Details and Format
The quality of a design can make the difference between a message being communicated and understood or illegible and lost. This course will offer you the opportunity to learn valuable design skills that are fully transportable into a wide range of applications in other courses or in employment post-college. A solid knowledge of graphic design can help anyone working in communications, marketing or business to create the image profile that they need for a brand ir company. It can also help people that work for smaller organizations such as local non-profit organizations, who’s work also requires the use of effective design to advertise programs and disseminate important information. However, not all design is instrumentalized. The examples on this page show the approach to balancing the communicative needs of design with willful creativity by The Designers Republic.
Format
Class sessions are broken up into three periods: reading discussions, demonstrations and tutorials, and exercises. There will be periodic critiques in which students will explain their work through the experience of making, failing, and finding solutions. This will help students to examine their own practice and develop ways of managing and completing any project or assignment.
In any art course, there is the need to accept that failure is part of learning. particularly when faced with the challenge of learning a new tool or process, trial and error are necessary to develop confidence and a true understanding.
There will be tutorials and exercises during class time, developing skills that will then be used in assigned homework. Students will do work both individually and in groups to produce project pieces. There will be readings assigned as homework that the class will discuss for their value in helping you to deepen your understanding of different design principles. This will lead to growth in the uses of and sensitivity to color, form, and composition. These are the basis of all design, and over the semester, students will be expected to increase the sophistication of their design. There is more information on the projects page about the work that students will engage in over the next 14 weeks.
Tools
The tools used for this course are the Adobe Creative Cloud apps. Students will use Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign. Students will learn how to use each of these tools, and how they are used together to produce specific design forms. These tools are only of true value to you when paired with the homework readings and exercises that are assigned in-class time. Students should think of their designs as the product of these two types of tools: practical uses and intellectual engagement. Software is available for student use on the computers in the digital lab – ART004, Br. Cornelius Art Center. Individual licenses are not available. Students may only use their own laptops if they also have a personal Adobe subscription. The digital lab (ART004) is available for student use whenever there is no class.
Typefaces
The image above is the Helvetica LT STD Condensed font face. Helvetica is the most commonly used font on the planet. It is the go-to font of all public signage. Helvetica was inspired by Akzidenz-Grotesk (the example below is Akzidenz-Grotesk Narrow – chosen to best compare with Helvetica), below. Akzidenz-Grotesk was developed in the 1800’s, author unknown. The paragraph font used on this website is called Didact Gothic.
We will be looking at fonts in detail, through which you should gain an appreciation of the subtleties of usage and placement of fonts in the designs you make in this course. You will be able to take this awareness of detail and apply it in other projects. This website provides you with centralized information related to the practicalities of the course, along with resources and references for you to use both in the course and as you need on campus. Make sure to bookmark this website and visit the site weekly.
Objects
When a logo is blank, and this example is, we can think of it as a monogram. it is effectively a logotype, one that has an enormous range of flexibility in usage. It can be used to contain colors, clipped images, and the differences in the designs can lend the brand a sense of scale that they would otherwise not have; each logo can address a different aspect of their consumer base while remaining under one brand. The two examples below show the differences that positive and negative masking techniques that a blank logo allows.
In many places on this site, there are examples of design objects. We will think of objects in both a physical and digital sense. The image above is a good example in that it exists in both domains. It is an effective logotype; it is as valuable and communicative on a website ask it is on a t-shirt or a billboard. The image below is a good example of a digitally designed product that performs well only as an object. This is because a part of the design is in its user interaction.
The gif above shows every design iteration made for the Autechre covers above, now printed as a poster, below. These examples show you how complexity can be developed even in the use of the most basic of design objects – circles and squares. This is an example of what can be made when design is pushed towards art.
