Mostly-in-class talk; light slide content.

2. TODAY
1) American Cultures in English: Let’s talk print project
2) Break
3) Icebreaker
4) Planning session/Print Project map-out
5) Team formation
6) Brainstorming
7) (time permitting) Design Activity talk
8) Homework

3. To start off…
With us today is Dr. Jim Porter, the director of Miami University’s
American Cultures and English program. He’s going to talk to us a
bit today about the needs that he and his program have for print
documents as we begin our major print-based project.
I am going to introduce you all to Dr. Porter, then I’m going to
yield him the floor for a few minutes to talk to all of you about
what ACE would like from us.
Ask good questions!

5. ICEBREAKER
Let’s all go around and share our name and
our dream job.

6. And now…
This can still change, of course, but now we should have a good
sense of what ACE wants and hence what we will be creating. So
I’m going to open a Word document so we can develop first the
“official” assignment prompt for the print project and the criteria
for evaluation, then we will in a separate document begin
developing a plan of action.

7. Teams
I’d like to see us work in teams of 3 minimum-4
maximum. As you form your team, think about
the skills you have and the skills others have
(this will require some talking about skills,
obviously). Also think about things like when
you can work, when you can meet, etc. Class will
serve as a central hub for this project, but you
will need to talk to each other more than once a
week. So keep that in mind.

8. Brainstorming…
As a group, let’s brainstorm out what we’d like to create and
what all of us want to generate/procure.
Bear in mind that individual groups can modify this and work as
they wish, but this is a chance for all of us to speak as a collective.

9. Teams
Now, as a team, look over what we’ve come
up with and talk about how you want to
approach the oncoming tasks.

10. Make a plan…
I’d like you to, as best you can, form a preliminary “plan of
action.”
Today is February 4th. The final versions of these documents are
due March 4th. That gives us one month to work on these, with a
workshop day in just two weeks to look at preliminary designs
and ideas.
Figure out what you need to gather, what you need to find out,
who you need to talk to, etc.
Think through it all carefully, form a team timeline, and then send
that timeline to me.

11. Design
You’ve done some reading on design, and
we’ll talk much more about design principles
next week. But to get us started, I want to
look at one poorly designed flyer and talk
about how we might make it better.
Prepare thyself!

12. From
http://www.
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13. Design choices
I’m not sure I precisely understand it, but there’s sort of
a sub-genre of party flyers that look a bit like this one.
Knowing that, I don’t want to act as if this is absolutely
hideous, but I think you can safely say, based on our
readings so far, that this is not a well designed flyer.
When addressing a flyer like this, we want to collect
some key information. So let’s break down what we
actually have here.

14. Elements
Text:
Images:
Color:
What is “essential?”:

15. As teams, hop on a machine
And make a better version of this flyer.
You can do it!

16. Homework
The major homework, obviously, is to coordinate with your team and
get the first portion of your design work done for the print project.
You also need to read: Williams non-designers design book Chapters
9-11, Kimball & Hawkins Chapters 5 and 6, Golombisky & Hagen
chapter 8, “What Typeface Goes with That” and “Typography 101”
from How to Design Cool Stuff and Chapter 8 in Lynch and Horton
All the readings are about type. :)
And don’t forget to keep up on your design tasks. I’m going to grade
blog entries this week, so if you’re behind, catch up by around 2
tomorrow when my office hours start.