Week #2 – Information / Resources

Welcome to MMA100 Week #2!

Here is this week’s useful information and class resources:

Did you miss Week #1’s Post? Go Here

Did you miss Assignment #1’s Details? Go Here

Did you prepare a series of thumbnail sketches or roughs for our first assignment? It would be of great value for our class to see where your references and ideas are coming from. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and paste a few links of images or websites where you found inspiration and visual examples that are being used for the project. (I pasted mine first, check below) You can also write a few words, or more!

We began our course and first assignment / project here in MMA 100 last week via discussion and will start our second class by reviewing the thumbnails sketches and roughs individually generated by the class. We will discuss the critique process and presenting our thumbnails, roughs and comps in the group setting to help extend our ideas. 

We will spend the second half of our class time working on part 2 of the Postcard project. We will get familiar with our work stations, get started with adobe photoshop, electronic imaging, scanning / photo documenting images and artwork, creating and working with various file types and bringing our roughs & comps into photoshop to produce the finished design.

Are you looking for a photoshop psd. file template example to create along with, format and submit your postcard? (Photoshop newbies can edit and change the layers as you need to) Those with experience should make the template themselves –   Click HERE

*This Week’s Exercise – Cutting out Images in Photoshop / Making Graphic Assets: Cutting out images in various fragments is a task that all graphic designers will face on a regular basis. Learning various methods for cutting out images is a necessity. We will explore, experiment and share a few methods on how. 

Students will select and practice from 2-3 images from a public domain, OER or creative commons sources on the Internet or they may use images that they have on their devices. Again, We have a huge selection of OER Resources on our class resources page here too

(This exercise/technique will be applied to the post card project).

Video Screening: Cutting out images in Photoshop (examples)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=creV_oVjwsc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cY6Vyi0Gm_k

These tutorials above will help get you started with our class exercise, but ultimately, you will need to master the pen tool in both photoshop and illustrator for the cleanest vector cut outs. The video below is a great tutorial.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzyvN3EqYds

(Is there a specific tutorial that you learned from recently or over time? Share the URL link with a description of your experience in the comments section below)

What are some of today’s trends in Graphic Design? Lets take a look at this video below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcc1VyGvaYk

Vocabulary to explore for next week – The Elements & Principles of Design