Final Project : Choose Your Own Final Design Adventure

Hello Students,

Your final project is to choose from one of the assignments or propose your own final project (with my approval). If your interested in developing a skill further with a specific process, technique or medium consider a project that will challenge your skills to grow. Consider the work results that will be the most attractive to your potential employers or college admission reviewer. Many design and communication programs in higher education require portfolios/demo reels for student applications.

Consider the projects below and take action to complete the work. All metrics in the course rubric will be applied to the work upon review.

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 - Design a Vinyl Cut sticker to promote school spirit at SCHS:

Design an illustration, team logo, promote a subject, class or teacher or even a logo for your club. Your design should be a positive reflection of SCHS but have style and content to reflect the ideals of our school (refer to the ESLRS). All artwork must be created as vector, with out micro details.... it must also work in one color. Work with our lab assistant to get your artwork added to a master print sheet for production. You may take one sticker as a work sample upon completion.

Option 4 - Design an event poster:

Design an event poster for a musical group. You must use your own creativity to design an eye catching and original 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.

Option 5 - 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 11th.

- Mr.W

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
• Rough copy of portfolio due on Tuesday!

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...

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...

Links for Inspiration:

35 Beautiful Music Album Covers

50 Amazing Album Cover Art Examples

Designs are due on Wednesday the 12th, have fun!

- Mr.W

Previous Student Work Examples: