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Assignment NUMBER THREE! OMG!

 

above covers by: Rudolph de Harak 

For our next assignment you will be designing three book covers in a series. Here is a short blurb about serial book design taken from The History of Graphic Design by Philip Meggs:

  "The concept of serial painting--a series or sequence of independant works unified by common elements or an underlying structure--was applied to graphic design by [Alexander] Rodchenko. In 1924 his series of ten covers for the Jim Dollar..."Miss Mend" books used a standard geometric format printed in black and a second color. The title, number, second color, and photomontage change with each edition, conveying the uniqueness of each book. The standardized elements bring consistency and

economy to the whole series."

What The Heck Are We Doing Today? November 10th: Hey, It's Critique Time.

Let's make this painless, shall we? Remember: TALK! Be Engaged! Help Each Other Out! Constructive Criticism! Fast Paced! NO SLEEPING! NO GLAZED EYES! ALERTNESS!!!

Your posters are due PRINTED a week from today. Upload your finals to flickr by Thursday and bring in a printout to look at if you can (it only needs to be black and white / tiled to full size) for one last look on Thursday. I am going to introduce the new and LAST assignment on Thursday. YOUR POSTERS ARE DUE FULL SIZE and PRINTED TUESDAY the 17th!

LET'S MAKE TODAY GOOD!

PSSST - Show and Tell. It is Jill Bliss DAY!

ALSO: We won't start class until 10:30 this next Thursday. I am going to be on OPB Radio's Think Outloud talking about our relationship to STUFF from 9-10 that morning and then I will zoom back to you all to introduce the next assignment and to look at your posters!

What the HECK Are We Doing Today? Thursday the 5th

Don't forget! Frank Chimero is coming! PSU Love What You Do is opening!

1. Look at Frank's Website.

2. DUE: Hang up moodboards and thumbnails. Take a look!

3. Work on executing two to three of your favorite thumbnails. I will be going around to each of you to help you decide which thumbnails are the strongest while you are working.

4. Next TUESDAY: CRITIQUE of your poster. Full size printout (may be quick print and/or tiled). You may present more than one poster if you wish.

What the HECK Are We Doing Today? Tuesday the 3rd!

Don't forget! Frank Chimero is coming! PSU Love What You Do is opening!

1. Turn in your dang binders!

2. Discuss the guts of your binders.

3. Introduce the next assignment.

4. Talk about process and moodboards.

5. Work on thumbnails and moodboards for the rest of the class.

DUE ON THURSDAY: 20 thumbnails (well done and about different concepts and layouts). Moodboard (or boards). Upload all to flickr and bring all to class.

New Assignment: Show & Tell Lecture Poster

SHOW & TELL LECTURE POSTER

Create a poster for the Friends of Graphic Design lecture series: SHOW & TELL. Carefully consider the typographic hierarchy of the information presented. A viewer should be able to easily understand the calendar of events and to quickly learn who the speakers are. The poster must also convey the excitement of the Show & Tell series to an audience of designers and students. The information itself must constitute the “imagery” of the poster.

Size: no smaller than 11x17 and no bigger than 16x20

Your poster must be purely typographic. You may use colors, shapes, and lines as well as text, but no pixelated images from the internet. (unless you REALLY fall in love with an image idea - clear it with me!)

What the HECK Are We Doing Today? Thursday the 29th

 

above image from SXSW Grids are Good Presentation by Khoi Vinh and Mark Boulton. Download Grids_are_good

DUE TODAY:

1. Your work should be upload from exercise one and exercise two to flickr and have print outs of at least TWO examples from each exercise.

2. We will pin all of these to the walls and discuss the exercises and some of your questions.

3. I will hand back black binders (I took note of who turned them in. You will have actual grades once you turn them back in again).

4. Review exercise 3

5. Talk about GRIDS. 

6. Review exercise 4

7. Work in class!

It is GRID TIME MY PEOPLES!

We are now entering the Grid Phase of Type One.

I want you to read the Grid Section in your Thinking With Type Book and also review the grid section of the Thinking With Type website. Oh, and look what I found on google books: Grid Systems by Kimberly Elam! Looking at this book will help you BIG TIME with your last exercise and will help prep you for your upcoming poster assignment. You really should buy it and add it to your type library.

More Grid System Info to swirl around in yr heads:

Five simple steps to designing grid systems - Journal : Mark Boulton also...see what wikipedia has to say about it: Grid (page layout) Look up some of the names mentioned as well.

The Grid System: Website dedicated to, well, grid systems!

Exercise FOUR for Project TWO: Grids, Bruce Mau and You

 

above: Fall 2008 examples of this project!

Problem: Produce (4) 8”x 8” compositions that explore visual hierarchy and the control of emphasis on type, image, and space.

Elements: Each of your layouts should be striving for visual hierarchy and should be based upon a grid system. Each panel should include all of the following elements: 

EXAMPLES OF FALL 2008 254 class start on page 6 of their Flickr Group. Explore!

• (1) of the 43 points from Bruce Mau's Incomplete Manifesto

• the # and heading of the above point

• the following credit “—an excerpt from Bruce Mau’s Incomplete Manifesto for Growth”

***REMINDER - you will only use ONE of his 43 points for all four compositions. Not four different points, but one point structured in four different ways.

All typography will be limited to (1) font and its family members. No display fonts. I suggest choosing one of the following families: Garamond, Bembo, Didot, Caslon, Futura, Gill Sans, Franklin Gothic, Helvetica, or Universe.

Use this same font for all four layouts.

You are limited to black for type color. 

Exercise THREE for Project TWO: Table of Contents

We are going to design the table of contents (TOC) of Texts on Type by Steven Heller and Philip B. Meggs. The copy is below the jump so you may copy and paste it for your designing pleasure.

You may use any typeface and you may add illustrated elements if you feel the need to do so. Also, please look look look look at examples of TOC's in the wild. Go to book stores, go to the library and please take a look at this PDF which contains many examples of TOC's.

You may have this TOC fit on one page or three or four - or 100. Think creatively! This exercise needs to be printed out and posted to your flickr by Tuesday. Turn hardcopies in on Tuesday.

What The HECK Are We Doing Today? Tuesday the 27th

 

Poster for LOVE WHAT YOU DO!

Hello! Hello!

What is on the agenda today?

1. Announcements! At NOON Ray Fenwick is Skyping in for Show and Tell. Let's take a look at his site. After Show & Tell, please stay around for a FoGD Meeting. We will be talking about LOVE WHAT YOU DO!

2. Next, we are going to hop over to your Flickr group and click through all of your profiles to see if you have organized your final work into a set and added a project reflection in the set description. We will talk about your final pieces and your plans for improvement.

3. I want to do FOUR exercises with you all before we start the second assignment (designing a Show & Tell Schedule Poster). I am going to introduce TWO of the FOUR today and the other TWO on Thursday. They will all be due in your black binders (which I am going to hand back to you on Thursday) on Tuesday the 3rd.

4. Review EXERCISE ONE.

5. Review EXERCISE TWO.

6. Talk about the importance of THUMBNAIL SKETCHES.

7. Please Read the TEXT section in your book by Thursday.

8. WORK IN CLASS if we have time.