New Project: Using Photoshop, Illustrator and Indesign Together to Create an Original Magazine Cover Design

Hello Students,
Your new assignment is a combination of Photoshop and Indesign. Find a high resolution image and process the photo with filters in photoshop and use it to design an original magazine cover with Indesign. You will create additional artistic elements with Illustrator as well. This project is a good lesson in utilizing multiple software tools. You need to use original photos and content!

Magazine Cover Design Project:
Take a photo with your own camera or borrow my camera. Crop the photo to 8.5X11 inches and process it with this series of filters and layer effects in this tutorial:
Photoshop Tutorial - Cutout Painting Photo Effect

Now you have original artwork to use in the following magazine layout tutorial, make sure to read all directions before proceeding:

Indesign Tutorial - Magazine Cover

Here is the progression of my magazine cover design. I took the photo, processed it with Photoshop, added colorful borders in Illustrator and brought it into Indesign to create my magazine cover design.

Designs are due on Monday. This should be a great piece for your portfolio, have fun!

 - Mr.W

New Project: Event Poster Design

Hello Students, 
Your new assignment is to design an event poster for your favorite musical group. You must adhere to the specifications below and use your own creativity to design an eye catching poster design. This is your chance to flex your creative and design skills.

Event Poster Design Project:

- You MUST produce 1 FULL PAGE pencil sketch of your poster design idea

- Your poster must be designed at 18"X24"

- Your poster must contain ORIGINAL ARTWORK or ORIGINAL PHOTOGRAPHY. You can use web images as reference only, but direct artwork tracing or photography used in your project must be original. Time to bust your your camera's.

- You may use Photoshop or Illustrator or both... your choice

- You MUST use no more than 2 fonts

- You must choose 2 bands to include in your poster, one group is the headline act, the other is the opening act

- Your poster must contain the following elements:

   • Band #1

   • Band #2 Opening Act

   • Location (the venue, such as The Catalyst or The Greek, Shoreline, etc...)

   • Date of the show

   • Show Times

   • Ticket Price

   • Ages Admitted

This poster assignment will be due on Tuesday.

TIPS, TRICKS AND RESOURCES FOR POSTER DESIGN

• Designing a poster isn't always easy, especially if it is your first time. Don't be afraid to experiment and don't feel held back by your drawing capabilities. There are lots of tricks to creating original artwork from photographs that don't require elite artistry techniques.
• Pay attention to the spaces BETWEEN your letters. Take some lessons from our typography studies and pay attention to the spacing, pace and rythmn of the words.
• Use colors that COMPLIMENT each other. When you color choices clash it affects the entire composition of your design.
• Communicate your message with the right images. Poster design is about communicating and delivering information.

Links for inspiration:
Link - Creative Event Poster Design Samples

Link - 30 Inspiring Poster Designs

Link - Vintage Poster Designs for Color Inspiration

Tutorial Project: Vintage Poster Design

Hello Students,

Having exceptional skills with Photoshop is a must have in this current job market. Your creativity can be unleashed if you have in depth understanding of graphic design tools, such as Photoshop.

Your new assignment is to work through the vintage pop art poster tutorial. Click the link below to access it. This is a great exercise in gathering materials and using advanced techniques to create grungy and weathered looking artwork, but don't despair... it is easier than you think. Your results should look close to the image below, you can use your own photo and text. Utilize your own creativity to make your poster unique but do work through all the steps in the tutorial.

Link: Vintage Pop Art Poster Tutorial

Link: Grungie Paper Textures

Link: Textures and Backgrounds

Link: Creative Commons Images

Student Work Examples:

End of Course Survey

Hello Students,
With current legislation regarding education in California and a looming budget crisis for California schools, it is more important that ever that we gather information about your experiences in ROP courses and your future plans for education and career.

Please click the link below and fill out the survey. It takes about 3 minutes and is very important to ensure that ROP courses are made available for future classes.

Link: ROP End Of Year Course Survey

Thank you,
- Mr.W

New Assignment: Package Design

Hello Students,
Your new assignment is to create an original package design.

Package Design Assignment Details:

• Search for template designs for packages, find one you like or make an original design. Try a google search for "package template(s)". Here is a link I found
• Outline or trace your template in Illustrator... note the tabs for gluing/taping together and the folding pattern
• Come up with a product idea and create a package design, front, back, sides, top and bottom
• Include product names, information, ingredients etc...
• All artwork must be original, no tracing or processing of photo's
• Your project will be graded on originality and complexity of your package design

Resources for inspiration:

Link: Packaging of the World

Link: Cool Hunter -  Power of the Package Design

Bonus Link: Vecteezy Free Package Templates in AI Format

Simple cereal box package template

Completed cereal package design

Have fun!

 - Mr.W

New Assignment: Creating an Identity Package

Hello Students,
An identity package is a corporate communication standard. It helps a company or organization present a uniform appearance to the world in its correspondence and communication. Being able to design a logo and elements that enhance it for an ID package is a strong design skill and one that is readily marketable to your potential clients.


Identity Package Assignment Details:

• When logo is complete, create an identity package that expands on your logo design style and color usage.
• Create a business card, letterhead, envelope design and CD Label. Use Indesign for creation.

Tutorial:

Use this tutorial as a guide to creating your Business card, letterhead and envelope. You will have to do some research and use your imagination to create the CD Label.

Link: How to create an identity package

Resources:

• Link: ID Package design done right
• Link: ID Package design samples

Examples of student work:

Have fun!

- Mr.W