This spring semester I have a brand new crop of Intro students. After my experience teaching the previous semester with 3 sections of Intro, I get to make tweaks to my curriculum where I see fit for this 1 section bunch. Like I said in my very first Intro post last semester, it is so satisfying to teach these beginners about Adobe design software, and watch them learn and grow. Community is starting to form among them after their first very successful critique together, as well.
The idiom illustration project was a hit last semester, so it was introduced as their first Illustrator project again this semester. They had to choose an idiom (raining cats and dogs, hit the hay, you are what you eat, etc.) and construct an interesting, successful illustration. Brainstorming processes such as mind mapping and forced connections were introduced. Then they had to submit a series of thumbnails of their ideas, and narrow down to their top three. Those three were then turned into rough comps that were drawn with sharpies and micron pens, and critiqued with their entire class. The best chosen sketch was scanned into Illustrator, and vector shapes are placed on top. The focus in Illustrator was learning the Pen Tool and layer management.
Below are some first page resume examples that were turned in. All have aspects to be improved upon for their portfolio, but overall I was very pleased with their results!
* I have permission from my students to promote their work on my website.
Brittany Spencer // Papermaking & Graphic Design 