Story Time

In the midst of CATS testing week, Intro to Graphics II students have been exercising their creative skills by writing, illustrating and designing their own children's book. Beginning with a simple storyline, students have been creating storyboard drawings, developing their plot and creating "dummy" designs of their book concepts. Next week, work on the actual page layout and design will begin. In class, students have been inspired by video interviews of children's book authors such as Simms Taback, creator of "Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly," and others such as Shel Silverstein, Eric Carle, and Maurice Sendak.

In the Intro to Graphics 1 class, students have been working on self-portraits in Adobe Illustrator and completing exercises exploring the brush tools and swatch palettes, and working with Photoshop images using the cropping tool.

The Art of the Poster

For the past couple of weeks, Graphics II students have been learning about the history of poster design & it's role in twentieth-century advertising. Beginning with a look at historical and iconic posters from Hollywood, advertising and modern pop culture, students explored the messages conveyed to an "audience on the move." Then, student designers put their own skills to work as they researched ideas, developed sketches and created poster designs for the PRP's production of the "Little Shop of Horrors" musical.

This week, Graphics II students have been working on concepts for a cd package design project, while my Intro to Graphics class has been exploring the basics of Adobe InDesign, through a series of Lab exercises.

Fresh New Faces~A New Trimester Begins

For the past couple of weeks, Intro to Graphic Design students have been learning about the principles of design and elements of art, and have created unique logos in Adobe Illustrator. Starting with twenty thumbnail sketches, students chose their top design to create digitally. Once completed, attention was shifted to creating business card designs, featuring their newly created logo.

Second trimester design students have been learning special effects using Adobe Photoshop. Their results are amazing, and include avatars, zombies, animorphs and student self portraits. Another project explores the Cow as Art, as students design and create their own milk carton, using images of cows as inspiration for package graphics and logo/brand creation.

Next week, PRP student entries to the annual Doodle 4 Google contest will be submitted to the national competition. Many students have participated in this project~winning entries are selected from every state and grade level. The national grand prize winner received a $15,000 scholarship for college, and gets to see their logo featured on Google's home page for an entire day! Best of luck to all student participants...

Congratulations to PRP's own Kendall Bickett, who recently won the Kentucky Derby Museum's annual student art contest: "Horsing Around with Art." Kendall, who is a senior at PRP and a student in the Visual Arts/Graphic Design program, received 6 box tickets to the 2011 Kentucky Derby for winning the grand prize. Way to go, Kendall!!!!

The Art of Google Doodles

Each year, Google sponsors a national competition called Doodle4Google, inviting students from every state and grade level to use their artistic talents and to "think big" to create their own "Google Doodle." The grand prize winner receives a $15,000 college scholarship and will see their design featured on the Google homepage for an entire day.

Students began the project last Thursday by watching a feature article from CBS Sunday Morning, and a time-lapsed video documenting an actual doodle creation. Inspired by seeing work produced by last year's winners, PRP Graphic Arts students were up for the challenge!  After downloading templates from Google's website, students began creating sketches/designs using traditional methods as well as newly acquired skills using Adobe CS5. Students will work on this project for a couple of days before moving on to our next project.

Diving into Adobe InDesign

This week we have been exploring page layout exercises in Adobe InDesign. InDesign is a powerful program with text layout, image, typography and special effects features. Students are able to put their newly acquired skills in Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator to use by combining the graphic elements they have created into multipage documents within InDesign.

To get the creativity flowing, students watched four installments of DesignSponge: Design by the Book, a video series produced by the New York Free Public Library. Studio visits and artist interviews give students a glimpse into the creative process--from initial concept to finished product.

Students completed two lab projects this week. In the first, they experimented with page layout, and in another, followed step-by-step instructions to recreate the Rally's logo.

Lastly, students learned about business cards and their uses, and created thumbnail sketches for a card of their own design. Students were inspired by some amazing and unusual business card designs by visiting http://creativebits.org/cool_business_card_designs. Before starting their designs on the computer, students completed Business Card Planning worksheets and produced sketches of their ideas.

Self Portraits go Digital!

This week, we started a new Digital Self Portrait project. After watching a demo on PhotoBooth, students started their project by creating a writing worksheet, where they identified nouns and adjectives that described their personality, and then outlined short-term and long-term goals for themselves. From there, students created 2 to 3 photographs of themselves using PhotoBooth. Images were saved to their desktop folder, and opened in Adobe Photoshop, where they edited their selections, and applied Photoshop filters to achieve an image that reflects their personality. Lastly, their images are imported into Adobe InDesign, where words from their writing assignment are applied to their self portrait.

If you missed the video in class, check out the PhotoBooth tutorial for yourself, at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIVb7eX5XWQ

Wrapping up Last Year's Projects...

Due to the snow days before the holiday break, the end of the six-week's grading period has been moved to Wednesday, January 5th. Before moving on to new projects for the New Year, students will spend the rest of this week finishing up their package design project, as well as their line grid studies [drawing project]. Both projects must be turned in by FRIDAY, JANUARY 7, 2011.

The assignment details for the package design project are posted on the "Assignments" tab. Students will be graded on their final project, and will be required to bring in a water or drink container [ex.: Aquafina, Deer Park, Red Bull, Monster, etc.] so that they can produce a package prototype, affixing their designs to the container they have chosen. Students who have opted to design a soapbox may print their designs out on cardstock, and assemble their carton in class. 

Following project completion, all students will participate in a whole class critique, where student work will be evaluated. Then, each student will write a reflection/self-assessment of their work. The critique and reflection will each count as a quiz grade.

Happy New Year [the New Macs are Here]!

As Graphic Arts students return to school this week, they will start the New Year using brand new computers to finish their package design project, and will begin planning designs for business cards, which will feature students' unique "name" logos, created in Adobe Illustrator.

Additional projects will include "Digital Self Portraits," in which students will learn to use a digital camera, upload their image to Adobe Photoshop, and apply text or other graphics to create a unique reflection of themselves.