Week 5: Course Embedded Assignment Reflection

You know I’ve never seen been able to appreciate art or enjoy art. During week 1 of this course we had to look at various graphical designs and decipher the elements that went into the work. Since then, I have been more critical of how I view my own work as well as others including my own students. As we progressed into week 2 and we created our own logo, I saw a side of me that didn’t know was there. I really enjoyed creating the logo assignment of this course. It taught me to think critically and evaluate myself in a creative way. Even better I was able to successfully use this assignment in my own classroom so students can evaluate themselves and create meaningful logos that represent who they are. Some of my students used logoease.com to help them get started while other students had no problem using MS Paint or MS Word to complete their task. I am always looking for ideas to help my students think critically and I never thought that creating a logo would achieve this. The Art of Self Branding worksheet provided by blogger Lea Alcantara is an excellent resource to get your students started with their logo design. It is important students complete this worksheet before they are even told that they have to create a logo otherwise they will want to start drawing and designing before even knowing about the adjectives that describe them. Being able to view other of my classmates’ logos on the discussion board was also a great help to the design of my logo. I was able to get ideas but also see the many different types of creative logos and how they tie to their personality. As we reached week 4 of this course, I was very confident about doing the newsletter and incorporating the logo we had created back in week 2. I was in for a big surprise as I had a very tough time completing week 4 assignment. I had created newsletters before using templates but creating them from scratch posed a big challenge for me. It took me several tries and many hours to get the newsletter close to what I imagined it to be. I kept referring back to week 1 and thinking about the CRAP elements. This made realize how critical I had become of my own work. Overall, I really enjoyed this course despite my initial skepticism about visual design and animation. The most important thing I learned about this course is the meaning of the word PRACTICE. This course truly was one of very few courses where I had the opportunity to sit down and practice (hands on) new acquired skills to finish assignments. As a result of this course, I decided that I needed to dedicate more time to practice on assignments in order to achieve greater learning. My logo design included the words continuous learner. If I want to achieve this goal, I need to become more proactive and practice more of things I don’t like or enjoy. In this case it wasn’t that I didn’t like design, it was that I didn’t have enough practice before so I assumed that I wouldn’t like it. Finally, week 5 was also a very informative week and we got very important resources that can help us as technology leaders. The resources provided provide many relevant examples of how we could use common software like MS Word to help diverse learners reach their potential and close the achievement gap.

Source:
The Art of Self-Branding: Part One | Lealea Design. (n.d.). Web, Print, Graphic Design and Creative Solutions | Lealea Design. Retrieved December 17, 2010, from http://www.lealea.net/blog/comments/the-art-of-self-branding-part-one/

Week 3 Animation Project

Assignment 1.2: Reflection on Outstanding 15th-century church book: Sherborne Missal

The first thing one can appreciate about this manuscript is the amount of artwork contained inside of it, which I think, is interesting because the cover displays quite the opposite. The cover is plain with lots of empty space with the exception the powerful logo displayed in dead center. The logo suggests royalty and sacredness. The author did a great job of concealing the tremendous about of artwork by the use of a plain cover. The cover is not ancient and suggests that the manuscript was created in modern time. The inside of this manuscript has artwork on every single page, white space is not an issue. The strategy inside of the manuscript was simple: religious text accompanied by beautiful artwork. The most obvious use of contrast throughout the manuscript is the use of black v. red in the text. Another example of the use of contrast is in the cover of the manuscript. This cover is the best example of using large v. small. Even though the empty space of the cover has the outright size advantage, one cannot help focus on the simple yet powerful logo despite its small size. Repetition is used quite frequently throughout this manuscript in terms of pictures (artwork), text size, color and style. Although all the artwork throughout the manuscript is not identical, it is extremely similar with very little variation. Its similarity ties the elements together, in this case it ties one page to the next. The font style is the same for the red and black text. Both use old English fonts with serif. The black text dominates as the main text while red is used to start new ideas or paragraphs. Wrap around graphics border most of the text for most of the manuscript with the exception of a few pages. In terms of alignment, the cover uses the most basic of them all; center alignment. The cover of this manuscript could be chopped up in horizontal or vertical and the four pieces would look almost identical. The main text on the other hand utilizes a geometrical center line made up pure artwork. The artwork not only wraps around text but also serves as a center divider for this two column style text to help clean up as much white/empty space as possible. Finally, in reviewing this work of art, one cannot stop and think about why there is so much artwork in this manuscript compared to a traditional bible or prayer book. This manuscript became famous as a result of the artwork. The artwork is in place to complement the text it surrounds. Every single piece of artwork helps the reader visually understand the text. The authors or artists used this technique of proximity to match the artwork to the photo. They simply belong together. The reader shouldn't have to read an entire page before seeing a visual. The author wanted the reader to simply scan their eyes a couple of inches to get a visual of what the text is referring to. This defines the element of proximity according to week 1 lecture: "the reader shouldn't have to seek out the next logical piece of information; rather, use proximity to make sure that the next piece of information a reader sees is the next piece of information they should see" (Professor Cummings).

Sources:

Professor Cindy Cummings Week 1 video lecture "Graphic Design Principles".

Turning the Pages: High quality version of the Sherborne Missal. (n.d.). THE BRITISH LIBRARY - The world's knowledge. Retrieved November 19, 2010, from http://www.bl.uk/collections/treasures/sherborne/sherborne_broadband.htm?middle