How we will meet
Four Six Five will meet twice a week in two-hour classes throughout the Fall 2024 semester. I believe you will find in-person sessions a great benefit for our course — J465 depends heavily on your ability to learn to collaborate effectively, and though all of your projects will be individual, many of our creative exercises will involve you working in small teams (usually pairs). Each of the next 15 weeks will be themed around a creative exercise and lectures that are intended to broaden your knowledge of graphic design in terms of its history, theory and practice.
Mondays: The first part of our week, once we get into the flow of the class, will usually feature a critique of our creative work from the previous week. We will then undertake a short “Tip” session, focusing on some aspect of Illustrator, Photoshop or (later in the semester) AfterEffects. Completing and submitting this work will contribute to your Participation grade for the class. The second half of Monday’s classes will usually feature a lecture to introduce that week’s concepts. The lecture will usually conclude with a creative prompt — not a graded project, but an exercise that will help you build skills related to various formats and purposes related to graphic design.
Wednesdays: Often, the Wednesday sessions will feel more like a workshop, where you will be working on that week’s creative exercise. Wednesdays will often feature a shorter lecture portion, too, pushing forward with important considerations for each week’s theme.
Handouts: We will use weekly handouts in class for Tips, designed to build skills in design software. Handouts will usually be printed out, and will be avalable in Canvas > Files > Handouts > Tips. There are also handouts for each week’s exercise prompt, as well as a series of “How To” and general reference handouts.
The work we’ll do
Four (or five, depending how you count) units will make up J465 this semester. We will begin the semester with some basic drawing exercises, then move on to beginning the work on our semester-long Portfolio project. We will then move into branding, then illustration, then layout, then animation. Within these units are weekly themes (outlined on the calendar page), during which you can expect brief lectures, critiques and a series of creative, in-class exercises. Over the course of the semester, you will accumulate a healthy portfolio of creative, original work in this fashion.
These exercises serve as practice for the graded projects, which you will produce outside of class time. These projects make up the majority of your grade in J465. The fifth “project” is your ongoing, personal J465 website, which you will design, code, publish (via Pages) and maintain over the course of the semester, adding your creative work as you go. In addition to showcasing your work in J465, with both exercises and projects, your site will feature your own design touches, including a header, background, typography, structure and colors.
Below is a list of the project work for Fall 2024. You will be able to see assignment prompts on Canvas.
Five projects
Thework you will turn in for a grade will be all your own. Each project is equally weighted, and unlike our creative exercises, you will work on your projects outside of class time. We will, however, reserve a portion of the class period before you submit each project for a pre-critique of your work-in-progress.
Percentage value of each project:
For the first (graded) project, you will create a brand name for an imagined publishing house that will “carry” all your work for this course. You will design logo variations, a color scheme and typographic style. Additionally, you will prepare a brief mission statement describing your organization’s aims, its audience and content, as well as a design rationale describing the meaning behind the logo design. The remaining project prompts are very broad, giving you a lot of leeway to specialize in a certain kind of style and look for the output of your “publishing company.”
Your next two projects involve opening up your creativity and drawing abilities. You will create a poster that represents your interpretation of the influence of graphic designer of your choice — it can be anyone, living or dead, individual or collective, whose style you especially admire. Later, you will create a centerpiece illustration and layout for your “publication” based on your choice from among a series of stories — or selecting something you yourself have written.
As we transition from static to motion design, you will be creating a short animation of your logo design using Adobe After Effects.
The final project will represent a culmination of all that you have learned and produced in this course. You will present your work (including the four previous projects as well as a selection of your in-class exercises) as a web portfolio, which you will begin in Week 3 and build over the course of the semester. We will “check in” on occasion during the semester to ensure your website is progressing as it should. Some of you will have vast experience in web design, but for some of you, this will be an entirely new skill with unique challenges. Please be sure to reach out to me if you need additional help with this aspect of our class.