Graphic Design

Keeper of the Lost Cities Legacy - Book Cover Project

Kristin Gentry, 7th grade

Drakes Creek Middle School

Graphic Design

My technology teacher gave our class a book cover project. We were told to pick a book of our choice and redesign the cover. I chose Keeper of the Lost Cities Legacy because that was the book I was reading at the time. I really enjoyed the book because it had a mixture of genres such as fantasy and mystery that made the book very suspenseful as well as interesting.

I made my image in Google Drawings. To begin, I opened a new Google Drawing. Then I started drawing the outline of the main character, Sophie. Next, I drew the background to include the famous landmark, Big Ben, from London. To make this look like a real book cover, I added the title and the author’s name to this redesign. Finally, to finish up, I added small amounts of colors into the illustration. At first, I didn't want to use color because it was overwhelming, but I decided to use snippets of color to enhance the image. I chose to add yellow in her hair because it is the color of Sophie’s hair. I added some blue in the background and gray in her cape to make those items stand out against the background. I also added a small maroon belt to her dress to match the belt she wears in the book.

My biggest challenge creating this graphic design was the coloring. When I first added color, the color went all over the page and I wasn’t able to keep it in the outlines of my drawings. Through trial and error with my color, I decided to use snippets of color instead.

One thing specifically that I enjoyed when redesigning this book cover was the freedom of how we could draw our covers. This allowed me to be more creative when planning what I wanted to implement in my design.

What is Wind Power? - Natural Resources Science Project

Luna DeVore, 8th Grade

Drakes Creek Middle School

Graphic Design

My science teacher instructed us to inform the class on natural resources, so I decided to make a poster to present to my peers. When I had to decide what natural resource I wanted to cover, I went with wind power because it was something that I would find fun and enjoyable to present to my class.

I first logged into Google Slides and clicked the “Blank” option underneath “Start a New Presentation”. I kept it simple and colored the background light gray. I started the whole thing by making the title, “What is Wind Power?” I then searched the definition of wind power and gathered that information. I decided to sum it up and put it into my own words. I wanted to make a cute design out of it, so I made it look like it came right from the dictionary. I also inserted a black text box with white text in front of it that said ‘a form of solar energy’. After that, I looked up some examples of wind power. I put a couple of the examples in a bulleted list. I wanted to find some information on the overall capacity of wind turbines, so I looked that up as well.

After I put down all of the things I wanted to say, I decided to add some texture so it didn’t look bland. For each text box, I added a black border to make it look more organized. Also, to give the text a 3D effect, I made a duplicate of the same size, filled in the text box with white, and added a border around the sides. I then placed that box behind the original text box, after I filled the original text box with the same color as the background.

I found both of my images within Google Slides. I like searching for images this way because they are all copyright free. I clicked ‘Insert’, then I clicked ‘Image’, which then took me to the ‘Search the Web’ option. Within that, I searched ‘windmills’ and got what is found at the bottom left of my poster. I copied and pasted the same windmill four times to create the row that they are all in. I also searched in that same space ‘wind’ and found a cute little icon of a cloud blowing air. This gave the poster a pop of color, but not too much. I put a plain black line as a border for this image as well. I labeled both of the images. For the windmills I made a white text box with black text that said, ‘wind turbines’ and for the cloud image I made a black text box with white text that simply stated, ‘wind’.

What I like most about this poster is how it is organized. It is a clean and modern design that explains all of my information that I collected clearly. The color scheme is consistent and it is plain but pretty.