Graphic Design

The last day of class

Hi,
Saturday May 21, is our last class. 
On that day we will:
1. Look at and discuss the package
    projects that came in a little late.
2. Review the ABC books.
3. I will look at your sketchbooks,
    please bring them in.
4. Review grades.

See you then!

Alphabet Project Part 2

So Far...
1. I have spoken to everyone that was in class today about each of your individual book projects.
2. For next Saturday, have the drawings sketched, inked and your text ready to be typed.
3. Photo copy or sketch your drawings into the blank booklet you made in class as a mock up of the final project.
4. Next Saturday, you will scan the drawings and type in your text as you begin crafting your final work.
5. As you create your work keep in mind that you have the option to not use any color and create a coloring book.
6. As you work on arranging each page and are playing with scale and image/text keep in mind the topics we spoke about earlier in the semester. See below:

Alphabet Book Project

 Summary:(Begin thinking of a topic, we will talk more about it on Saturday)

1. Choose Topic for ABC book

2. Doodle some ideas

3. Make a list of words from A-Z, that fall within the topic.

4. Make more sketches

5. Check to make sure the text is age appropriate when 

creating work for children. If you are creating an adult book, 

you can be more flexible.

6. Begin finalizing sketched ideas and concepts.

7. Create handmade mock up.

8. Begin building in illustrator.

9. One 8 ½ x 11”, vertically formatted, ai. file for each page.

At first glance, coming up with a topic isn’t all that hard. The difficulty comes in choosing just the right angle for your topic,  for example writing an ABC book on food has been done a million times, but what about foods from around the world, where each letter could represent a food from a different country?

To start this process, I recommend looking at recent ABC books on the market (within the past 5 years). Find out what’s selling and why.  A quick check of on line retailers for popular books can provide good ­­ideas and trends.

When choosing a topic, look at other popular children’s books, aside from ABC books, to get ideas as well. Discover what some of the current themes are. One good example of this is the environment. Regardless of which side of the political fence your views fall on concerning being green, one thing you can’t deny is that the topic is showing up everywhere, even in children’s books. Take advantage of such popular topics and use them as a basis for your alphabet book. Just because you don’t see a book on a particular topic doesn’t mean that the topic has been rejected by publishers. It could very well mean that no one has thought to write about it yet!

In general, the more specific you can get with your topic, the better. Instead of animals, choose a particular category of animals, such as those that live in a certain region, or those you might find at a zoo. Another general rule is to think globally. More and more, publishers are trying to reach an international audience, or, at the very least, are trying to pull their readers into a global awareness. The more you can include other cultures and regions around the world, the more marketable your book will be viewed by publishers.

It’s important to spend adequate time researching your potential topic to make sure you can actually write a complete alphabet book on it. “A” though “D” may be easy, but what about “X” through “Z”? This, of course, is the downside of choosing a too-specific topic. But that’s where more research comes in, and that’s what we’ll talk about next time. After all, if these books were as easy as ABC, everyone would be writing one!

I always suggest, when starting from a clean slate in choosing your words, to make one long list of every possible word you can think of that deals with your topic. Let’s say you’ve decided to do an ABC book on sea creatures. Write down every creature, big and small, you can think of that lives in the seas and oceans. Don’t over think your words at this point. It’s important to have as many as possible to work from. I also recommend never leaving the house without some way of taking notes when you’re out. You never know when that perfect word is going to pop into your head!

After you have compiled a sizable list, organize it by letter.  Then identify those letters that have few, if any, corresponding words. For those letters that are lacking ideas, search through both children’s books and adult books on your topic. Check out the glossaries and indices of those books to identify potential words. Even look at other alphabet books on your subject for ideas.

For difficult letters, like Q or X, try to find other ABC books by the publishers you want to submit to, to see how they treat such letters. Some publishers are lenient and will allow authors to use words that merely have that letter in it, as opposed to insisting that the word start with it. Other publishers are not so lenient. You’ll need to know ahead of time what your potential publisher prefers.

Select the link below to see common words used by grade

http://www.readingrockets.org/article/basic-spelling-vocabulary-list

Once again, this is where diligent research of both the publishers you want to pursue and their competition is going to pay off. Some publishers will have very specific styles that any potential ABC book must adhere to for publishing consideration. In general (I always have to say this because there are exceptions I will surely hear about if I don’t give this disclaimer!) you will find that the old style of “A is for Apple, B is for Banana” is long gone.

 Kids are smart! Don’t worry about using terminology that may be a bit challenging or concepts that might be outside their area of current discovery. Just be careful not to go overboard with it. There’s a fine balance between challenge and frustration. Allow children to connect their own dots as they read, and don’t feel you have to hand over all the information to them. Let them dig a little and use their brains!

Don’t write the same for girls and boys. Generally speaking, your girl reader will gravitate toward different material than your boy reader.  Girls are typically more interested in relationships, dialogue, and emotions, where boys need to have action, intrigue, and facts. This is not to say that you can’t write about similar topics for girls and boys, but you should approach your story quite differently depending on your target audience.

Publishers today are looking for a more sophisticated approach—one that really brings the alphabet to life for a young reader, or perhaps just helps that reader see it in a new way. One example is to make your way through the alphabet backwards. Another is to connect the alphabetical words in such a way that one logically leads to another. Alphabet books can either be nonfiction or fiction, but nowadays there needs to be some form of story involved. Gone are the days of simply listing words in alphabetical order, even if those words all center on a certain theme.

  Contents:

1. Cover: Your name, Title of book, artwork

2. Blank page

3. Book Text/graphic logo

4. Credit Page:Year, your name, email address

5. Artwork (26 pages)

6. Author Bio: This can be, Who, What, When and Why info, 

or a little more. One short paragraph and your logo.

7. (May need an extra blank page here.)

8. Back Cover: Graphic logo 

Sample artwork

Package Design Project

Project: Recreate a package design 

Do:

1. Chose an existing product. 

    (Have fun with the product you pick, it does not need to be boring...)

2. Empty the contents. 

        (Bring the empty packing to class next Saturday).

3. On a printed out copy of the 

regular box or long box, using your pencil, sketch out your concept for a new packaging design that is based on the product you have chosen. 

(You only need to pick one template).

4. Next Saturday, bring your empty package and concept sketch to class.

5. If you want to get ahead, do several versions of your package, maybe a character design for the product.

6. Before next Saturday, review the following link and videos.

http://designmadeinjapan.com/magazine/graphic-design/bringing-barcodes-to-life-barcodes-by-design-barcoder/

http://www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceRegulation/GuidanceDocumentsRegulatoryInformation/LabelingNutrition/ucm2006828.htm

https://fnic.nal.usda.gov/food-labeling/general-information-and-resources

Please Read

Hi,
Please follow the link below and read about the 20 basic design rules. We will talk about them on Saturday.

https://designschool.canva.com/blog/design-rules/

Frank Artwork

Great Job! 

Very Experimental

Happy Easter

Today and Homework

Poster Project

Styles

* Art-Nouveau - characterized by the depiction of leaves and flowers in

flowing, sinuous lines, often influenced Japanese prints

* Cubism - fragmented collage and images, type used as abstract element

* Futurism - breaks traditional symmetrical layout, emphasized the power, force & motion of machinery

* Dada - experimentation  and randomness, frequently mixing fonts 

employing unorthodox punctuation

*Surrealism - the works feature the element of surprise, unexpected 

juxtapositions and non sequitur

*Constructivism - combine words and pictures into single element 

usually with political message (ex. Russian revolution posters)

*Bauhaus - techniques and materials employed especially in industrial 

fabrication and manufacture

* Swiss - uses grid, asymmetry and minimal type (often, helvetica)

* Psychedelic - malleable, distorted letterforms and organic expression

* Typographic Deconstruction - (battle between legibility and maximum 

visual impact  ex. Emigre Magazine)

* Punk - Rip, Torn, collage, breaking apart and reconstructing pre made information


Details:

The information that you put on your poster is more or less up to you. 

However, it should fulfill the purpose of informing someone who may 

have never heard of this art movement. It should include at least 20 

words, the name of the movement, the date it started and at least one 

important artists or designer involved in the movement. The movement 

title should be a primary focal point in the design.

Steps:

1. Choose two style types. 
2. On separate pages in your sketchbook, Loosely sketch out some ideas you have for your two posters. Use pencil only
3. Before you leave class today show me your two design ideas. Together we will pick one. 
4. For homework, research the information needed for your poster, add the new information and refine your poster concept.
5. Next class (April 2), come with your drawn out poster mock up and we will scan it and recreate it in illustrator. ALL RESEARCH MUST BE COMPLETED BEFORE COMING TO CLASS. 

Project Requirements:

Poster should be 8X10 inches and the style of the design should reflect 

the movement

Poster design needs to include:

1. The title of the movement (this should be a primary focal point)

2. The date it started, 

3. One key influential artist or designer 

4. A paragraph of text. Minimum of 20 words and maximum of 50 words.

5. Due end of class April 9th

Homework 3/12/16

Hi everyone,
1. Please go the the Video Tab on the blog and watch the  rest of the videos.
2. In you sketch book, on separate pages, draw something from each video, nice and large,  that represents each style.
3. In your sketchbook note the characteristics of the styles.

See you all next Saturday!

Homework

Hi everyone:
A couple of things,
1. Saturday the 12th, your Mid. term paper is due at the end of class, you will be turning it in electronically.
2. Please go the the Video Tab on the blog and watch the two videos on Art Nouveau and Cubism.
3. In you sketch book, on two separate pages, draw something from each video, nice and large,  that represents each style.

Rebranding Project Part 2

MID TERM RESEARCH PROJECT

http://portfolios.aiga.org/

February 27, Homework

Great job today everyone: 
Your info graphics are looking great.

Your homework this week: 
1. Design 4 different combination logos in your sketchbook for a toy.
2. Using the toy that you chose as a basis for your designs, your goal is to use the colors and the shape of the character to design a new name, and identity.
A. Pick a new name for your character.
B. Use Word, Photoshop, Illustrator or any other text based program to experiment with different font styles.
C. Pick 4 different font styles in the name you have chosen and draw them as you see them on one page in your sketchbook. 
D. On a fresh page in your sketchbook, using pencil, draw 12 different graphic images that could be used with your text logo.
E. Pick 4 of the graphic images and 4 of the text logos you created and experiment with matching them together on the same page in pencil.
(Below is a combination of 12 examples, you are only required to create 4)