Summer Teen Camp Take 2
July 18, 2008
Hi Everyone,
Yesterday we finished our second week of our annual summer camp for high school students. The camp was a great success and the work was outstanding. The students participated in Interior Design, Graphic Design, Photography and Animation.
I personally worked with the graphic design students. Two of them participated in the first week and were able to build upon their knowledge. Each student did different work and some did multiple pieces. One of the girls did a poster for the new Batman movie and used Adobe Illustrator to make it all vector. She had never used this program, but learned it quickly and her design turned out great. Another girl did a digital illustration of a Cadillac. She drew the car, scanned in the image and painted it using only Adobe Photoshop. She was very unfamiliar with this program, but by the end of the camp she was very proficient using the selection and painting tools, and it showed! The other girl made a calendar with her favorite bands on it. She did 13 different designs using Adobe Photoshop and Adobe InDesign. Each design for the calendar was unique and she made solid layout and type decisions.
The teen camp experience was rewarding for everyone, especially the students. At the end of the last day they got to show their work and talk about it to everyone. I could tell they all had a great sense of accomplishment while they were showing their pieces to their family and friends, and faculty of the college. If these particular students wished to continue their knowledge in Graphic Design, I think they could all be very successful in the future.
Keynote…Presentation Perfection.
July 16, 2008
Hi Everyone,
Today I want to talk about Keynote. This is a program that comes with Macs as part of the iWork series. This is quickly becoming one of my favorite programs.
Keynote is as drag-and-drop as it gets. They have many design presets to choose from, which look great and are totally customizable. It has gorgeous transitions between slides and animations for slide content. It also has SmartBuilds, which are presets that allow you to display multiples of content on the same slide, which means you dont have to make a million slides for a simple photo gallery. The best thing about Keynote is its ease of use. You literally can pick a theme, drag and drop, copy and paste content, add transitions, and have an amazing looking and functioning presentation with absolutely no knowledge about design. Its almost like cheating!
Click this link to see Keynote in action.
The rest of the iWork series of programs are also worth looking into as well. The other two programs are Numbers and Pages. Numbers gives you pre-formatted, customizable spreadsheets for many different applications, plus blank spreadsheets for more savvy users. Pages has a ton of pre-formatted, pre-designed documents, such as, letters, envelopes, resumes, etc. This whole series can really make your life easier and its only $80 to activate them, or you can use the trial versions for 30 days…if you have a Mac.
I hope you got something from this post. I use all of the programs, almost on a daily basis and it truly keeps me organized and makes my life easier. Thanks Mr. Jobs!
Summer Teen Camp
July 11, 2008
Hi everyone,
Today I figured I would talk about an event that is going on at school right now, which is the annual summer camp for teens. The camp is for high school students who are interested in the Arts, and/or design. Our school has 8 degrees which the students can choose from and then learn about over the course of the week. Since I am in graphic design, I have been working with the graphic design students.
Unfortunately I can’t show any of the artwork, but I am impressed. These students are coming up with great, cohesive designs and picking up the computer programs extremely quickly. I think the most impressive thing is to see how eager they are to learn. They are all very intent on learning what works with their designs and implementing those ideas into their designs.
I got a little taste of what it feels like to be a teacher yesterday when I was helping them use the computer programs and I must say, it was very rewarding to show them some Photoshop tricks and then see their expression and excitement about the results.
So far this teen camp has been a great success and I have even learned some things about graphic design from these students. Their ideas are fresh and creative and since they are a little unfamiliar with the programs, they are really pushing the limits of what they can do. If I get permission, I will post some images, so you all can see some of the great work they have done.
Design Links
July 7, 2008
Hi Everyone,
Today I have decided to list a bunch of links that I use all the time. These always help me whether its for inspiration, instruction, or fun.
Colour Lovers – This is a great site for figuring out a color scheme. Once you find the right on, you can download it in many formats, my favorite is as an Adobe Illustrator swatches palette.
istockphoto – Probably my favorite stock photo site.
softpedia – This site is full of free downloads, including many types of code. Great for web design.
csselite – This site gives me inspiration for web design.
gotoandlearn - This site has awesome tutorials for Flash animation.
adobe exchange – Many tools and trick for all the adobe programs.
citation machine – Not sure how to cite references? This site can do it for you!
That’s it for today. There is a whole internet full of awesome and useful sites to designers. If you have any favorites that you love to use, please let me know. I am always looking for good resources for design.
