EDU 642

This week was all about Design Thinking, a topic that I'm very interested in learning more about. In my role as a film teacher, I'm always making media for my students, and starting this August, I'll be changing schools and moving into a new role where I'll be developing a "Film Production and Digital Media" course for the school that will increase the amount of media I'll be making, as the amount of film/media classes I will have will increase significantly and I'll be teaching more types of digital media. Often, when I'm creating media for my students, I'm typically making video examples or tutorials for my students or YouTube channel, so I'm not sure yet how these principles will apply to that medium, but there have definitely been times where I've looked back on a video I've made and I feel I could have spaced things out better on screen or used better fonts, etc. Also, when thinking about some of the rationale for why we would want to use design principles (as outlined in the readings), I also strive to keep my content as visually engaging as possible to ensure my students have the easiest time reading and engaging with the content, so they can get the most of what I'm presenting and not be distracted from the main message by poor design choices.

I enjoyed reading about Gestalt's Theories, and especially seeing that I already have intuitively tried to follow similar rules while creating my own content. These included the Similarity, Proximity, and Symmetry and Order principles. The Figure/Ground principle was something I had seen numerous examples of in art or optical illusions and it was very familiar to me (though I didn't know that it was a principle of design). And the Closure and Continuation principles were completely new, but I recognised the examples and enjoyed getting a better understanding of how these principles are applied with these examples, specifically the WWF logo with the panda.

As I learn more about design theory and experiment with creating different types of media, I have considered using infographics more in my practice. In the last class (EDU590) I had created my very first infographic (EVER!) and was fairly pleased with the result. I had created a poster about Digital Equity (link) which employed a lot of Symmetry and Similarity principles, but I had doubts of my colour selection, and I wonder how I would do it differently after I finish this class. I'm looking forward to learning more about these principles as I could see myself using infographics more for a variety of "quick tips" posters on various topics in my classes.

After having a closer look at the CRAP design principles, I once again felt they reinforced some of my intuitive choices I've made with my own designs, however there are elements that I would like learn more about. One of the principles that was unique and new to me was Contrast. I think I've tried this in the past with using "complimentary fonts" in some of my presentations, but probably not to the extent described in this outline of the CRAP principles. Thankfully, Proximity and Alignment are principles I'm already familiar with and use regularly in almost everything I create.

As the weeks continue I'm looking forward to seeing more examples and learning more.