Course Description
This course is year-long, and students who complete both semesters will receive a full high school credit in Visual Arts/Fine Arts. Students may also choose to complete the first semester for 0.5 credits. Students must take the first semester to be enrolled in the second semester of this course.
This live, online graphic design course introduces high school students to the fundamentals of graphic design and basic art elements through immersive, creative, project-based learning. Using industry-standard design technology, students will develop essential technical skills in visual communication, alongside understanding the artistic elements, principles, and processes of graphic design.
In the first semester, the focus is on foundational design elements through scaffolded, creative explorations, beginning with understanding the elements and principles of design in Canva for Education (along with other free program options), transitioning to creating original designs in Photoshop. Weekly projects will adhere to national standards and engage students with interest-led choices. This foundation will prepare students for more advanced creative design projects in the second semester, where they will delve into Adobe Illustrator and InDesign.
Perfect for students who enjoy creative challenges, more technical artistic projects, or students who simply want to learn artistic skills in a digital format, throughout this course, students will have fun engaging with a series of sequential design exercises and weekly projects, including developing images for social media, event flyers, post card designs, and layered image collages, building toward digital compositions, animated gifs, surreal landscapes, poster designs and book covers first semester. Second semester will expand on the learning of first semester into logos, type/letterforms, branding, and much more.
Subjects covered in this course will include:
- Understanding elements and principles of design, including line, shape, color, texture, space, and more through Canva for Education.
- Gaining a high level of familiarity and comfort over the course of the year using Adobe software to generate original works of design.
- Engagement with the creative design process and artistic practice: from ideation and rough sketches to critique, proofing, and revision before calling work complete.
- The “gestalt” principles of design affecting our perception, including proximity, similarity, closure, continuity, figure/ground relationships, and establishing a visual hierarchy — all to create visual efficiency in conveying the intended message and quality of visual unity needed to heighten the desired effect.
- An overview of color “theory,” including updating a common misunderstanding of how color works in both pigment and screen-based settings.
- Using written identity guidelines that describe the look and feel of successful outcomes to help steer the many design decisions to be made on behalf of a given project.
- Experience with the art of making type/letterforms (type design) and typography (the art of arranging type).
Course Objectives:
After completing this course, student will be able to:
- Use analog and digital tools to engage in the creative process to develop effective solutions to visual and textual problems.
- Tap into their own interests, passions, concerns, and ambitions as content for coursework.
- Experience, conceive and create visual art and design with greater sensitivity and success.
- Consider the needs of a client, an audience and other contextual factors for each project.
- Communicate with greater clarity as to the qualities of designs made by themselves and others, enhancing abilities to create for others and to be able to hire others to produce works that work for them.
Required materials
- a blank sketchbook, or grid paper
- cheap mechanical pencils with eraser
- 18″ cork-backed ruler
- black markers—fine-tipped and brush-tipped (chisel-tipped is a plus!)
- colored pencils (any brand)
- an opaque white poster marker (optional, but highly recommended for editing ink sketches)
Software:
We will start the first-semester using Canva for Education and Adobe Photoshop CC. The second semester will require access to Adobe Illustrator and InDesign.
Using the student account for Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign requires a monthly subscription to their “Creative Cloud” at roughly $20 per month (a significant student discount).
*While free alternatives do exist for Adobe products, they are limited, much harder to learn and use, and also far less applicable to professional settings, so using the Adobe tools is very highly recommended for making the most of this class. No prior experience with any of those is required or expected.
Course Structure
Most class meetings will begin with a look at the previous week’s homework, followed by a lecture/discussion and technical demonstration of next steps.
Each week’s homework will be listed in our course modules in Canvas and covered thoroughly during class. 2–2.5 hours of homework will be expected each week and will sometimes entail watching a video online that I’ve found or created to help work and learn a particular topic at your own pace.
The information shared and technical knowledge will be largely sequential, so missing previous classes could make it hard to work on current work; students who miss class will be encouraged to review the previous recorded meeting.
Who should enroll?
This course is recommended for 10th-12th grade students interested in art and design.
Technology Requirements
- A computer with with high-speed, broadband Internet, webcam and working microphone for live meetings and watching recorded lectures
- Students will be encouraged to share their work-in-progress via screen-sharing on Zoom to get help and feedback, and that can require a security password to enable.
- A camera — a standard phone camera will work well
- An additional screen to allow for watching meetings while working on screen-space consuming software (optional but very highly recommended)
Evaluation and Feedback
Feedback will be offered in each class as part of critique and discussion and will also be provided in further detail through project grading. Scores will be applied to most assignments within the week following the first due date, with lower scores usually meaning the directions weren’t followed or insufficient work was completed.
Students are encouraged to set up individual meetings to get more feedback and/or work through any conceptual, aesthetic, or technical challenges.
Assignments can be revised for more credit up until the end of the semester.
Participation in class meetings is worth 25% of the grade, so that earning an A or B requires coming prepared and engaging with the instructor and classmates during our live meetings.
Communication
Parents and students can contact me via email (beades@aimacademy.online) and can expect a response within 24 hours.
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