Teaching Graphic Design

Course Offerings and Class Projects from the Leading Graduate and Undergraduate Programs

Steven Heller, Steven Heller

• Publisher: Allworth
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781621536154
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Conception
• Subtopic: Histoire et critique de la conception

More Than Sixty Course Syllabi That Bring the New Complexity of Graphic Design to Light
All graphic designers teach, yet not all graphic designers are teachers. Teaching is a special skill requiring talent, instinct, passion, and organization. But while talent, instinct, and passion are inherent, organization must be acquired and can usually be found in a syllabus. Teaching Graphic Design, Second Edition, contains syllabi that are for all practicing designers and design educators who want to enhance their teaching skills and learn how experienced instructors and professors teach varied tools and impart the knowledge needed to be a designer in the current environment. This second edition is newly revised to include more than thirty new syllabi by a wide range of professional teachers and teaching professionals who address the most current concerns of the graphic design industry, including product, strategic, entrepreneurial, and data design as well as the classic image, type, and layout disciplines. Some of the new syllabi included are:

• Expressive Typography
  
• Designer as Image Maker
  
• Emerging Media Production
  
• Branding
  
• Corporate Design
  
• Graphic Design and Visual Culture
  
• Impact! Design for Social Change
  
• And many more
• 
  Beginning with first through fourth year of undergraduate courses and ending with a sampling of graduate school course options, Teaching Graphic Design, Second Edition, is the most comprehensive collection of courses for graphic designers of all levels.

1

Course Title

INTRODUCTION TO GRAPHIC DESIGN

INSTRUCTOR JULIE MADER-MEERSMAN

SCHOOL MINNESOTA STATE UNIVERSITY, MOORHEAD

FREQUENCY ONE SEMESTER (SIXTEEN WEEKS PLUS FINALS WEEK), TWICE WEEKLY

CREDITS FOUR

LEVEL UNDERGRADUATE

PURPOSE

This course is the first (beyond foundation studies in two- and three-dimensional design and drawing) in a program of courses leading to a BFA* in graphic design, tailored to prepare a student for professional practice in the graphic design field.

*Our BFA degree has selective admission; a BA in graphic design is also offered.

DESCRIPTION

This is an introductory course for majors in our department of art and design’s graphic design program. It involves studio inquiry into the nature of graphic design and visual problem-solving. Topics introduced in the course are symbols, typography, information design, visual concepts, and three-dimensional graphic design. The course also introduces the student to studio operations and procedures, client-designer relations, production processes for print media, and graphic design history. Lectures, readings, demonstrations, slide presentations, group exercises, class discussions, and one-on-one meetings with students are used.

Description of Classes

WEEK 1

• Introductions: Syllabus review. What is graphic design?

WEEK 2

• Symbol show-and-tell; Symbol lecture; Slides; Timed sketchbook exercise; Introduce symbol project; Studio

• Session 2: Group research review; Studio

WEEK 3

• Review thumbnails and roughs; Studio

• Session 2: Studio; Mounting demo

WEEK 4

• Preliminary design review

• Session 2: Studio

WEEK 5

• Symbol critique

• Session 2: Anatomy of typography lecture (read Craig, pp. 12–23; 28–35); Introduce three-part type project; Group exercise (Koberg & Bagnall, pp. 52–65)

WEEK 6

• Research thumbnail review

• Session 2: Twentieth-century typography slide presentation; Studio

WEEK 7

• Preliminary design review

• Session 2: Open studio

WEEK 8

• Typography critique

• Session 2: Visual concepts and creative process lecture (read Koberg & Bagnall, pp. 8–34 and 78–91); Slides; Introduce project; Group brainstorming exercise.

WEEK 9

• Research review; Studio

• Session 2: Thumbnail review; Studio

WEEK 10

• Spring break, no class

WEEK 11

• Preliminary design review

• Session 2: Open studio

WEEK 12

• Visual concepts critique

• Session 2: Information design lecture; Slides; Introduce project; Group exercise (read Koberg & Bagnall, pp. 66–77)

WEEK 13

• Research and thumbnail review; Studio

• Session 2: Professional practice lecture (2:00–2:30 p.m.); Field trip to printer (2:45–4:30 p.m.)

WEEK 14

• Preliminary design review

• Session 2: Departmental portfolio reviews; no class

WEEK 15

• Information design critique; Introduce 3D project; Slides

• Session 2: Design firm field trips, no class

WEEK 16

• Research and thumbnail review; Studio

• Session 2: Open studio

WEEK 17

• Preliminary design review

• Session 2: Study day, no class

• Final Critique (3D Project); Tuesday, May 7, 3:00–5:00 p.m.

Assignments

Samplings of two projects used in the course follow.

TYPOGRAPHY: PLAYING WITH TYPE

A three-part assignment follows.

PART I. WARMING UP: CRAFTING LETTERFORMS

Choose one of the two attached fonts to trace. Trace the font until the tracing looks and feels natural to do. Adhere your tracing(s) into your sketchbook.

Objective: This is a preliminary exercise that begins to develop your ability to craft typography and improve your ability to draw letterforms.

PART II. BRAINSTORMING EXERCISE: 100 THUMBNAILS**

Choose a letter from the alphabet. Use both upper- and lowercase forms of this letter (real or invented) and visually interpret it one hundred different ways. Consider cropping, touching, overlapping, intersecting, positive/negative space, composition, texture, scale, color, etc. You can use any kind of writing or drawing instrument for this, but no computer.

Use the grid template provided. Cleanly and squarely blow it up 160 percent on a black-and-white copier to fit on 11" × 17" paper. Do your design sketches directly on the 11" × 17" copy—not on the 8.5" × 11" template.

Objective: To encourage compositional play, risk-taking, and experimentation in form; and to test endurance and resourcefulness. The requirement of trying to find so many preliminary ideas can be exhausting. This is the critical point, when attention tends to wander and impatience begins to set in. By simply completing this demanding task, you will begin to believe in your own infinite possibilities.

**This part is a modification of an exercise in Wilde & Wilde’s Visual Literacy.

PART III. DESIGN: AN INTERPRETIVE COMPOSITION

Generate a composition using typography to express a specific emotional state. Each person will have a different emotion to express in his or her composition. We’ll draw those out of a hat today. For your design, you may work with found type, computer-generated type, and/or photocopied type elements. Use color if the concept dictates it. The size of the composition is to be 11" × 17". Develop a minimum of fifteen thumbnails for concepts by the time of the review.

Objective: To use type as an artistic element, to emphasize the interpretive potential of typographic form, and to communicate a specific meaning (the feeling of an emotion) through design.

Specs: Mount Parts II and III separately, each on a 15" × 20" photo-gray mat board with cover sheets. Turn in all preliminary work (neatly and chronologically packaged), as well as sufficient, documented evidence of research with your final designs. All parts are due at the time of the final critique.

DESIGNING FOR THREE DIMENSIONS: PROJECT AEROFONT

We will design a three-dimensional font called “Aerofont,” based on the theme of flying. Each person is individually responsible for designing and building two characters of the font (which we will draw from a hat today). As a group, your letters will form the whole font. The characters will be tied together solely by the theme.

Thoughts: You can express an interpretation of the theme through the design of the letter itself and/or through type and images applied to the surface of a form. The letterforms can be entirely invented by you, or you can use or manipulate an existing typeface. Many aspects of the meaning of “flying” as a concept should be explored in the developmental stages. Incorporate model building and experimenting with materials early in your process.

SPECIFICATIONS

Color. Use whatever supports your concept (polychromatic, monochromatic, black and white, etc.).

Size. Student’s choice, but no smaller than 12" high and 6" deep. Again, design your form to support your concept. Keep in mind that it may be easier to manage the forms if they are larger.

Medium/Materials. The forms can (but do not have to) use digital imagery. Use whatever materials it takes to successfully render your interpretation of the theme. Some possible materials: cardboard, foam core, handmade papers, newspaper, wire, metal, found objects, fabric, floral foam, dowel rods, t-pins, glue, paint, images to collage, digital output, balsa wood, chipboard….

Final presentation. Three-dimensional forms. Neatly compile and turn in all preliminary work and evidence of research at the final.

DESCRIPTION OF CRITIQUE

Critiques are conducted for all five of the main projects. Students are required to participate in a mandatory “preliminary design review” (a highly refined work-in-progress critique) that precedes the final critique for each project. The emphasis at the preliminary design review is on affirming the validity of the students’ concepts and analyzing form. The final critique is used to evaluate the evolution and resolution of the designs. In all critiques, students are expected to come prepared to present their concepts, discuss how the forms of their designs support their concepts, as well as describe the ways they arrived at their ideas/forms.

CONCLUSION

The course structure and content is designed to emphasize design as a noun and a verb. Students learn from the outset that how they make/think is as important as what they make. The process-oriented emphasis of this course is used to prepare students to function on an increasingly independent basis as they move through the intermediate and advanced levels of the program. Art/design students often have difficulty distinguishing between the many processes that affect their progress: their own individual creative process, the process of design as it relates to a professional environment, and various production processes related to the physical making of art/design. By struc...