Today’s Plan
- Quick review of White Space
- Photoshop Tutorials
- Zip it and ship it (1:35)
- Homework
I wanted to highlight a few major points from chapter one of the White Space reading. First, on page 6, Hagen and Golombisky’s four rules for good graphic design:
- It captures attention
- It controls the eye’s movement across the page or screen
- It conveys information
- It evokes emotion
Those final two refer back to our discussion of logos and pathos (respectively) last week. But the second one is the one I want to highlight: because it stresses that design involves an amount of research. And they build on this idea, when they advocate that your should know the general rules of design, and know when and why you might break them. Picasso once said: “Learn the rules like a pro so you can break them like an artist, and I think Hagen and Golombisky are echoing his sentiment. This, then, is a way of thinking about ethos and design. For instance, you might not want to compose a presentation on groundbreaking science in Comic Sans. I have already suggested that if you want to center-align large blocks of text, then I assume you are trying to hurt my soul. There are many, many rules (some good, some silly, some pedantic) regarding design–betraying the basics is likely to cost you credibility not only with designers, but with mass audiences as well. We judge something by whether it looks right (even if we shouldn’t judge the book by its cover, we often in fact do).
Photoshop Thursday (or Friday)
Today we will be working with Photoshop in class. I have posted a number of images for us to work with in Canvas under the file tab. First, I want to go over Photoshop quickly, then we’ll start in our tutorial.
The tutorial I selected today is professional, but moves slow and is quite long (we likely won’t get through the whole thing). But it offers a more comprehensive view of a wide range of tools. Terry White goes through 10 things people want to know how to do in Photoshop (I’m guessing we will get through the first six):
- Touch up a photo (Acne Face)
- Layers and Adjustment Layers (Too Dark)
- Cropping (Liven Up a Dull Exposure))
- Exposure Problems (Liven Up a Dull Exposure)
- Removing an Object (Remove Something From a Photo)
- Content Aware Take 2 w/ Quick Select (Power Lines)
Is It 1:35? Then it is Time to Zip it and Ship it
I’ll stop with 10 minutes left in class and ask you to .zip your modified images together and them submit the .zip folder to Canvas.
Homework
Read Gries Chapter 1, pages 1-7 and 135-145. Read White Space chapter 1 and 2. Do one more Photoshop tutorial on your own (maybe one like this that works with text and layers).
As you read the first 7 pages of Gries, look out for why she thinks a new materialist approach to visual rhetoric is important. And be on the lookout for how she defines terms. As you read the other pages, keep track of the materials and methods used to compose Obama Hope.
