Hello. I hope you all enjoyed the long weekend last week.

Inclass – 09.24.12
Today (Monday) we will continue with the research phase of the ‘Get Out the Vote’ poster campaign. Remember the poster that you will be designing is meant to be nonpartisan – meaning “not partisan; free from party affiliation, bias, or designation.”

We will continue to use Photoshop to work on the moodboards. Moodboards – also known as your research board should be made in Photoshop – import images into the document from the web, the way I showed in class: see handout posted week2. By the end of class your moodboard should be complete and include images for each of the following four categories:

Here are  additional words we came up with last week:

1. Lab time to work
2. Sign-up for class presentation if you have not already done so last week.
3. Before class ends we will break into small groups to construct 4 questions or statements that capture the theme of your moodboard. This question or statement will become the basis for the tagline of your poster.

Lesson
Photoshop Review – Download class lesson files here: original-images
-> Setting up/ saving a document – resolution
-> Rulers, Layers, Menus, Palettes and Tools
-> Selections
-> Working with layers
-> Layer adjustments
-> Type tool
-> If time allows we will peek at Illustrator

Homework
1. Post 4 possible taglines to this blog.
2. From your tagline develop 3 pencil or ink sketches of a possible poster concept. Sketches MUST have a drawn border around them.
3. Moodboard – keep in mind your moodboard should show evidence of your research. Your moodboard should define what a democracy is. I expect to see historical references relating to voting, freedom, government, independence…

For next week I would like you to have a specific target audience in mind and you should be able to explain how your sketches address your target audience and encourage them to go out and vote.
For example your target audience could be based on age, economic background, geographic location, gender, etc…

Additional Design Strategies Develop a visual hierarchy of all the required visual elements. Create a few sketches to explore different possibilities for your layout. Think about using type as metaphor to visually communicate your analysis, or point(s) of view on the subject. Experiment with a variety of approaches. Don’t assume first ideas and solutions are the best. Take chances, you can always tighten things up later. Select a series of words from your phrases, edit the words down to a series of syllables, literal meanings have less significance here. Experiment with type and composition perhaps focus on the expression through the letterforms themselves, as well as through their arrangement on the page.

Sketches can be smaller than final poster dimensions but should be a vertical layout. I will review your interim compositions (sketches) next week and from there you will begin to develop one final solution of the poster.

Next week we will review the sketches.