Jean Robison's blog

InDesign Tutorials

art show announcement example

In class exercise. Make a post card for your own amazing art show. Follow these instructions from eHow. 

Create interesting text effects with InDesign. Layers Magazine tutorial.

General help with InDesign from Adobe.

Tuesday 3/15 catch up

Art 41: I hope you were able to access the computer lab today to work on your projects for Thurday's critique. Be ready for the crit with your prints. I'm really looking forward to seeing your comic book work.

 

Art 43: Same about the lab. Keep working on both your website and your online article. This will involve preparing images with Save for Web, creating layouts in Dreamweaver, researching and testing designs etc.Keep reading about CSS in your text book. Read through to chapter 9 before the online article project is due on March 21.

Here's a CSS tutorial that I've posted previously. It's very helpful:

CSS Part 1 from curtis stage on Vimeo.

I will definitely be in class on Thursday.

 

Art 41 Collaborative comics

By now, everyone in the class has swapped Illustrator-made characters and is creating a unique comic book layout. Each project tells a different story using common characters. Your decisions regarding panels, text (or no text), colors, scale, reading directions (top > bottom, left > right, right > left, center > out?)  will set your particular story apart. Use the work made by your classmates along with your own vector characters. Really consider how a story can be told using graphic clues like unusually shaped story panels, moving elements off of the page and zooming in/out. 

Here is an example of a web piece made by  Adrian Miles in which the artist rethought the video frame, Bergen Clouds.

The artist explains the motives behind the cloud shaped quicktime player,

twilight lingers in bergen. + speeds it up - loads degraded skies.

this is a project that wanted to begin an investigation into the aesthetics and possibilities of skinned movies. but skinned movies that didn't replace the standard qt interface with something groovy but removed it all together. it comes out of the canberra trilogy series where i started to think about the frame of the video not just as a container for video but as itself an authored space.

A couple more examples of interesting and useful, styles of framing in comics:

From Scott McCloud's amazing book, Understanding Comics.

 

The last two examples are images of a graphic novel  by  Laylah Ali. Watch this Art 21 video with the artist to learn more about her work. It's pretty great.

Watch the full episode. See more ART:21.

 

 

Art 43 Web Typography

Some links for you to peruse as you plan out your online article:

CSS Zen Garden illustrates the power of separating style from content.

An article about the importance of font size on web pages from Web Design Ledger.

Here are a few of the sites I showed in class that demonstrate a range of different type styles from very readable to very interesting:

http://www.newyorker.com/

http://eastofborneo.org/

http://themorningnews.org/

http://wordswithoutpictures.org

http://mirandajuly.com

http://noonebelongsheremorethanyou.com/0002

Here's a site called I Love Typography.

If you, too, love typography, please watch this documentary about the typeface Helvetica.

 

Comic characters for Art 41

Thinking about how you will display your comic panels for Project 2, consider stretching the medium and making an interesting and dynamic layout with differently shaped panels, deciding how to incorporate text (if you include words), choosing interesting colors, filling the background or leaving it open etc.

McCloud’s TED talk gives an overview of comics in history from pre-print, print and into post-print. He is optimistic that, although hyperlinked information is inherently non-spatial, the Internet provides an infinite canvas for comic storytelling.

 

Here’s an example he uses to illustrate the idea of an infinite canvas: “Pup Contemplates the Heat Death of the Universe,” by Drew Weing.

http://www.blog.spoongraphics.co.uk/tutorials/create-a-cute-furry-vector-monster-in-illustrator

Illustrator!

Art 41 people, we are about to embark on a fabulous vector journey. Departure date: tomorow. I'll be explaining the Illustrator interface as well as demonstrating a few tools such as:

making shapes and using a fill/stroke and gradient
Transform tool
Warp tool
Scale tool
Pathfinder tools for creating shapes

Type tools: Various directions to type and of course many fonts
create outlines with type to make typeface into graphic, then can apply path finder tools, alter points with direct select tool, arrange letters etc.

Place an image made in Photoshop, Illustrator or other
use a Clipping Mask to change the shape of placed image

We'll be practicing in class tomorrow by making Exquisite Corpses. This a fun, creative and collaborative way to get you started with the new program.



An exquisite Exquisite Corpse example.

Here are some Adobe tutorials on Illustrator CS5 to help you get started or maybe unstuck.

CSS Tutorials on Vimeo for you wonderful budding web designers

Local artist, educator and all around great guy, Curtis Stage, has posted several useful video tutorials on CSS and other aspects of Web making on Vimeo. Check them out!

Incredible cigarette ash landscapes by Yang Yongliang

Art 41ers! Take a look at this digital photographic collaging in an installation. This work is based on a different concept that your current photographic collaging project but how inspiring is this level of detail and ambition?

“Cigarette Ash Landscape” is an installation by Yang Yongliang. Black and white photographs were cut out and collaged together to evoke the image of a cigarette dropping ashes into a flowery field.

A Communication Primer by Charles and Ray Eames

Check out this terrific film by Charles and Ray Eames the dynamic design duo. It is a fascinating lesson on how communication occurs best. Though the piece was made in 1953, the ideas are very useful to the contemporary visual communicator. It is a favorite of mine!

Link to my Tumblr to view A Communication Primer.