April 29th

Hello!

Today I'd like you to start by finishing the design work from last class on your blog. Once the majority of people are finished this, I will introduce you to your final project for inDesign.

You have been asked to create a brochure for Rockway Mennonite Collegiate. It is a brochure that the school will give out to potential students. You may copy and paste text from the website, and use photos from the website as well. I will show you how to link these photos to insure the highest resolution possible. When creating your brochure, be sure to consider layout, composition, colour, etc.

On the brochure, you must include:

-Why attend Rockway

-the four pillars
-academics
-athletics
-arts
-something about the Communications Technology Course (could be inside acadmeics)
-images
-paragraphs
-bullets
-a text wrap
-a consistent flow 

 

This project will be due at beginning of class on Tuesday, May 6th. I will give you a rubric today in class and show you a couple examples of exemplars. 

April 24th

Hello!

Today you will have the first half of the class (until 2:50) to finish your magazine covers. Your covers must be exported and uploaded to your blogs as jpegs or PNGS by the end of this time period.

PART 2:

For the second half of the class, we are going to move to the other side of the room to allow the video people an opportunity to use photoshop video. You are going to a Design Scavenger Hunt online! You are going to find the best and the worst of design on the web. To start, please watch the following the video:

Design Council: What is Design?

 This video was filled with a lot of great information. Please answer the following in your own words, not necessarily the words from the video.

1. What is your first impressions of the video? How did it make you rethink the world of design?


2. What area of design was the most interesting to you? Why is that?

3. What do you think is the important of brand identity? What does brand identity usually include?


 Scavenger Hunt:
1. Please find 1 example of a poorly designed website and include a link, why do you think the website is poorly designed? Aesthetics, user-ability, etc.

2. Please find 2 examples of well designed websites and include a link, why do you think the website is well designed?

3. Please find an example of a well designed restaurant menu and an example of a poorly designed website menu. What are the differences between the two?

4. Can you think of an object that has been redesigned by a company such as the dyson vaccuum? List 3 of these, and what they did that was revolutionary for the product.

April 22nd

Hello!

Last class we created text portraits and they turned out great! If you're not done, quickly finish and EXPORT it as a jpeg or png. If you see a black line around the image where you traced, then go to your pentool and make sure that you don't have a black stroke selected.

Today we will do the following:

If you had your own magazine, what would it be about? What would be on the cover?
Using InDesign, design a magazine cover that looks as “real” as possible. You can duplicate an existing magazine or come up with your own original idea.
Include the magazine name, a picture or illustration and the usual text describing what’s inside the magazine (as well as a date/volume/issue number etc)
What are some things that all magazine covers have in common? Why do certain magazines look the way they do?
This site gives a detailed breakdown of some standard elements of magazine covers.
A google image search for “magazine cover” should provide plenty of inspiration.
Make it “Bleed” – the images on most magazine covers will go right over the edge of the page (in the design world this is referred to as a “bleed”). Make sure your images are large enough to roll off the edge of the page so there won’t be a border on your image.


Here is a great tutorial to get you started in inDesign:
inDesign Magazine Cover Tutorial

April 15th

Hello!

Today you will have the first part of class to finish your Envirathon/Servathon flyer challenge. When you are done, PLEASE save it as an inDesign file AND a PDF. I will take it on my USB from you. I must have the original file incase I need to do any reformatting for you.

After this I will give you a demo about text-wrapping and we will play with this feature for the remainder of the class.

For your own knowledge, here is a great youtube tutorial for understanding how text wrap works!

Text Wrapping in inDesign

April 11th

Hello all!

Today we are going to take a break from our tutorial and create a flyer for Envirathon/ Servathon! Go to the rockway website for a Q & A about the detail on this event. The flyer must be 8.5 x 11 and must include the title and the date, the rest is up to you! If you would like to use illustrator, you can create a text file in illustrator (save as png) and try placing it in your indesign file.

This will likely take you the entire class if you do the best job you can. Use dafont.com for more font choices. If you happen to finish, you can carry on with your tutorial.

Here is something you might find helpful:

Use drop caps

You can add drop caps to one or more paragraphs at a time. The drop cap’s baseline sits one or more lines below the baseline of the first line of a paragraph.
You can also create a character style that can be applied to the drop‑cap characters. For example, you can create a tall cap (also called a raised cap) by specifying a 1‑line, 1‑character drop cap and applying a character style that increases the size of the first letter.

One-character, three-line drop cap (left), and five-character, two-line drop cap (right)

Create a drop cap

1. With the Type tool  selected, click in the paragraph where you want the drop cap to appear.
2. In the Paragraph panel or Control panel, type a number for Drop Cap Number Of Lines  to indicate the number of lines you want the drop cap to occupy.
3. For Drop Cap One Or More Characters , type the number of drop cap characters you want.
4. To apply a character style to the drop cap character, choose Drop Caps And Nested Styles from the Paragraph panel menu, and then choose the character style you created.
   You can also use the Drop Caps And Nested Styles dialog box to align the drop cap to the text edge, reducing the amount of space on the left side of the drop cap, and adjust for drop cap letters with descenders, such as “g” and “y.” If you want to resize, skew, or change the typeface of the drop cap letter for added effect, select the letter or letters and make the formatting changes.

Remove a drop cap

1. With the Type tool  selected, click in the paragraph where the drop cap appears.
2. In the Paragraph panel or Control panel, type 0 for Drop Cap Number Of Lines or Drop Cap Number Of Characters.

April 10th

Hello!

Please continue working on the tutorial that we started last class at your own pace. Please watch for a very short scene, pause the video, and then edit it on your own. I will be there to help you answers questions as you go.

April 8th

Hello Group 2!

Today we are starting our new module using inDesign. I'd like you to open up inDesign and respond to the following on your blog:

1. From your OWN observations, and NOT google, what does inDesign look like it is used for?

2. What are some similiarities and some differences between inDesign and illustrator/ photoshop?

3. Try using some of the tools on inDesign, were you able to create anything? What did you create?

After I get the other group started with videography, we will begin working through a tutorial as a class. Please DO NOT start this without me. The link is below for those of you that are absent today/ will be in the near future so that you can catch-up on your own time.

inDesign tutorial

April 3rd

Hello!

Today if your last chance to edit your stop-motion video. Please work at this and make it your best creation yet! When you are finished, upload it to youtube and send me the link.

If you finish early you can do the following with our other module:

Today is a warm and overcast day-sounds like perfect photography weather!

In light of the great weather we've been having recently, let's get outside and shoot some great photos! I'd like everyone to take 3-5 GREAT photos (any subject matter is welcome) and then edit them on either photoshop or iphoto (your choice) and upload them to your blog today.

Remember a great photo consists of:

-good compositon (think rule of thirds)
-appropriate depth of field (aperture setting)
-is properply lit
-interesting colour, texture, space, etc.

Get out there and start shooting!

On Tuesday we will begin our new unit on inDesign.