Thursday, December 19, 2013

Portfolio Development

Hello Students,

Having a polished and professional looking portfolio is key to your success in finding work after High School and moving on to developing a career. Download the ROP Portfolio Handbook to use as a guide for creating your own portfolio, a requirement in all ROP classes.

Portfolio's are due by the January 18th and must be ready for presentation, evaluation and critique. You will complete a digital version as a PDF file for evaluation. Class winner will be able to print and prepare their portfolio for inclusion in the Portfolio Showcase competition

Remember that the best portfolio in class will be sent to the portfolio design competition that ROP has at the end of each school year, your portfolio will compete against other graphic design classes across the county, and there are prizes!

A judge evaluates print portfolio's from past entrants...

Portfolio Development Assignment:

Your portfolio must be created in Indesign and the final file must be a multi-page PDF document
Use the Pages palette to create multiple pages for your portfolio with Indesign
Your portfolio cover, table of contents and all materials should look clean and consistent. Use consistent design style across all aspects of your portfolio, this includes color, typography, layout and style

Your Portfolio must contain in this order: See portfolio handbook for more details...

Cover page with your name, class title, year. Spend some time on this, it should show good design skill and be reflective of your personality
Table of contents
Letter of Introduction
Resume
Handwritten Job Application
List of References
Letter of Recommendation - cannot be from your ROP teacher or a family member
3 or more work samples with written explanation about the work, why is it important to your career choice? What did the project entail, what were the challenges and difficulties? Give us details.

How Your Portfolio Is Evaluated:

Contains required content and format
Well organized
Free of grammer problems
ROP related work samples
Shows creativity
Nice appearance
Shows skill development
Appropriate for use in job search
Professional appearance
Nice presentation

A print portfolio can take many forms, it can be professionally bound, stitched by hand or bound with a spiral ring... how will you create your portfolio, what will make it stand out above the rest?

Tips For Winning The Portfolio Competition:

In the last few years the portfolio competition has gotten fierce, especially for the graphic design category. Other schools have printing facilities that we don't, so you must use your creativity, ingenuity and eye for design to stand above the rest. Consider purchasing a large format portfolio binder and printing work samples at 11X17", or consider making a hand-bound book format to showcase your work. The limits are only contained by your creativity!

Use this as a rough guide to laying out your own portfolio...

Ok, have fun!

Student Portfolio Design Samples:

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Exploring InDesign and Creating an Original Magazine Cover

Hello Students,

Your new assignment is a combination of using Digital Photography and 3 programs to create one product, Adobe Illustrator, 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 Adobe 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!

Part 1 - Launch and Explore InDesign

Go to the dock and launch InDesign, or look in your Applications folder to find the app
Go to the File Menu and create a New Document
Go to the Window Menu and set your Workspace to Advanced
Explore the tool bar, click on the text tool and draw a text box to create text, try the shape tools and look for the color modifiers to change colors
Open all the palettes under the Window Menu and explore all the functions, look at the quick guides below for reference
See if you can create text of different sizes, change the colors, modify the text kerning and tracking and draw shapes in different colors and with different borders

Hidden Tools and Shortcut Keys

Character Formatting Panel In InDesign

Paragraph Formatting Panel in InDesign

Part 2 - Magazine Cover Design Project:

Take a photo with your own camera or borrow a school camera. Look for interesting subjects, you can also use the photo studio. Crop the photo to 8.5X11 inches and process it with this series of filters and layer effects in this tutorial, or your own combination of Photoshop Effects. The image must be processed somehow.

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 Tuesday. This should be a great piece for your portfolio, have fun!

- Mr.W

Tuesday, December 3, 2013

New Project: Promotional Advertising, Design an Original Event Poster

Hello Students,

Your new assignment is to design an event poster for a 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. All elements studied are to be utilized and will be scrutinized: color, design, illustration and typography.

Poster design by your instructor, Seth Wilson

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 out your camera's.

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

- You may 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

- When you post your final work to your blog you must display the color palette used, list all fonts used, what software and hardware was used, including the camera

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

Examples of student work:

Multiple Sizes Final Logo

Overview:

In this exercise you will layout your final logo art at different scales and print them to test design fidelity. You may need to revise the contrast or color choices after you see the print result.

Print Test Multiple Scales:

Create a New Document in Adobe Illustrator.
Copy-Paste your Black and White and Color versions of your logo into the New Document.
Arrange them side by side and group them.
Use the Scale Tool by double-clicking on the tool and setting the scale to 75%, make sure the option is set to Scale Stroke and Effects, click Copy and this will make a copy of your selection that is reduced in size.
Repeat this step until you have versions of your logo that are scaled from 1/4 page to roughly 1 inch.
Arrange the designs on the page so they all fit and are aligned and organized.
Print this page and review it. Are there any changes that should be made? Do you see any mistakes? Does the small version need more contrast or perhaps thinner stroke weights?
Revise your scaled versions and reprint.
Turn in your final print with your name for grading.

Student Example

Thursday, November 21, 2013

Render Final Logo

Overview:

In this project, you will take your pencil sketched logo design from the previous project and render it with Adobe Illustrator. Students that are more proficient with creating vector artwork should assist the less experienced designers. Color choices, line quality and a polished final product is the goal.
This project is worth 50pts

Final Logo Render Project:

You should work independently on this exercise and ask for help when needed or research your own answers online.
You should work quietly but are encouraged to ask questions and share information.
You must render your pencil sketched logos with Adobe Illustrator to create vector artwork as the final result.
You will create a version in black and white, then color.

Vector Artwork Part 1:

Use a flatbed scanner to scan your pencil sketch artwork at a resolution of 300 DPI and save it to your computer in the JPG file format. If no scanner is available, use a high quality (or whatever is available) digital camera to take a picture of the design. Use a steady hand and make sure the camera is facing the artwork straight on. Then copy the photo to your computer.
Open a New Document in Adobe Illustrator and set it to Letter size, 8 1/2 inches by 11 inches, set the orientation to match your logo sketch paper, set the color to CMYK.
Bring the JPG file of your sketch into Illustrator by going to the File Menu and selecting Place, navigate to your image and click to place.
Scale the image if needed to fit within your page boundaries.
Save your document into a new project folder and title it " logo_version1.ai".

Vector Artwork Part 2:

Open the Layer Palette and set the opacity of the Pencil Sketch Layer to 75% and lock the layer.
Create a New Layer by clicking the New Layer button on the Layer Palette, rename it "black and white art".
Trace the line art of the pencil sketch with the Pen Tool, make sure all the curves are smooth and all the shapes complete. When complete modify the shape of the line with a custom brush or the Stroke Shape option in the Stroke Palette. Make every line graceful and precise.
When the outlines are complete fill in areas with black to create the black and white version.
When the B&W version is done, create a copy of that layer and rename it "color art". Edit that layer to become your color version. Use all the colors you want to see in the final version, gradients are allowed, choose your color palette wisely.
Pay attention to retaining quality line shape, good use of contrast and bright appropriate color usage.

Student Examples:

Low Performing

Medium Performing

High Performing

Graphic Style Guidelines

Why Vector Art? Why do we create logo designs with a vector art program? The answer is simple: Vector art is flexible and powerful. It is very easy to create multiple color tests, multiple typeface tests, scale and arrange objects quickly. This is all important when doing work for clients who change their minds on details all the time.

Pencil To Vector: Executing a pencil sketch into vector art is a multi-step process, just as it is creating the design itself. Scanning your artwork is the first step, next comes tracing the shape with the pen tool, then adding color and text and final touches. Make everything editable and keep your art and layers organized, remember the clients will change everything so make it easy to change.

Graphic Style: All logo designs have a certain identifyable style and that is usually in line with the nature of the business, brand or service it represents. You need to analyze your design and make sure your style fits! Do you want your style to be bold, fun and cute?

Graphic Style: Or is your company technical in nature and your style is sleek, technical looking and a bit sedate?

Final Art - Graphic Style: Maybe your client doesn't take themselves too seriously and wants a cartoony design, paying attention to your line shape really matters here.

Graphic Style: Maybe your client is high tech and wants a design that appears three dimensional, this can be challenging to render in vector... but gradient shapes help.

Graphic Style: Their are a wide range of design styles to use. Let your design style fit the concept it represents but still be unique and assertive.

Line Quality: Line quality refers to the smoothness and preciseness of your shapes and lines in your design. Using the Pen Tool is the only way to acheive this, and while it can be a challenging tool to use all good designers are proficient with it. Master the Pen Tool and you can make a career out of using it. Pay attention to your efforts here, practice drawing a line to get it right. If it doesn't look right than try again. Make it perfect.

Line Shape: If you are using line drawings in your logo or are creating cartoony artwork you must bay attention to your line shape. The Stroke Palette in Adobe Illustrator lets your change the shape by selecting a shape from a pull down menu, there is also a library of art brushes that can be used for a more organic and artistic line shape.

Line Shape: Before and after versions of a logo design. Seperate shapes were drawn for color layers, line layers were modified to have tapered line shapes.

Color Matters: Remember that color matters, research what your competitors use, use colors that are appropriate and are chosen to cause an emotional effect deliberately. Consistent Color choice increases brand recognition by 80%. Proper color choice is a way we add value to our work, rich gradients and color highlights can really make a logo pop.

Review: Decide on your graphic look based on your design--it should be in harmony. Research your competitors: You can benefit from their work and research as well. Spend time on line quality--if it doesn't look right make it perfect and try again. Pay attention to line shape, graceful tapering curves, rounded ends, different thickness are all ways we add quality to our work.

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Group Review of 3 Final Sketches

Group Review: Logo Design Critique Form

Overview:

In this exercise, you will display your 3 logo design final sketches from the previous lesson and you will review each others work in groups

Quick Story from Mr. Wilson:

When I was in a design class in college, I created a logo that used the silhouette of a bird. When I showed it to a classmate, they said, "What is it?" I replied, "It's a bird!" as if that was plain as daylight. The student said that all they saw were 2 crab claws. I was dumbfounded to say the least, but it is a good example of why we share work and ask for criticism, it makes our design work stronger.

Critiquing in the Classroom:

Critiquing sessions in the classroom requires conscious critiquing with guidelines:

The Platinum rule is: "Try to write what you think that person wants to hear."
The Golden rule would be nearly as good, "What YOU would like to hear."
Critiquing is to describe, analyze, and interpret, not to be judgemental or simply say that they do or don't like something.
Any critiquing should be constructive, not destructive.
Our work becomes stronger when other people hold our efforts to a higher level of quality and this requires the ability to accept feedback and criticism.

Critique Format:

Break into groups of 4
You should each have 3 copies of the artwork critique form.
Choose one person in the group to be the group leader and make sure that each student gets adequate critque time.
Review each others artwork, one at a time. At the end of the exercise, each of you should have 3 critique forms that evaluates your logo designs.
You should review the artwork and analyze the elements that work. Keep the criticism constructive and adhere to the printed form.

Critique Form:

Rendering Final Sketches of Top 3 Thumbnails

Rendering The Thumbnail: Full Page Sketches

Produce 3 final sketches.
Sketch a full page example of your top 3 chosen thumbnail logo designs.
You may use pencils, pens and colored pencils to create your final renderings.
You have the entire class period of 50 minutes to complete this assignment.
When complete, you should read/work quietly until the time limit is up for the final session.

Student Examples:

Low Performing:

High Performing

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Thumbnail Group Review

Overview:

Break into groups of 4 by your row of seats and review each others thumbnail design work. You will define your 3 strongest thumbnail designs for further development. You will create full page sketches of your strongest examples for critique in the next lesson.

Group Work: Getting Feedback

Break into groups (4 students per group) and arrange chairs in a circle or around a desk.
Choose onne person in your group to be the group leader
Taking turns, each student will show their thumbnail sketches to the other group members and explain the concept of the design and what kind of business or brand it is for.
Each student must review their designs and choose their 3 favorites.
When the group reaches a consensus on the strongest designs, they move on to the next student until everyone has had a chance for review.

At the end of the group exercise, review the chosen designs with your instructor.

Monday, November 18, 2013

Rapid Concept Development: Sketching Thumbnails

Overview:

Thumbnail sketching is for rapid concept development, basic composition or layout, client communication and approval, visual exploration and refining visual solutions. In this exercise, you will challenge and develop your design skills by creating 20 thumbnail sketches of potential logo designs for the brand/company of your choice. You can use this assignment and the following project as an opportunity to design a logo for your own self promotion, or to design a logo for a family members independent business. You are encouraged to find real world applications for your efforts in this project. It looks great in a portfolio and resume.

Materials:

Thumbnail grid with 20 small boxes for quick sketching. This helps you keep your designs small and quick. If you have their own sketchbook, that is fine to use, but the idea is to draw small.

20 Thumbnail Sketches Assignment Details:

Time limit of 45 minutes
You must choose a single subject for a logo design and draw 20 thumbnail sketches
You must use pencils only-- no pens or colored pencils
You will use one of the final designs for refinement in the next project
You are encouraged to research the concepts, ideas and competing logo designs for their particular subject
When you finish, you should review your designs quietly and continue working until the time is up