Final Project : Choose Your Own Adventure

Hello Students,

Your final project is to choose from one of the 3 assignments. You may either design a poster that promotes one of the CTE courses at SCHS, or you may create an original magazine cover design... or choose one of our previous projects to redo for more credit and better results.

Option 1 - Design a promotional poster for a CTE course
For this project your goal is to design a promotional poster that will create interest for students in taking CTE classes. You could design a poster that creates interest for a specific class or multiple classes. If your poster qualifies it will be printed and displayed on campus and you will have another great design project for your portfolio.

Option 2 - Design and create an original magazine cover

This 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 if you wish 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!

Option 3 - Revisit a previous project, redo, remake, retry for better results.

Did you struggle through a previous project? Feel like you could do better now with your improved skills? Tackle a previous project with renewed energy to achieve better results. Project must be approved by me and the results should show new original work, not refine/rehashed previous efforts.

Have fun! All projects are due by end of finals!

- Mr.W

Design an Original Album Cover

Hello Students,

Your new assignment is to create an original album cover design. All artwork, photography and illustration used in your cover design must be 100% original. Use all of your skills you have learned this semester, you must demonstrate your competence in using design and software skills.

Introducing: Fou Ts'ong, Piano, Mozart Piano Cocerti , K503 & K595,  Westminster , Rudolph de Harak

Assignment Paramaters:

You will be creating a CD album artwork. Start by listening to an album you would like to create a design for. Think about how you can visualize the physical and emotional response the music creates inside of you... how can you put those influences into a visual representation? When listening to the music it can help to create a list of words that come to mind... think of it as creating your own inspirational word cloud.. this can help influence your visual design and give it focus. They key to this assignment is to make sure the artwork on the album cover is representational of the music it is showcasing.

Assignment Specifications:

Utilize all of the skills you have learned this semester. This project should be a shining example of your graphic design skills for your portfolio. This project will be graded against the class rubric, see the link above and read before proceeding:

• Find a template for a CD jewel case insert for the dimensions and layout. You will need to design the cover and spine to fit in a jewel case, front and back.
• All artwork, illustration and photography used must be 100% original
• Make sure the design shows unity with the music it is showcasing, it should show creativity, be appropriate for the audience and demonstrate an understanding of design
• Typography must display the album title and name of band
• Use all design principals that can be applied, alignment, typography, contrast etc. Focus on typography and composition for a professional looking result
• Use Photoshop or Illustrator or both, your choice. Utilize any and all artistic creation processes to create your design, including illustration, photography, painting, collage, sculpture, etc...
• Refer to our grading rubric for clarity on the assignment expectations

Links for Inspiration:

35 Beautiful Music Album Covers

50 Amazing Album Cover Art Examples

Designs are due on Friday the 25th, have fun!

- Mr.W

Previous Student Work Examples:

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 beginning of May and must be ready for presentation, evaluation and critique (make it perfect!) but that is no reason to slack on this project. You should put great time and care into creating the professional side of your portfolio and then you will be ready to add your creative projects as the semester progresses. 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. Everyone can print a copy to keep and report covers will be provided if possible.

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 Cover Design Assignment:

• Design an eye catching cover design for you your portfolio
• Include your name, the title of this class, the school you are currently attending and the year
• Design your cover for standard letter size 8.5X11 inch paper
• When you are done post your portfolio cover design to your blog
• Portfolio structure design is due today
• Cover design is due on wednesday

Portfolio Development Long Term 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...

1. 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
2. Table of contents
3. Letter of Introduction
4. Resume
5. Handwritten Job Application 
6. List of References
7. Letter of Recommendation -  cannot be from your ROP teacher or a family member
8. 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
• Shows good design and wise choice of color palettes
• Shows consistency across all pages
• Reflects your style, personality and interests

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...

Part 1 - Launch and Explore InDesign Before Creating Your Portfolio:

• If you are confident with Indesign you can skip ahead, if you feel you need more familiarity with Indesign than read through and try out all the tools in Indesign before proceeding.
• 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

Previous Student Portfolio Cover Design Samples:

P.S. There are more samples on the back table for review...

Logo Design Capstone Project: Creating an Identity Kit

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 then enhance it for an ID package is a strong design skill and one that is readily marketable to your potential clients.

Identity Kit Assignment Details:

• When you have consulted with your instructor and your final logo design is complete, create an identity package that expands on your logo design style and color usage. Look for elements you can play with such as color, shapes, graphic elements, typography use them in the design of your identity package assets. Above all make the kit have consistency and adhere to the graphic "DNA" in your logo design.
• Create a business card, letterhead, envelope design and a Shirt design + 2 promotional items of your choice (cd/dvd label, usb drive, pen, pencil, notepad, keychain etc).
• Use the tutorial if you wish as a guide to creating your Business card, letterhead and envelope elements. You will have to do some research and use your imagination to complete the other assets in your ID kit. Look up the sizing and specifications of each asset before creating them, for instance the CD label, you can find a template to use through a quick google image search.

Link: How to create an identity package

Identity Kit Assignment Deliverables:

• Your final logo applied to and expanded upon in the creation of a cohesive identity kit
• A mockup of all designs applied to:
• Business card (front and back)
• Letterhead
• Envelope
• T-Shirt
• 2 Promotional items of your choice that are brand appropriate (DVDs, CDs, pens, pencils, usb-drives, water bottles, etc.)
• Design mockups assembled and presented in an appealing visual manner in 1 final image
• Designs and final work are expected to show quality and craftsmanship and to utilize the principles and elements of design in deliberate ways to produce compelling and effective work. Please read the class rubric for grading expectations.

Resources:

• Link: ID Package design samples

Examples of student work: High Performing
These designs all show quality logo design and good application to promotional and print elements. A quality mockup can sell the idea to your client so our expectations are high.

Examples of student work: Medium Performing

Missing promotional items. Logo design was copied from prior works.

Examples of student work: Low Performing

The final logo design in this assignment was not reviewed with the instructor. The  application lacks detail and does not adhere to design principles and elements or the class rubric. Missing additional promotional items.

Have fun!

- Mr.W

Logo Development Project Phase 2: Final Design and Production Art

Hello Students,
For this project you will review the 15 examples you created in the prior project. Identify the strongest example(s) and further develop them, resulting in a single logo rendered as final production art. This assignment has multiple deliverables, so focus on reading and understanding the expectations laid out below before beginning.

Final Logo Development Project:

• Take the strongest example of your previous project and develop it further, explore it's design, create 3 strong variations of your final design, explore layout and graphic options, choose the best version and render it as final production art meeting the deliverables below.
• To evaluate your best designs, email the finished results of your previous project and or the current state of your designs to me as JPG's and I will email feedback and offer suggestions on how to progress and refine your design.
• For final production art you will create and post a version in black and white and one in color, you will also post your 3 pencil sketches alongside your final vector artwork. Presentation and quality counts. Show the versatility of your logo design with different sizes, colors and how it might be used against different backgrounds, white on black, black on white etc.

Deliverables:

• 3 Logo design variations based on strongest design(s) from previous project. Email these to me for feedback before proceeding.
• When given feedback, render your 1 final logo rendered vector art, in both color and black and white/white on black and in 3 sizes from large to small (64X64 pixels or 1"X1"). Alter or edit smallest version if needed for clarity
• To clarify: Final Logo is posted as...
• Full Color
• Black on white background
• White on black background
• 3 sizes from Full size, to small (think business card size) to Icon size (64X64 Pixels, unique pixel art modifications may be needed)

Grading:

Refer to the grading rubric for the expectations and methods I will use to evaluate your work.

3 Logo Variations are Due by Thursday, Final Logo artwork is due next Tuesday - Mr.W

Previous Student Examples: Low Performing:

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This design shows poor execution and failed to meet assignment deliverables. There is no attention paid to the quality of the line work. The logo is not describable. The logo is not expressive of it's organizations purpose.

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Medium Performing:

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This logo shows good craftsmanship but received a poor rating as it was appropriated from a pre-existing design

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High Performing:

These examples showed strong design skills, good craftsmanship and students met required deliverables for the assignment. Strong original designs can be a shining example in a young designers portfolio.

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