Today’s plan:
- Resumes
- Menus
- Golumbiski and Hagen on Mock-Ups
- Homework
Resumes
I want to take 10 minutes (max!) to talk about the resumes.
- Jayden, Nick, Hannah
- Modulating leading (hierarchy and differentiation), Catherine, Kelsey, Katie, Nathan, Alyssa, (vs Tyler, Hayley–Chloe)
- Let’s try something (Case, Lia)
Menus
For the next two weeks we will be designing a restaurant menu. This is a multiple-birds-with-one-project project, since we’ll be:
- Learning InDesign
- Learning Design Process and Grid Layout (developing a mock-up/sketch)
- Practicing Typography
To get us started, I’ve asked you to grab a menu today to bring to class. Before we start examining our menu, let’s head to Google and see if we can learn any basic recommendations for menu design.
Pre-Writing a Design
Most of you are writers. As writers, you all probably have a different approach to pre-writing. Me? I read and write comments in the margins of a book. Then I write out quotes into a document with some transitions and some analysis. Pieces of stuff. Eventually I start thinking of an outline (what, in my writing classes, I call a road map: first this paper does X, then it uses X to examine A, B, and C. Or first is reviews X and Y. Then it compares X and Y to Z, stressing A and B). Whatever. I do some math and start guessing how many pages I can dedicate to each element in the outline. As a profession academic, I often work backwards a bit on this part, since virtually anything I write will be 8 pages (for a conference) or 20-30 pages (for an article).
However we approach pre-writing, I think we can think of it as developing a sketch of what our work will look like. It is an exercise in planning organization, mapping ideas. I think you can see where this is going.
When I used to design websites, I would always begin with a mock-up: a Photoshop picture of what I wanted the site to look like. This would include some basic measurements and grid work. We’re going to use a similar, but more lo-fi, approach to developing a draft for the menu project.
Homework
Remember that Friday’s class will be our first time opening and using InDesign. While I find InDesign more accessible than Premiere, I still think a lot of folks would benefit from a general introduction to and walk-around the workspace.
For Monday’s class, I’d like you to prepare two mock-ups for your menu (one portrait and one landscape). Here is the content I’ve developed for our menus. If you prefer, you can mock up your menu in Photoshop or Canva (but note that the final turn in for this will be an .indd file).
I expect most of you will simply want to use crayons/colored pencils/markers for this. The mock up doesn’t have to be detailed at this point–it is more thinking about where you will put blocks of text, colors for backgrounds and headers, images, etc.
Future Schedule
I’d like you to spend a bit more time working on the menu assignment and learning InDesign in the process. So here’s the plan:
- Friday: Introduction to InDesign
- Monday: Sharing Mock Ups (25 minutes); Working with Text in InDesign (25 minutes)
- Wednesday: Share drafts of your menu for a crit
- Friday: Complete InDesign CLIAB Lesson #4 (?????)
- Monday, Sept 27: Final Menu Share / Promotional Poster Project
I’m waiting to hear back from Michael Mayer on the exact schedule for the promotional poster project–so that might impact this timeline. Also, I’m willing to dedicate extra time to the project if folks want to invest more in it, or if folks feel they need more time to learn InDesign. This is meant as an introductory assignment and is as much about learning how to navigate InDesign as it is producing a beautiful menu. If folks are learning, and the project feels productive, then we can stick with it.
