I have already said this during our last class and in my sappy email, but again, I am so proud of all of you!
I know many of you must be working hard on revising your projects. I’m looking forward to seeing your final submissions. Again, by Wednesday, May 6, send me ONE email with either attachments or links to your PDF files of project 3.1, 3.2, 3.3 and 4, so I don’t miss anything.
As I mentioned, in order to help you keep working on your own and support each other in general, I will keep holding my office hours every Tuesday 10:30am –12:20pm starting from May 12. So not this week (we deserve one week of break?) but the following week. Same Zoom link. Thank you those who emailed to let me know that you want to do this! We can change the time if the majority of you want to meet later, but right now this time seems to work for everyone, right?
We will discuss the book I sent you, other reading materials or films I’ll introduce to you, and anything you’re reading or watching, revisit your past projects, or start new projects together… Your ideas are welcome. Take advantage!
Oh, I meant to send this to you. I remembered a student had sent this as his application and luckily I still had it. Look at all of you!
And lastly, here, I photoshopped Marshall into our class photo! 😛 Now the class is complete. (Compared to the first day you look so much more mature on your last day! This pandemic age you, or did I? 😉
For this new poster project, each of you plays two roles: you are a client for one project and a designer for another project.
1. As a client, you come up with a project:
Choose an event by a specific organization that you are part of or familiar with. It could also be a lecture or any type of call to action or PSA. Pick a subject matter or a cause that you actually care about.
You can use an existing event, or come up with a new one. The organization itself could be imaginary if you can’t think of one. It could just be your college/department too.
Come up with the content for the event. Write up a project brief for your designer that includes all the copies (not to mention the title of the event), as well as the event/organization’s context, purpose, and audience — all the information that your designer should know about. The copy should be coherent, clear, and grammatically correct so ideally the designer can just copy and paste them into the design (which doesn’t always happen in the real world, but I’m teaching you to be better clients too!).
Deliver all the content and communicate with your designer what you would like to achieve in the design. Conveying your thoughts clearly to your designer is the challenge here, which is why having a project brief is important.
How specifically you want to describe your vision for the poster is up to you. You could give your designer some kind of visual ideas that you may have, but it is not necessary. What you should clearly define is the purpose and goal of the project, not how to get there, which is your designer’s job.
2. As a designer, you receive the assignment, do your research, and make design sketches:
First of all, make sure you fully understand the message/intention of your client. If not clear, ask them.
Think critically through your client’s input. See if there’s any information your client didn’t provide that you think should be included. You could suggest editing the text/image if you think it is necessary.
Do your own research too. You are not mere hands to actualize your clients’ vision. As a designer, you are the creative mind who can introduce a new vision or take your client’s vision to the next level. Also, it’s not only about making your client happy, but also making work that you think is successful! Even if your client has a very specific visual idea, you can still suggest something else that you think works better. You just need to convince your client with your design proposal & presentation 🙂
Come up with visual strategies to best convey the message intended. Make at least two different directions to show your client. Of course, to get two presentable directions, you will need many more sketches, right?
The poster is 11″x17″, you can use any tools you need but the final posters should be made in InDesign.
The design doesn’t need to be final for the first presentation but your design idea & thought process should be clear within each direction. Think about how to present it to your client and persuade them.
Task 1 as a client should be done by Sunday, March 5 and you should email your project brief to your designer by Monday, March 6. During our class on Tuesday, March 7, you will be able to ask questions about the briefs, among other things.
Task 2 as a designer is due Thursday, March 9. You will present two design sketches to your clients during the class. And we’ll be all like this.
Here are the pairings, made in alphabetical order of your last names:
Tomorrow (Wednesday) at 1pm, designer Irma Boom will give a Zoom talk for our graphic design MFA students, and you are all welcome to join: bit.ly/IrmaBoomVAupdate
In case you are not familiar, here’s what wikipedia says about Irma: Boom has been described as ‘The Queen of Books’, having created over 300 books and is well reputed for her artistic autonomy within her field. Her bold experimental approach to her projects often challenges the convention of traditional books in both physical design and printed content.
Hi all, great seeing you today. While we are focusing on learning technical skills and typographic details at this particular moment, I would like you to take a pause and reflect on all the little steps you have taken since the beginning of this semester.
It is easy to forget about the big picture and the fundamentals (like, what exactly is it that I’m doing? And why? And what was this thing called design again?) when you are working on a specific assignment with a specific subject matter, but the good news is that you may(should) have already internalized some of the fundamentals and may be utilizing everything that you’ve learned synchronically, without even thinking about it! (I hope… 🙂 )
As we continue to go further on this journey, I would like you to always remember why you are doing what you are doing and what it all means.
This reading will take you back to the underlying context of what we are doing and give you more examples of various visual strategies—which you may want to try to press against what you are doing with your posters now. Take a read, and if you have any comments or questions, bring to class on Thursday.
Dear Anna K, Anna Z, Annie, Avery, Bernardo, Corey, Emma, Jacob, James, Lauren, Leo, Lourdes, Marshall, Melissa, Rosa, Tilman, and Zawar:
Although we can not be physically together in the room 210 of Green Hall, 1156 Chapel Street, New Haven, CT for the rest of the semester, please know that we are still very much together, and our class, Introduction to Graphic Design, continues.
As we all know that this distance learning would inevitably be something quite different from what we have had—especially without experiencing the physical, spatial, tactile dimensions of your work, let alone your immediate company, I wanted to find the best way for us to keep learning, helping each other, and having fun within the limitations we face.
So as a start, I created this space for us. Think of it as our classroom, that is open to you at all times. You can share your work, thoughts, questions, concerns, or anything else you’d like to share with the class. I will be here to guide you, talk to you, and also keep sharing things you can learn from. Just like how important our discussions were in class, you are very much encouraged to comment on other people’s work. As we are all new to this, let’s be extra supportive of each other.
Having this shared space for us that’s continuously open and available is important because: while we will have some zoom classes as needed, some of you are now in different time zones, some of you may not have a great internet connection, or a quiet space to participate via zoom. Also, I like to have a sense that we are all connected 🙂
Please know that our original syllabus/plan will change. Our pace and workload will be adjusted considering the unique situation each of you are in. I will post announcements/next steps here as we move along.
Some guidelines for using the site:
× Once you are logged in (after registering, which takes only two seconds!) you will always see the editor as the first thing on the homepage of the site.
× This front-end editor is there so you can easily post things. You can either drag and drop your image into the text field or click on the image icon on the top tool bar. Make sure that the images are in jpg, gif or png format if you want them to appear in your post. Pdfs will appear as a link you can click on to see the pdf.
× These posts will be automatically filed under “Pin-ups & Discussions” in the menu on the right side.
× After posting, you can still edit/delete your posts by clicking three dots on the top right corner of your post.
× You need to be logged in to make comments on posts.
× When posting your assignments, let’s try to use hashtags for different projects so we can easily search everyone’s work for a certain project. And of course you can add any other hashtags! So, for the current projects you’re working on, how about we use #project3.1 ( for Word flyer) and #project3.2 (for Helvetica poster)?
× Please explore other parts of the website and see if you have any difficulties using it. Obviously I had to build it really quickly and it is still in progress. We will keep building it together! Let me know if you have any suggestions as well as questions.
