ASSIGNMENT: Magazine Spread

Due on the server on Monday at the start of class is a two-page magazine spread. You will need to create a fictional magazine and give us a graf or two on who the audience is, what the content will be, etc.

Your two-page spread will need a grid, folio info, headline, maybe a deck, some visuals and credits. (See this post for possible image sources.)

You can create your own visuals if you want. Be bold.

As with the newspaper design, package this in InDesign for submission. You should also export a PDF and drop that on the server for us to look at quickly on Monday. So, what you drop on the server will have two parts – a folder that is the packaged product as well as a single, PDF.

Have some fun with this.

Stock Photo Options

For your magazine project, you’ll need some images, so I’ve honored my colleague Prof. Kristen Smith’s by borrowing liberally from her list of resources …

• Stock.XCHNG Free stock photo site.
• Morgue File This is a great site of free, high-res images that you can use pretty much as you like without attribution. (Read the license summary for each image.)
• Creative Commons A nonprofit that provides free tools for people to mark their creative works with the freedoms and restrictions they like. At the CC site you can search images on Google and flickr (and other places) that carry a Creative Commons license.
• Burning Well Free public domain images at high resolutions.
• Library of Congress Many historical photos in the Library of Congress belong to the American people and are available for your use.

ASSIGNMENT: Newspaper Design

While I finished the presentation this morning, I didn’t get to run you through a few more tricks in InDesign that you’ll need. You can get started tonight, though …

Start by looking through some newspaper designs on the Newseum site. You can sort by region or look at their top ten each day. What do you see? What do you like? What don’t you like?

Then, sketch a little. Based on what you’ve seen and like, what do you want your newspaper page to look like? You’ll need to place the flag, date, volume, index, weather, UPC and teasers/skyboxes. What should you grid be? Can you count the columns in a few pages, see what the pages you like have in common?

Once you’ve sketched a bit, go ahead and start building in InDesign. You can get most of that above info in there. Do you need any rules (lines) to capture the date and volume info? Put all of that on one layer and lock it down.

In class Thursday, we’ll go through a few InDesign things and then set you free. This will be do at the start of class on Friday, though we won’t look at it until Monday. Friday will be Magazine design day.

And nice work on the info graphics – some really cool stuff happening in them. Critiques on those and resubmissions will be out Thursday afternoon.

ASSIGNMENT: More Illustrator, Finding Data

To start, log back in to Lynda.com through the university’s portal, head to the Illustrator section. In the upper left corner, select CS6 (the version we’re on), and then scroll down to Creating Infographics with Illustrator.

Please watch the Introduction and parts one, two and three. If you want to practice, part four will walk you through creating a graphic.

Additional, please find a small data set to work with for this project. UGA has one that’s full of data, but you will need to pull it out and into Excel (or another spreadsheet, you’ll be copying and pasting into Illustrator so you can use Google’s if you want).

Look for a data set that is of interest to you and has at least five categories of data. For instance, if you wanted to do admissions data for UGA, the link above would get you the 2012 info. On that page is a link to past fact books, so you could pull 2011, 2010, 2009 and 2008.

The Center for Disease Control posts data sets online, too, though some of those can get very large.

Think about what you’d like to be doing when you finish up here at Grady – is there an infographic you could build that word impress someone you want to work for? Take this chance to build something that matters.

You can sketch some ideas this weekend, maybe even play with the graphing functions in Excel and Google to see what the data might look like. You’ll have all of class on Tuesday to work on this, and it’ll be due on the server at the start of class on Wednesday.

And a reminder that resubmits of the self portrait and logo are due on Tuesday, as well.

NPR Arrested Development Story

Andrew Beaujon has the inside story on how NPR’s Adam Cole put together that wicked awesome graphic on Arrested Development.

I need to get smarter …

ASSIGNMENT: Illustrator Tutorials

Again, I’d like to apologize for shortening this morning’s class. It doesn’t happen often, but occasionally life happens, even to faculty members. (Which is why we almost always excuse legitimate medical issues, which this was.)

Moving forward … I’ve spent the last few hours looking at updated Adobe Illustrator videos to see which ones you’ll need to get through the next day or two.

First, to get to them, head over to the EITS page on the UGA web site, that’ll give you the ability to log in to Lynda.com using your MyID.

Once you’re there, you can go to the applications tab, go to I and select Illustrator. You should see a series of videos by Justin Seeley under the title of Illustrator CS6 Essential Training.

There are a lot of videos, so start with these three short ones from the first few chapters:

• Understanding Vector Graphics
• Exploring the Panels
• Working with the Control Panels

Then we need to get into the meat of the program, so you’ll need to watch all of these chapters (you can do it in one chunk, or watch the short pieces – it’s all the same thing).

• Chapter 6 – Working with Paths
• Chapter 7 – Creating Shapes
• Chapter 8 – Don’t Be Afraid to Use the Pen Tool

That’s a lot of video, so make sure your laptop is in a cozy place and charged up. It should take you under two hours to get through them. (Which, when you consider each day is a week, is not bad for a week’s worth of homework, right?) (Yes, it’s all about framing.)

Now, back to critiquing your selfies …

ASSIGNMENT: Logo Design

You’ve already filled in and shared your grid, looking for patterns or similarities. Study those common themes, what do they say about who you are right now? About who you want to become?

Now, what does that look like? Is it bold, heavy, weighty? Is it light, elegant? Fluid? Stable? Adventurous?

Start sketching, what do you see in yourself that you can communicate to someone quickly, reliably, consistently? If someone who has worked with you saw a design, would they connect that with you?

If you need to know a little more about yourself, you may want to do a Briggs Myers test and see if that helps you.

Please work up five sketches and shoot a phot of each, emailing it to me by 8:30 on Wednesday morning. I’ll toss them in a quick presentation and we can share. Remember, these are sketches, works in progress. It’s important to understand that it takes many, many steps to get to a final version of anything – don’t be afraid or embarrassed about what you’ve created. Ever.

Addendum: Take a look around you at the logos for different organizations, choose a few (3-5) that you think are particularly good (or bad) and bring them to class.