9/23/16 – 9/30/16
All work is due by midnight on 9/30/16
Week 5 will be focused on design. For this week you will be ramping up your command of image editing as well as closely considering design elements such as color, font, iconography, etc.
We’ve put together a page that includes lots of great design resources. You should take a look at it. Two things you should look at to get you thinking about design:
Title Design: The Making of Movie Titles
Read: Stranger Things: meet the design genius behind TV’s most talked about title font
- Read and Reflect: A design resource that’s worth looking at is The Vignelli Canon. It’s a short booklet by Massimo Vignelli, who was a superstar in the world of graphic design. The booklet is light on text and heavy on space and imagery, so it’s a quick read. His purpose in writing it was to share his knowledge for the benefit of other designers. As he says, “Creativity needs the support of knowledge to be able to perform at its best.” Vignelli did most of his work in the pre-Internet era, when graphic design meant ink on paper, so some of the information is not so relevant to our online environment, but the principles still stand. So take a look at it and the two items above, and let us know what you think. Categorize your reflection post under Thoughts/Ideas and tag it designthoughts.
- Complete a DesignBlitz: To reinforce your understanding of design principles, you need to undertake a “Design Blitz.” Carry your camera with you this week and take photos of objects, ads, signs, etc. that illustrate at least four of the ten concepts listed below (one photo per concept). Refer to the DesignBlitz resources on the Design Resource page for more information about each of the concepts.
- color
- typography
- metaphors/symbols
- minimalism & use of space
- form/function/message
- balance
- rhythm
- proportion
- dominance
- unity
- Share all your photos on Flickr and tag them designblitz; also make sure you write up a blog post sharing what you found and tag it designblitz.
- When you have completed your Blitz, write a blog post that includes (THAT MEANS EMBED!) the photos and your analysis of the design elements and what makes them effective or not. (You should do this in one single post.)
- PRO TIP: Sometimes we can learn just as much from badly designed things as we can from well-designed things!
- Earlier we looked at a blog post on Austin Kleon’s Show Your Work! This week, look at two chapters in particular:
2. Think Process, Not Product.
3. Share Something Small Everyday.
There are two purposes for this. One is that Kleon’s message applies to what we should be doing in this class. We should blog about our processes, the thoughts and decisions that go into the assignments, and we should do a little each day, as much as possible. The other is that Kleon’s book is very interesting from a design standpoint. How do these chapters display some of the concepts from the DesignBlitz? Put your thoughts in a blog post and tag it kleon.
Note: The publisher only lets one person view the book at a time. Hopefully this won’t be too much of an inconvenience. - Do your DailyCreates: We are doing 3 TDCs again this week.
- Complete at least 12 stars of other design assignments: Complete at least 10 stars of Design assignments from the Design category of the Assignment Bank. A couple of design assignments we recommend are the Four Icons/ One Story and the Minimalist Movie/TV Poster assignments, though neither is required. Each design assignment must be blogged and narrated with your process and thinking! Don’t forget to review Alan’s tips of how to write-up assignments like a pro – it’s all in the write-up.
