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Indiana University Southeast - BFA Graphic Design I Aug - Dec 2017
Syllabus for a senior-level BFA Graphic Design (S452), Indiana University Southeast, New Albany, Indiana, USA for the fall semester from Aug - Dec 2017.
Download: S452 BFA GD syllabus - Fall 2017.pdf
1st project: Social Commentary Through Posters
Organized by PLAKART that formed the ISPC (International Student Poster competition), made out of 6 initial board members, 4 graphic designers, 1 multimedia director, and 3 international professors, a poster contest became an opportunity to test the students' ideas and techniques at an international level. The class submitted electronically by 9/7/2017 despite the final deadline on October 30, 2017. For this project, they need to submit a proof of submission to the organizer by the end of the project to be considered complete. The poster should promote the given topic and promote a solution/concept for a wider international audience.
The submitted poster must observe the following rules:
JPG file with B3 format printing preparation (350x500mm) with 300 dpi resolution with custom CMYK colors.
A single file must not exceed 10 MB.
All used fonts should be in outline or rasterized.
You are not allowed to use any designs/materials you do not own copyrighted.
Understand and accept that the organizers reserve the right to use the submitted visual solutions for presentation and media use and reproduction for promotional purposes within the international promotional activities and campaigns.
Objectives:
To test students' ideas and techniques on an international level competition
To create a platform for the student to take a stand on an issue that affects the society.
To employ exploratory techniques to create one's original artwork and other applicable graphics or typefaces to add meaning to the message.
Top: Emily Thompson's design taps into the idea of the big brother watching over us as we have more and more reliant on the internet, especially the Wi-Fi which through the symbol of an eye, strategically placed in the middle, signifies her main concept of a highly surveilled society that we all live in.
Bottom: Marissa Kress argues that automation is highly dependent on energy and that source must be generated, often times by human and without any power outlet to have a symbolic robotic person to charge, automation is essentially useless.
2nd project: Learn from the Masters
Designers are creating ideas to make the world a better place. Inspired, this project is about drawing inspirations from the superstars of graphic design. The students need to research and study in depth their design philosophies and propose a project based on them. It was a project to tap into entrepreneurship in design. It was not the objective of this project to follow the master's styles but rather to model your design philosophies after theirs. A total of six designers were presented as options for the students: Paula Scher, Marian Bantjes, Ellen Lupton, Bruce Mau, Stefan Sagmeister, and Milton Glaser.
As a project to prepare them for portfolio pieces, they were encouraged to make something thoughtfully so that people can and want to use it.The final presentation format required their ideas to be well-presented digitally on a 24" x 24" format at 150 or 300 dpi (depending on the software: raster vs. vector). The content of their final presentation contains your ideation, refinement, and production stages.
Inspired by Bruce Mau, Marissa Kress proposed a menu redesign for a restaurant in her hometown called the New Boston Tavern in New Boston, Indiana. It has been a popular restaurant for locals to enjoy homemade soups, pulled barbecue pork and fried chicken. The menu features a clean and consistent layout with items being easier to locate. Because we 'eat with our eyes', the images are of the most popular items sold and will influence the customers to order that item. An illustration of the building, logo, and history on the back page was designed to personalize the restaurant menu. The goal is to satisfy the experience of restaurant customers and to increase sales, accordingly.
For more information about information of how much Americans spend at restaurants, visit http://aaronallen.com/blog/how-much-americans-spend-at-restaurants
3rd project: Polysemous cards
"Polysemy" is the presence of semantic ambiguity in language, i.e., when one word can be associated with two or more meanings. For this project, the students created a set of two cards where you have to integrate self-created images and the four polysemic words in the design. Words like bow (to incline the body or head) vs. bow (a flexible strip of wood for propelling arrows), lead, tear (to pull apart) vs. tear (a drop of the fluid secreted by the eye) are some glaring examples. (FYI: its opposite, monosemy is completely clear and unambiguous).
They were required to investigate different card stocks and relevant techniques such as embossing, debossing, pop-up, etc to produce the final mock-up. They may also think of "technique" as exploratory methods used to produce a different style of artwork that you have never tried before. Likewise, for typefaces, instead of relying on computer-generated typefaces, they have to create their own. A2 invitation envelopes which may also be referred to as announcement envelopes sized at 4.375" x 5.75" are used to contain the final products.
Top: Emily Thompson's design is based on the word FILE where her first expression is about "filling paperwork" or a filing cabinet. She created her card to appear at the front of a filing cabinet and in an accordion fold which enables her to place papers inside the card. Her second design is "to file one's nails" where the background of the card was made to look like the inside of a nail salon. The interactive piece has a pull tab to enable the hand to move back and forth to create the illusion of filing.
Bottom: In expressing "horn," Marissa investigates the meaning by placing a pop-up horn on the head of a unicorn and the other meaning for the horn is based on the musical instrument of French horn: a musical brass wind instrument with a long coiled tube having a conical bore and a flaring bell. The musical notes seem to be floating off the page as she painstakingly cut and glued each letter on a transparent film.
3rd project: Polysemous cards
Shown here is Connor Olbderding's polysemous word to intrepret the word 'DUCK.'
4th project: Food truck
With the rise of the service economy, graphic designers are being asked to solve design problem in a constantly changing economic and social environment. In order to succeed as graphic designers today, we need to be equipped with tools and approaches that work best in this service-oriented world. For this project, the students designed a graphical wrap for a food truck.
Top: Marissa Kress's truck selling dessert
Bottom: Connor Olberding's truck selling Japanese food
5th project: Expand your project
The final project provides an opportunity for a self-defined project from conceptual development to production. This is an opportunity to create portfolio pieces for entering the design profession or as a preamble into investigating a design topic of interest. As such, the student may also choose to work with a client for an existing project that augments or compliments your career path/portfolio. If those options were not viable at this point, consider all the four projects completed so far and they can focus on one of them and expand it to include three other touchpoints.
They also need to present their idea in a 24" x 24" format digitally as they finalize their design.The format forces the students to think about how to present their work in the absence of their physical self. As such, it got them to think about how to carefully describe, layout, and compose their ideas.
5th project: Expand your project
Shown here are Marissa's magazine layout showing the cover, its masthead, Travel Goer,' and the table of contents and inside spreads.
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YEOH AS EDUCATOR
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Select below to view my students' awards as well as their creations from Nanyang Technological University, Texas Tech University, and Southern Arkansas University.
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