What have I learned this
week...I am a designing disaster. Every time I create something new, I learn the following week all that I
have done wrong! Luckily, I won't let that stop me. This week I
decided to push myself and do both Design Basics Index activities.
With the MMP right around the corner and my extreme (but luckily
decreasing) lack of designing knowledge, I feel there is no time like the
present to try to develop these skills. I put the first into a video
slideshow to make the presentation have a little zing.
Shapes Workshop:
Using Google Drive: Drawing
and vector drawing enhancements for Google Chrome I created some shapes.
Using the enhancements and the entire creative process was completely new
to me and took a bit of getting use to. I especially enjoyed the size
variation activity and the movement the shapes created.
The video is less than one minute.
The video is less than one minute.
http://www.masher.com/player.jsp?key=d8881ea3-7045-25bb-ee23-0000704d89a7&adscheme=0
Fonts:
For the next activity I
focused on fonts and creating words that matched (the first two) and contrasted
(third one). The final column is the name of the font. Originally I
selected mainly decorative fonts, but as the readings progressed I realized
that I need to put in some Old Style and Serif fonts since I will primarily be
working with these from now on. Again I used Google Drive: Drawing.
There is the option to add a wide variety of fonts so I was able to
choose from quite an assortment. To me the words "thin" and
"scientific" had the most impact in terms of adding more emphasis to
the word; in the case of scientific it was a great juxtaposition.
"Tense" was the least effective in that the font selection is
such an opposite of the term it diffused the intensity of the word itself.
This activity shows how important font choice is in terms of adding to or
taking away from a headline.
I created this before reading about the importance of grids, so I
realized too late that I should have put this into four columns rather than 12
rows.
Krause,
Jim (2004) Design Basics Index. Cincinnati: HOW Design Books
Hi Brandi, I enjoyed reading your views on fonts and styles. I also chose this activity and agree with you on how fonts add to the expression of the text. It is almost like how the choice of colors affect a painting and shape its meaning. I also will check out Google Drive as well as their other influential tools. I am new to using gmail and amazed how they really 'own' the world wide web. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteHi Brandi,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed your video and font choices for the mini art school assignment. I love the video with the color illusions and shapes. My sister did a similar project with different shapes and colors. Colors and shapes create illusions and tend to play tricks on us. When using colors from similar pigment families, they may see like a completely different color. The shapes exercise was awesome and I loved the way you utilized them.
For the font exercise, I like the choice of words that you have selected for the fonts. Also, thank you for putting the font names there. I like how you used the Black Ops font in voicing the heroic/ determined side of it, while flirty is the contradiction. I myself see the Black Ops game and that is not a flirty game at all. All the voice words match the font types perfectly and the contradictions, well, were great contradictions.
-Mae-Lin
Hi Brandi,
ReplyDeleteYou did a terrific job with the activities you selected for this week's Mini Art School blog!
I just wanted to point out a few things that I was especially pleased to see:
1. The fact that you created a Masher video to illustrate the first activity you completed. This is the first time I've ever seen someone create a video with that tool for a blog exercise, and I thought the music you selected to accompany your examples was a great choice. In addition, the fact that you let your readers know that the video was under 1 minute long will probably help you incur more viewers (sometimes people are turned off by lengthy explanations in videos -- I realize this is something I personally have to work on when creating screencasts for my students ;)
2. I love seeing the fonts that students select for this exercise! It's always a popular choice in the course, and I'm a big fan of font-selection to convey mood, tone, etc. Fonts have personalities in that way, which makes this a fun exercise to complete and to "read". Those were some fonts I hadn't seen before. Did you have these pre-loaded onto your computer, or did you use a website to download free fonts? I personally like dafont.com for free selections. Warning: You could spend hours on there (you think I'm kidding...)
Finally, I liked that you wrote about how you realized a grid format may have been more appropriate than listing the fonts in 12 lines. It's always great to see students making "live" connections in that way. I can tell from your intro paragraph that you're definitely seeing the error of you pre-course designing ways, and that's great to hear! More learning to come, I assure you :)
Well done!
Prof H
Thanks for the compliments. I created the fonts page in Google Drive: Drawings. They offer a ton of free fonts. I have yet to make it to the end of the entire catalog, which I never thought was possible. I will check out dafont too though. I have always been a big fan of using font, especially when creating materials for my Social Studies classes.
DeleteSteve and Mae-Lin: Thanks for your reviews. I’m glad you enjoyed my creations.
ReplyDeleteTo Steve: Once I found out about the Google drawing and enhancements creating assignments for this class became much easier. The drawing template in Drive is wonderful because of the ease of use and the free form allowing one to create without the usual boundaries that get in the way.