Barney's New York Twitter Background Contest

I saw the tweet for their contest thought it was a great opportunity and excuse for me to use Illustrator and Photoshop. Admittingly, I'm still testing things out and illustrator confuses me a lot more than Photoshop but I learned that they both go hand in hand very well and I am loving it! A friend and mentor of mine is planning on giving me some tutorial CDs soon on illustrator and I'm totally stoked about learning soon! Until then, I'll rely on your constructive criticisms on how to make my designs BETTER.

So the point of this contest is to make a background for Barney's and the only requirement is that it includes their logo. In this design I used illustrator to draw each building and then photoshop to add the logos and windows.

I did three different versions where the difference is just the color of the "barneys new york logo." My personal favorite is the one with Purple, Orange and Blue but my sister liked the yellow one too so I submitted both. And then submitted a black and white one cuz maybe they'd like it to be more neutral and cool.

Anyhow, that's my first twitter background design ever so the size might not be exact but I made it so that it's ok to chop off a little off the top and it will still look good. I know that the tweets are in the middle but I prefer the city to be continuous instead of chopped into two pieces with an empty space in the middle so that when you scroll ALL the way to the bottom, you'll know it's one continuous city. What's also nice is that it looks good as a desktop background too! It's currently mine and I like the color change when it switches through each version.

About Myself

So thanks to JulReDesigns from Twitter, I've realized that I had absolutely no information on myself for those who are curious as to who this designer is and why they should rate this stranger. If I stuck myself in her/his shoes and everyone else I tweeted, I'd probably be thinking the same thing:
"Why should I vote for you? I don't know you."

So here's a short Bio on myself and I'll try to update this blog as often as possible so you can get to know me:

My name is Jennifer and my last name starts with a Y and a R. Hence, "Jenni Y.R." However, since this is public I'd like to keep this info private and reserved for those I know so Y & R is all you'll know. I have no middle name but apparently, my ONE last name got translated from two different dialects of my parent's native tongue and they couldn't decide which one to choose, so they chose both. And that's how I ended up with two last names in English.

I'm a graduate with a degree in Biology and currently trying to figure out what I want to do with my life, or at least trying to get myself started in getting there. In the meanwhile, I've also always loved messing around on Photoshop. After recently getting the new CS4 Adobe Suite, I've decided to learn how to use In-Design, Illustrator and Photoshop with my sister's Wacom tablet. (She's an artist).

So far I've only been testing everything out, but I believe the best way to learn is with a challenge and the Barney's New York twitter background contest is my first professional work with the combination of Illustrator and Photoshop.

I will try to post what I do in this Blog as well and would love any and all feedback. Even tips for the programs I'm learning how to use would be fantastic!