Everyday, audiences are bombarded by visual communication like graphic design. As technological advances continue to make desktop publishing accessible to just about anyone who can find a computer, so continues the bombardment, with an increase of real world design that's just plain bad. With some guidance, these instant "designers" can become effective visual communicators. And, there's no reason why young computer game enthusiasts couldn't advance beyond just "playing". This course will provide students with an introduction to professional graphic design and visual communication. Through a series of short graphic design projects, students will learn about and use design processes to create personal logos, business cards, and self-promotional posters. Additionally, students will have the opportunity to learn about and draw inspiration from their own cultural heritage by examining ancient Mayan mythology and hieroglyphs. A field trip to the Art Institute's Ancient West Mexico exhibit will be one of the more educationally rewarding highlights of the course. Additionally, students will make maximum use of the resources available in the Erie Technology Center, such as animation-simulating software and video image-capture software, to bring their designs to life. As an added bonus, a guest caricature artist will visit to teach drawing techniques essential to political cartooning, yet another creative form of visual communication.
Drawing, Graphic Design and Production, Cartooning, Desktop Publishing, Art History.
Eight class sessions, each two hours in length.
Students will have fun learning about effective visual communication while using computer desktop publishing systems.
Students will understand more about their cultural heritage by comparing the hieroglyphs of ancient civilizations to contemporary logotypes.
Students will create functional materials like business cards and rubber stamps, to use and/or include in a portfolio.
Students will practice caricature drawing techniques to create strong political cartoons.
Through creative brainstorming and image research, including examination of the ancient hieroglyphs of their cultural ancestry, students will learn how to focus on imagery that communicates their ideas and learn how to refine that imagery into logos that best communicate to their intended audience/situation.
Students will learn to combine graphic design concepts and techniques like thumbnail sketching and layout composition to create effective designs and, ultimately, functional print materials like business cards.
Students will begin to learn about design essentials like typography, layout grids, and the production of camera-ready art.
Students will learn to appreciate each other's ideas, be able to give and take constructive criticism, and hopefully, be pleasantly surprised by the results.
Introduce students to the vast world of visual communications, including show-and-tell from the instructor's portfolio. Engage the students in discussion about concepts in graphic design and how they effect their lives. Discuss historical and cultural influences.
Explain the concept and purpose of logos, and have the students think about possibilities for personal logos. Using resource materials like photo stock books and magazines, have the students research visual references to thumbnail sketch ideas that could help communicate their intended message.
Explain various sketching and rapid visualization techniques, encouraging students to remain loose in their renderings, resisting the temptation to erase or start over again.
Have the students begin their sketches on paper with pencil or pen. Ask students to think about symbols that could be used to represent their ideas. Some symbols could stand alone as logos, while other symbols could be paired with lettering to create logotypes that more effectively communicate their messages.
After finishing the last steps in session one, discuss their sketches. Have the students briefly critique each other's ideas, and emphasize those suggestions that could help strengthen the ideas and keep the students focused.
Introduce the students to the desktop publishing hardware and software available in the computer lab, and explain how they can scan their sketches and manipulate them on the computer. Encourage the students to incorporate type into their logo ideas.
Print the results and lead a class critique on the designs.
Finish up any remaining steps from session two, then discuss basic concepts of design composition, including layout grids.
Have the students begin layout sketches for business cards and letterheads that include their logo designs. Make suggestions for inclusion of pertinent information, including the placement of such information/graphics in their layouts.
Print the results and lead a class critique on the designs.
Lead the class on a field trip to the Art Institute's Ancient West Mexico exhibit. Have the students bring sketching materials to record images/ideas that they could refine and incorporate into their design projects.
Pay special attention to the hieroglyphs used by ancient Mayan cultures and discuss possibilities for using them. For example, students may choose to use actual hieroglyphs to create symbols that represent their names, or they may want to create their own hieroglyphs, or use combinations of both.
Discuss their ideas and sketches.
Continue where the class left off in session four. Then, have the students return to their business stationary designs to incorporate their hieroglyph-like logos. Students may also want to begin designing different stationary, or a self-promotional poster.
Discuss the process of designing and producing rubber stamps, including the production of camera-ready art suitable for a print shop. Their rubber stamp designs could include a logo/return address stamp that they could use to create many envelopes for their business stationary. (Rubber stamps to be completed during the final session.)
Lead a class critique of their final laser print designs.
After completing any remaining steps from session five, introduce the class to the guest caricature artist. Discuss the significance of political cartoons in relation to print media, and how caricatures can quickly and impactfully communicate the artist's ideas to the intended audience.
Using the lab's video camera and animation-simulation software, have the students begin recording and manipulating their own faces on computer while the guest artist draws caricature examples and offers suggestions that will help make the students' caricatures most effective.
Continue the animation, using the caricatures and/or logos as the subject.
View the work as a class and lead a brief critique.
Introduce the students to the concept of color posters as a means of self-promotion. Begin layout of personal posters. These will become part of each student's portfolio and can include their logos and caricatures.
Critique the poster designs.
Complete and print the color posters.
Assemble rubber stamps by having the students rubber cement the polymer images onto wood blocks.
Discuss and assemble portfolios.
Celebrate!
To introduce students to the graphic arts world of pre-press production and printing, have the students create camera-ready art to be taken along on a field trip to a local printer and left behind for printing. Have the printer discuss how the camera-ready art will be used, and show samples of printed materials created with similar camera-ready art. Later, when the print job is done, pass the printed materials out in class. The students should be quite impressed.
Did students interact in the process of graphic design and can they repeat them? Did students comprehend the concept of brainstorming, researching, and critiquing ideas? Assess how students combined thumbnail sketching, layout design, and caricature drawing to create effective posters, etc. Were these techniques used to design and compose printed materials that visually communicate their ideas clearly and in a manner relevant to them? Assess students' satisfaction with the way the final pieces turned out.
Animation, audience, brainstorm, camera-ready, caricature, composition, critique, deadline, desktop publishing, graphic design, grid, hardware, hieroglyphs, image-capture, imagery, layout, lettering, logo, logotype, Mayan culture, mythology, political cartoon, polymer slab, portfolio, pre-press, print media, production, self-promotion, software, stock book, symbolism, thumbnail sketch, typography, visual communication.
Business envelopes, computers, color markers, desktop publishing "biz card stock", ink stamp pads, layout paper, pencils, pens, picture reference books, rubber cement, scissors, sketchbooks, wood blocks.