Photo Manipulations (week 8)

Graphic design students have finished up with their environmental design projects and have them posted to their online portfolios.  Next week we will be unleashing the full potential of our imaginations and Photoshop as we learn how to do photo manipulations.  We will look at some work and speed art from Erik Johansson and Alexander Koshelkov.  Students will then be collecting images for some photo manipulations of their own.

Below is some student work that turned out pretty well recently.  The typography prints were remixes made from free images from unsplash.com.  The Haiku poems were actually written by a computer program that my Programming 1 students made that randomly generates Haikus.  At the bottom, we have some examples of some minimalist style movie posters I thought were creative as well.  Keep up the good work!

Environmental Design (week 7)

We finished up our layout design with magazine covers and a movie poster.  Next week we will be looking at examples of environmental graphic design.  The major project will be identifying an area that could use design, making a design for it, then using Photoshop to make it look like it's actually there!

layout design (week 6)

Students were to turn in their infographics before they left on Friday.  If they are not finished, they need to make arrangements to come in after school to get those turned in as we are moving on to the next project.

Next week we will be working on layout design.  The homework assignment is for students to bring in a magazine cover by Tuesday.  Students will learn key terms in layout design such as: layout, collateral design, print design, margins, gutters, horizon lines, grid, and columns.  Students will need to be able to define these terms, then they will measure the key elements on their magazine cover and will turn in a labeled diagram.

We will then look at some posters created by Saul Bass.  Students will create a movie poster with a Saul Bass or a minimal-style influence to it.  Students will need to pay attention to the layout, spacing, use of colors, fonts, designs, etc.  It is always fun to see what movies the students pick and to see how their projects turn out.

Speaking of great projects...  Below are some of the great examples of typography kids turned in for their various projects.  I was really pleased with these examples.

Great work on these projects, and keep up the great work!

infographics (week 5)

We will be finishing up our section about typography on Tuesday of this week, and uploading our work to our portfolio.  Some of the projects look great, and others are fine-tuning their work to the point where it meets the student's expectations.  Once we have these projects turned in, we are going to move on to the world of infographics or information graphics.  We will look at some examples of how they are used today, we will do some practice activities together, then we will work on our infographic.  Students will need to research a topic, record their sources of information, sketch out a layout to organize their data, then will create their infographic on the computer.  They need to include the sources appropriately on their project.  This project is an important topic in graphic design, but also covers the standard that deals with ethics and free use in the work place.  By giving credit to where they found their information, they are telling a story with their design, but are giving credit to the researchers who found the information.

typography (Week 4)

We have finished up our learning about branding and identity designs.  Students have been working on improving their use of the design process.  Friday we turned in our branding guides and Tuesday we will be starting our next section.  The next learning topics will cover practises in typography.  We will discuss form and content, look at some work by famous graphic designers like David Carson, and will create a series of work that uses typography in various ways.  Below are some examples of the stationery that students turned in last week that turned out good.

Great job, and keep up the great work Graphic Design students!