course of study

Fall Semester

Unit One: Design Elements & Principles

What is Graphic Design?

• Careers in computer graphics

Elements Collage

• Intro to Elements of Design

• Ideation (Five things you don’t know about me) for personal logo 

• Apply each element to logo drawings & create a collage for the portfolio site  cover 

Intro to Principles of Design

• Intro to Principles of Design

• Design Principles Google slideshow 

Unit Two: Portfolio Site & Personal Logo 

Portfolio Website

• Working with Weebly: creating and editing pages: home, about me, blog & portfolio

• Blog post #1: sketches of personal logo

• Photograph collage for site menu 

Personal Logo:

• What is a logo?

• Intro to Adobe  Illustrator: What are vectors?

• Stroke & fill

• Building with shapes & shape-building tool (card suits)

• Drawing tools and stroke/brush options 

• Pathfinder and shape builder

• Blog post #2: b&w vector of logo

• Blog post #3 color & effects 

• Final project on the menu of the portfolio site

• Fontbook & Cloud fonts

• Anatomy of type

• Expanding objects/compound paths & working with type as an object

• Types of logos

• Blog post #5 Line art for Type logo

• Blog post  #6: Color & Effects

• Final project on the portfolio page of a site

Unit Three:  Typography

Their Words Portrait (portrait made of type)

• What is Typography?

• Intro to type tools in Illustrator

• Envelope distort tools

• Blog post #4:’Their  Words” progress

• Final project on the portfolio page of your site

Type Poster:

• Text Layout

• Hierarchy & Alignment

• History of Times New Roman & Helvetica

• Research on Type of Choice

• 11x17” Type poster illustrating the history of the chosen font

• Blog post #7 Layout for Poster 

• Final project on the portfolio page of the site

Spring Semester:: 

Unit One: Intro to Bitmap & Photoshop

Here’s My Number Poster

• Colorspace: RGB, CMYK & Pantone

• Color-matching eyedrop tool

• Layers, masks, and color modes

• Blog post #9: “What’s my Color?” ideation

• Blog post #10: Poster layout

• Final project on the portfolio page of the site

Character illustration: 

• Drawing in Photoshop

• Working with brushes, clipping masks, filters & layer effects

• Design Career: Illustration 

• Blog post #12: Ideation for character

• What is character design?

• Final project on the portfolio page of the site

Book Cover:

• Selections in Photoshop

• Collaging images

• Editing photos

• Type Tools

• Layer masks, blend modes

• Blog post #11: Ideation for Children’s book (using character design) 

• Final project on the portfolio page of the site

Unit Two: Frame Animation:

• Principles of Animation

• History of Animation

• Frame animation in Photoshop/Video animation in Animate

• Working with a timeline

• Puppet warp tool

• Tweening

• Blog post #13: animation principle animation

• Final project on the portfolio page of the site

Unit Three (final): Branding & Identity

• What is branding & Identity?

• Blog post #14: Ideation for Brand Identity Project

• What is a style guide?

• Contents of style guide options (print or site)

• Blog post #15 logo, type & color

• Style Guide (In Design) on the portfolio page of the site