Retro Poster project

My first lesson of Semester for Semester 2, was starting to feel a little stale. So I knew it needed to be revamped. 

The first lesson in photoshop needs to be 3 things:

1. Entertaining to get student buy in.

2. Not too hard so kids will give up. 

3. But teaches enough base skills so they are set up for success in photoshop in the future. 

The lesson I used to do were just Photo compositing images. where they just combine an animal, landscape and effect together. It was fun but nobody actually wanted to keep their final product. So I did some looking on the internet, and I found the retro poster design. 

Examples from the online

We start with a lesson on Copyright free images and sites and the importance of copyright but also how to find images taht are copy right free so you as an artist can make work without fear of taking someone else's property. 

Then we learn about poster design and the ingredients their poster will need. 

Here is the Visual Ingredient list each of their posters need. 

A fun element I challenged students to find was a "functional feature": Like a barcode, or QR code, or stamps. Starting show how design can have real world interactions, why also giving students an opportunity for interaction with your work. 

This is a video about downloading from copyright free sites. 

This is a video on how to actually do the poster design in Photoshop 

Here are student examples from this years assignment. 

I feel like this lesson was a pretty successful. I think the students were able to have a way to express themselves and make something that they were proud of which was my biggest goal. I don't like to have my students making "digital garbage". I want them to honor their time and create things they can be proud to share.

Black and white Assignment (Media Arts)

 I have a few black-and-white assignments that I give my students. This one was designed for my Media Arts class. It's a little more of an overview and focuses more on composition than on history or the camera settings. My Media Arts Class is a "Survey of Arts for Digital Art Classes" So we go through a lot in a short amount of time. 

I give a few prompts, so students know what to focus on, but the most successful of those prompts were the double exposure prompts. The students were able to create stunning pictures with the black-and-white double exposure. The other prompts were good for testing their skills but I found they had more substance than style. They had a lot of ideas but my the skills to make them look their best so the images were a little overthought. All students did a great job, but in future lessons, I would spend more time on setting up compositions and directing models. 

Here is a video on how to do double exposure. This is not the only way to do it but I found these versions to be the easiest. 

I like black and white for a prompt in most of my lessons because it is a pure form of composition. You remove the destruction of color and just focus on the contrast of the way the figures fill the image. 

Prompts for this lesson 

8 photos all soft edited
2 images- High Action 
2 images-Shadows
2 images-People and a story
2 images-Double exposure

Here are some examples of student work. 

AI Wrangler - Using AI and Design

 AI is everywhere. It hard to know where to start in the conversation, so I like to allow students to experiment in an easy program. This unit was designed to get kids thinking about AI, seeing it in action, and manipulating images. However, this is also the final AI use project, meaning every project after this cannot have an AI element at all. 

Other conversations: 

- How does AI affect your life?

- Where do you think AI is currently?

- What jobs are in danger?

- Do you think it is positive or negative?

- What already uses AI?

- What what the world look like if it waws banned?

The assignment: 

Create a series of 3 images that match thematically and visually. Each image in the series should be manipulated in some way by the student. they can't just use the image AI made, they either need to combine multiple images together, add other images, or correct AI mistakes in Photoshop. 

The following images were created by a student to show her progress, which is how the assignment should work. 

The images she created using Night Cafe

The final image she created, mixing the above images together.

The space fish images made by Night Cafe 

The final image

Here are a few examples of student series. 

The critique questions:

1. What is the story of your series 

2. Make a prediction on where you think AI will be in 5 years, and what will the world look like with it in it?

Landscapes (Part 2) - Grey blocking

 We did part one, so students are starting to feel the "I can do this" vibe, so let's bring in composition and original ideas. 

Our second mini-lesson is one I started my Traditional drawing class with as well. This is a great sketchbook practice project that gets kids thinking originally without overthinking composition.  We build on the foreground middle ground background we started with in part one, we also apply the idea of aerial perspective, but now we're starting to think more about overlay, and proportion. 

Start with a piece of paper or a digital project 8x10 in 300 dpi. (this is a practice project so it does not need to be very large.) Split it into at least 4 parts. In my traditional drawing classes I often encourage more squares, and to fill as many as they can in a time decided time frame. 

Start with the foreground and make it black, then move into the middle ground and have it be dark grey, then do the background in light grey. The first iteration of this will make something very basic, but as students keep making them they realize they can add whatever they want and the black dark grey light grey becomes the color-blocking backdrop for more details. 

The result is a very satisfying sketchbook page and I have often had a student just clip one out of the project and use it as the sketch for their final assignment. 

Here are a few examples of what this looks like in the professional digital drawing space. 

Here is a video of instructions for the physical version of this thumbnail composition landscape exercise. 

Teaching font (My Mini Assignment)

 Teaching font can be an incredibly frustrating subject in design because it is tedious, and there are so many factors. Students need to practice intentionality, a skill most teenagers try very hard to avoid. 

So to get them ready for the "big" font assignment I start with two mini lessons that help Let them practice these things in Formative assessments. 

A couple videos I like for getting the message across. 

Mini assignment 1: Words on Pictures (dumb name bear with me)

This assignment has a very fast critique at the end of the assignment, I just read through all the images and decided if they were successful or not matching the text to the quote and the image. Some of them are pretty funny, but they soon realize that many of them didn't quite meet the requirements, so as a group we talk about the common problems we see and what we could do to fix them. 

These are not student examples but they are examples I showed the students before we started. The kids then make their own versions. 

Requirements:

1. Choose a quote 

2. Choose an image

3. Choose a font from a website (cannot be one that is just available on Photoshop) 

4. Put them together with the correct color and size to fit the image the best they can. 

Mini Assignment 2: The calligraphr lesson (Not spelled incorrectly) 

Calligraphr is one of my favorite tools I found on the internet as of late and it beautifully and immediately shows students the anatomy of font. you can choose your template and what letters you want included you print your template and then you have the students make their very own font. It can be decorative or I also just let them make a font of their own handwriting. 

 Cralligraphr Website

 template example

Then I take their worksheet run them through the scanner, and share the google doc. they then find their font and we use the Calligraphr website to turn that final image into and actual text you can download and type with. 

These two lessons are quick and easy, keep them busy, and show instant results when preparing them for the final font design. They create a new font with a clear purpose and then use it in a scenario. 

Hard Editing Vs. Soft Editing

When I started the first photo assignment I noticed students struggled with knowing when the editing went too far. There is a time and place for both styles, but I did require all photos to be at least soft edited. 

So in this assignment, practice finding that line and when and where is the time to cross it my more intense edits for your pictures. 

We start will a lesson where we talk about the "looks" soft editing VS. Har editing. As a general rule I say soft editing a person should think, "Wow look at that great picture." in Hard editing a person look at the image and say, "Wow, look at the editing in the picture." In hard edits Photo shopping become the star of the show. 

Assignment:

2 different photos of still life top shots 
2 Different photos of Controlled light 
2 different photos of foreground disrupted photos 
2 Black and White Photos (both just in black and white no hard editing required)

Expectations:
all photos must be edited
all photos must be original
all photos must be take for this project (do not turn in a old photo you like from a year ago)
all photos must be exported as jpgs (no screenshots or photos of your screen)
all photos must show intentionality and purpose

Examples of student work from this year.

Soft Edits:

Hard Edits: