What kind of job do you want to wake up to every day? What do you want to do daily?
I want to wake up to a job that I thrive in, a job that gives me joy in life and not just a paycheck. I want to use my creative mind every day and not waste in retail where I’ve been for the past decade and more. I want to design for people. I’m not sure what way I want to go in graphic design yet, but I do recon it will be design and layout. So this CA we are going to do designing an magazine will be amazing to do. I also like the design part of web design, so maybe a little UI design as well. I know that logo design isn’t a way I probably want to go, but who knows, maybe I start enjoying that part too?
Which type of clients do you want to work with?
Since I think i want to work with layout I want to work with clients that need magazines, infographic, brochures etc. and maybe clients that like some of the styles that I also like so I can evolve and learn more in that genre.
After pinning down your interests and vision of yourself as a professional, in which areas do you think you need more growth and experience?
I need more growth in strategic design and logo design, but also UI, layout, grid, typography and illustrations.
What are your next steps to fulfil who you want to be as a graphic designer? If you are unsure, think of the different courses you’ve done so far in your studies and the projects you enjoyed most – where did you naturally flourish, and which projects did you unexpectedly shine in?
My next step is to finish this last semester, but also watch as many LinkedIn learning courses and learn more about the topics I want to learn more about. And then I need to start searching for companies in the area that I want to work in and start working on my papers.
My experience with feedback from people around me has been good, but also little confusing. Whit confusing I mean that they love what I’m doing, they like what they see but they can’t directly give me good feedback since they don’t know what to look for when it comes to constructive critics. They usually have a good feedback if I give them different option , like witch one does fit the most.
When it comes to feedback from the forum is always easy to understand and sometimes it’s frustrating, but when it’s frustrating and when I feel I need to do a lot of changes I do my research to find out why would that way work better for the design/task.
TIP
When going through these courses, it’s a good idea to open the course on a secondary screen – like an iPad, for example – and then open InDesign on your desktop computer or laptop. Follow along and test things out as the course progresses.
Be actively involved in InDesign throughout the course. It’s better to be alert and engaged with the programme than to sit back and passively listen to what is said in the course.
Describe the similarities and differences between suprematism and constructivism. There is no prescribed word count; you just need to show that you understand the movements in broad terms.
The similarities between Suprematism and Constructivism
The difference between Suprematism and Constructivism
For each of these movements, find examples from their eras and then two contemporary designs you think are influenced by these styles.
Today we’re taking a break from theory and having some fun with pixel art. Traditionally, pixel art was not seen as art at all; it was merely seen as a way for, particularly video game developers, to use a limited number of pixels to create images.
But it’s really a lot like abstract art: it represents a pictorial element in its simplest, purest form using only squares and flat colours. It forces the creator to focus and isolate only what is most important in an image without providing the finer control you could apply in a more detailed drawing style. Think of it as modern-day Piet Mondrian.
Design an A2 poster for a Stavanger Symphony Orchestra concert. The concert consists of two parts. The first is a commission from local composer Ståle Kleiberg who’s known as a composer for grand occasions. The Turangalîla-Symphonie by Messiaen follows the intermission, which according to the composer, is a love song.
Use the Swiss style grid to organise the information and the typeface Helvetica. Place the main focus on the image and heading.
The heading of the poster should be SEASON OPENING.
The rest of the information that needs to feature is the following:
PROGRAMME
Ståle Kleiberg (born 1958):
Commissioned work for Stavanger anniversary – World Premiere
Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992):
The Turangalîla-Symphonie
CONTRIBUTORS
Andris Poga, conductor
Pierre-Laurent Aimard, piano
Nathalie Forget, ondes martenot
VENUE
Fartein Valen, Stavanger konserthus
You need to create an HTML and CSS document for this lesson task. Use one root folder containing separate CSS and image folders. Find three images you can use; one will be used as a background and one as part of the content, while the third should be a simple png with a transparent background.
Link the styles.css file with the HTML document using the property inside the section of the HTML document.
Create a basic structure for the HTML document with a <body> containing a <header>, <main> and <footer> section. Insert a <h1> element into the <header> section and a <p> element with text inside the <main> section.
Using CSS, apply the following to the HTML page:
Take screenshots of the HTML and CSS code as well as the browser results. Write a short description explaining how the property values changed the behaviour of the background image. This should be loaded onto your blog.
Insert a div with a class into the <main> section of the HTML page. Specify the div’s size using a CSS rule that includes a height and width property. You can also specify a border so you can see the empty container. If you need to refresh your memory on border styles, visit this link.
Once the empty container is showing up in the browser or result view, add a multi-layered background to the container that includes the following:
Take screenshots of the CSS code and the result and write a short description explaining how the property values changed the behaviour of the background image.
Take screenshots of the HTML and CSS code as well as the browser results to load onto your blog.
<header>
<nav>
<ul>
<li><a>home</a></li>
<li><a>about</a></li>
<li><a>contact</a></li>
</ul>
</nav>
</header>
<main>
<section>
<h1>Welcome Home</h1>
<p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna
aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis
aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint
occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.</p>
</section>
</main>
First, examine the layout and draw a wireframe showing the different sections of the page. Then, inspect the HTML code to find the hierarchy of parent and child elements that respond to the sections you identified. Write down the names of the classes of the parent containers that make up the basic structure.
For example: <nav> is the parent container that holds two siblings: the logo image and the <ul> that make up the navigation menu. The <ul> element is the parent container that holds the three list items: Home, About and Contact.
Take a screenshot of your browser display and your HTML and CSS documents. Here is the updated CSS file with media queries to show you how we solved it. Compare this example to your own.
A Nordic non-profit organisation commissions you to create a website to promote mental health awareness. This is a fictitious client.
Create a new document in Adobe Dreamweaver. This time, choose “CSS” as your document type. A window with source code will open. Save the file as “styles.css” in the same root folder as the index.html file and close it.
Go back to the source code of the index.html file and link the styles.css file to the index.html file. You should add all the information inside the <link> tag using attributes. Remember, a link element is one of the elements that does not require an opening and closing tag.
Using your existing index.html document, give a unique ID to one of the sections in your document and give a class to one of the <p>, <ul> or <ol> elements.
Now open the CSS file and create a ruleset that targets each the following elements inside the HTML document:
Using what you’ve learned about general and more specific styling, apply a style to all text inside the <body> of the html document. You can use any property, but some suggestions are different web-safe fonts like in the lesson example, a text-decoration, font style or a colour property.
Using a descendant selector, specify a different style for the links inside the list items of the navigation. Test to see if the link items render differently than the general body text in the browser or result view.
Take screenshots of the HTML, CSS and browser or result view and describe what you’ve learned.
Since we actually have been through this basic HTML and CSS the first year I feel that until now it’s just a refresh on what I learned the first time we were going through this. But again I feel like this modul is a bit deeper in to the basic. So to be honest I haven’t learnt that much more out of this but I feel it was a really nice refreshing.
Open the website CSS Zen Garden in Chrome. This website was developed to display how powerful CSS can change the appearance of a simple HTML document.
Using the Chrome inspect function, find the following elements:
For each element, write down the CSS ruleset applied to it (you will see this in the styles pane). After doing this, load a different CSS style to the webpage and repeat the exercise.
Write about how the appearance of each of the three elements changed from one CSS ruleset to the other and mention what properties and values were applied. You can include screenshots to support your writing.
h1 {
padding-top: 0;
padding-bottom: 5px;
border-bottom: none;
font-family: ‘Julius Sans One’, sans-serif;
font-size: 3.2em;
text-transform: uppercase;
}
p {
display: block;
margin-block-start: 1em;
margin-block-end: 1em;
margin-inline-start: 0px;
margin-inline-end: 0px;
}
a.designer-name {
color: #616857;
font-size: 0.9em;
font-style: normal;
}
h1 {
position: fixed;
left: -.3em;
top: 0;
width: 1em;
font-size: 48px;
line-height: .8;
text-align: center;
text-transform: uppercase;
word-wrap: break-word;
text-shadow: 0 0 48px rgba(0,0,0,0.3);
webkit-transition: all 0.2s ease-out;
moz-transition: all 0.2s ease-out;
ms-transition: all 0.2s ease-out;
o-transition: all 0.2s ease-out;
transition: all 0.2s ease-out;
}
p {
display: block;
margin-block-start: 1em;
margin-block-end: 1em;
margin-inline-start: 0px;
margin-inline-end: 0px;
}
a.designer-name {
font-family: ‘Montserrat’, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;
font-weight: bold;
font-style: normal;
font-size: .875em;
text-decoration: none;
text-transform: uppercase;
}
Use an online font library and select a font pair for your project. You need to choose one font to use as a heading font and a different font to use for all paragraph or body text. We recommend Google fonts, but you can use a different library if you want to.
Using the <link> tag method described in the lesson, link the chosen fonts into your project. Create rules in CSS to apply the fonts from the library to create a different font style for headings, paragraph text and list items. The same text styles should apply to all the pages of your website.
Take screenshots of the HTML, CSS and browser or result view. If you encounter any problems, try to go over the lessons on inheritance and styling text. Write a short paragraph to explain what you have learned about styling text using fonts from an online font library.
As I mention in one of the last tasks I feel that I already knew this from earlier. But it’s still nice to go through it again.
For this lesson task, you need to focus on applying pseudo-classes to the navigation list. Apply a “hover” and “active” state to all the menu items. The styling can be as simple as a background colour, font style or text-decoration.
The hover style must show when you hover over the link with your mouse, and the active state must show on the link when you are on that particular page. For example, the “contact” link in the navigation list must look different to the rest of the links when you are on the contact page.
It’s time to put the links to the test from outside your local folder. Upload the root folder containing all your web page files to your host using an FTP client. Once uploaded, check if the fonts load correctly on all pages, check the images and pseudo-classes and check if your page links work properly.
Take screenshots to show your web page loads correctly in the Google Chrome browser. Upload the screenshots with a short description of the process to your blog. If you had to fix any links, remember to also write about your problem-solving.
The website is working.
Since you will create your own website using HTML and CSS in this course, you will need to acquire your own hosting service. This part of the lesson task is mandatory.
You are free to choose any hosting service, but we recommend one.com. The monthly fee is low, and the beginner plan is sufficient.
Consider your domain name very carefully. This cannot be altered. You will be able to use this domain for future website projects. (You can, of course, sign up for other domain names and delete the one you have, but “getting it right the first time” saves you a great deal of trouble.)
I already have hosting at one.com, for my portfolio and my reflective journal. I’m going to move my reflective journal from www.tinahetland.com to www.myreflectivejournal.hetiart.no as soon as I have some time to do it. The reason for this is because I want to use www.tinahetland.com for my photography portfolio again.
The Norwegian Seafood Council wants to promote the health benefits of Norwegian salmon to the local and international market. You need to create an informative website for this purpose. (This is a fictitious client and project).
Create very basic wireframes for the website, showing at least three pages. These can be low tech wireframes that show planning for the page structure and navigation.
The Norwegian Seafood Council Wireframe
Create the structure for the HTML files and folders of the web page. Think about the root folder and name the folders correctly. Firstly, sketch out what the structure will look like. Then, set these up, so you are ready to code your website.
Open Adobe Dreamweaver. Click on the ‘Create New’ button, and under ‘Document type’, choose HTML. Keep the ‘Framework’ as none since we will not use a Bootstrap framework. You can give the file a name, call it ‘home’ and the ‘Doc Type’ should be HTML5.
This will open a blank document in Dreamweaver. You will see a tab called ‘Untitled-1’ in the top left bar. This is because the file is not yet saved. Hit ‘save’ and save the file as Index.html in the correct folder of the folder structure you created. One HTML document called ‘index.html’ is enough for this LT.
Remember, this structure should be set up so that it can be uploaded to a hosting server without disrupting the file paths. When you are done, take a screenshot of the folder and, together with the sketch of your structure, upload it to your WordPress blog.
The Norwegian Seafood Council Structure
Almost all of the elements you will use have opening and closing tags. Typical “newbie” mistakes include forgetting to close your tags. Check your work!
Take a screenshot of the HTML coded document to post to your blog.
Basic HTML Structure
Description And Meaning
<!DOCTYPE html> : The first line of the document that indicate what document it is.
<html> : The <html> tag is the main “nest container” where all of the elements are put in to.
<head> : The <head> tag contains metadata and information about the page, this will not be visible on the website.
<meta> : The <meta> tag always go inside the <head> element and are typically used to specify the data of the page, like page description, keywords, author and viewport settings.
<title> : The <title> tag is required in a HTML document, it defines the title of the document. This title is shown in the browsers title bar or in the pages tab. This tag needs to be inside the <head> tag.
<body> : The <body> tag defines the document’s body, it contains all the elements of an HTML document as headings, paragraphs, images, nav, tables, lists, footer, etc. And there can only be one <body> element in the document.
<header> : The <header> tag represents the container for introductory content or a set of navigational linkes. This tag needs to be inside the <body> tag.
<nav> : The <nav> tag defines a set of navigation links, the <nav> element is intended only for major blocks of navigation links. This tag needs to be inside the <body> tag.
<main> : The <main> tag specifies the main content of the document. This tag needs to be inside the <body> tag.
<footer> : The <footer> tag is the last element inside the <body> tag, and are placed at the bottom of the page. This can contain many elements but typically contains authorship, copyright, contact information, related documents, back to top links, etc.
Check your page in a web browser to make sure it works properly. Don’t be discouraged if the results are not overly impressive or if the page does not work as you expected. We will be quickly moving along to more complex and visually rich pages.
Post screenshots of the code and browser result to your WordPress blog.
Create the other HTML pages that you have planned for the webpage. (This should include all the pages that are on your <ul>). Take note of where you are saving these files in your file structure.
Using the href=”” attribute and relative file paths, create links to each of the pages from the <ul> in the index.html document.
Populate each of the new HTML files with the same <ul> for navigation and at least a <h1> header to state the title of the page.
In your index.html document, add one image to one of the sections in the page using a relative file path. Note that you need to take special care of where you put the image in the folder structure and how you link the href. Add text for the alt attribute. This should describe the image in some way if it’s not displayed.
You can experiment by adding a width or height attribute to make the image fit inside the browser display.
Add another image. Observe how the images are placed on the HTML page. Add a <br> element between the images to see how the layout changes. Add an <hr> element to insert a line break between the images. Finally, add a <p> element between the images.
Select the root folder containing your HTML and the ‘Images’ folder and upload it to your host using an FTP client. Once uploaded, check if the remote files work in your browser.
Check your page links in the live browser to see if it works properly. Check if the images display. If not, check your links and file locations.
Post screenshots of the code and browser result to your WordPress blog and write about what you have learned.
I’ve uploaded the root folder in to file management at one.com and the page loads and look as it should. The linked also works.
We have been through all this coding earlier but I feel that now when we actually have to write the code ourself I understands it even better then I did earlier. When we made the CA05 and CA07 I used a lot of finished codes, bootstraps and snippets. So by actually write them myself is going to be a hard thing but so much better when it comes to actually learning it.
Using the logo you created in Week 1 and the brochure you designed in Week 2, think about your brand and design packaging for your product. Remember that you can decide about the detail of your product. Is it dog biscuits, meat products in a tin, dry pellets or a new and exciting product?
Do your design according to the following steps:
Use sketching techniques to draw thumbnails and hand in your thumbnails as scanned PDFs.
I have some real troubles with my printer when it comes to scanning sketches. And since I have a laptop that I can sketch on I’ve started to make the sketches straight on the laptop.
I have owned dogs in almost 15 years, I’ve worked in several petstores so I have been around dogfood half of my life. So for me it was an easy choice when it comes to what type of packaging.
The four sketches is the same principle but different design. Two of them have an extra piece of paper that is over the top that you can lift up. The other two has a normal packaging.
Choose one of your thumbnails and refine your design. Place it next to your brochure and logo and see how you can merge your design with the brand identity. Also, what fundamentals of the brand can you draw from and use in your design? Hand in a picture of your thumbnails, mock-ups, logo and brochure together.
I want to use recycled paper for the bags, and something I really miss on dog foods today is that you actually can see the food inside. So on one of the sides I want to have a window that makes it possible to actually see the size and shapes on the pebbles. The reason that I want this is that I have dog that is medium big size, his main food is raw food. But as treats I use a dry food, so I want to use the smallest size I can find on the pebbles.
Now design your packaging properly, using any design application of your choice (or a combination of e.g. Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator). Export the flat design as a PDF.
For the design I wanted it to work well together with the logo and the brochure. I also wanted to use the infographic that I made on the last LT with the brochure. I needed to change the size and needed to break the whole infographic apart to place it where I wanted it to be in the design.
Make a life-size mock-up of your final design and take photographs of it. Remember that you can take more than one photo to show the different angles and sides of the packaging. Here your presentation skills are vital. How do you present the final mock-up in a photo to reflect the true essence of your design?
I’ve made a digital mockup of the design.
Take pictures of your printed-mockup to show off the various aspects and angles of your packaging. You can also make a digital mock-up*.
When I was finished with the design I wanted to do more, to have a series of products, not just the one that was the main task. The only thing that I changed on the design was the background image the color scheme and the name on the product. I only made these to show a bigger spectrum of products so I didn’t change the text. I also changed the brochure, so the infographic page that I had is gone. But I’ve added new pages that contains every product with infographic on each product. The new brochure is here.
I started to search for other brands so I could see what info other used on the infographic and what color scheme they used for it. The text I used is from an Canadian brand called Acana.
I wanted the infographic to contain ingredients, nutrient analysis and a feeding guide. I did make the nutrient analysis illustration pretty long but I since I copied the text from acana I didn’t know what to leave out. But after moving everything around on the a5 sheet I found a good way to show it. And I also wanted to show all of the vitamins, minerals and amino acids.
The ingredient list is clean and simple, I also chose 4 icons that shows a small amount of info that the ingredients is wrapped around.
And I wanted the feeding guide to be similar to the nutrient analysis so it would work good together. On this guide I have a column with weight of the dog, how much the serving size is pr day if the dog is active and one column that show how much if the dog is highly active.
I wanted the background on the infographic to work with the rest of the brochure so I chose photo with a poppy field, and I also found a photo of 4 dogs that would fit perfectly over the infographic.
The color I chose was a beige(ish) and brown color. I want the design on everything to be very natural and clean.
For the brochure I have used the same color scheme as the infographic. I found some pretty photos of some dogs with the right color and mood that I though would work really well in the brochure. I used one photo for each page in the brochure and then I used text/info blocks on each page to join everything together. The brochure is also A5 in size(A5 lying when its folded).
After this week LT where I made the packaging design I changed the brochure, added some pages. “Sport&Agility” is the main design that I made, but I felt like making more types of food, like adult, puppy, senior etc. So I put these inside of the brochure as well.
Develop a name for a dog food product. Design a logo for this product, using full colour. The logo must contain a main visual and typography. (Use the “People Saving Pets” logo as a guide – this does not mean your design should be the same, it is simply an example.) Follow each of the fundamental steps outlined above, in that sequence and take note of what needs to be handed in as you progress through these steps:
Exploration – Use sketching techniques to draw thumbnails and hand in your thumbnails as scanned PDFs.
Focus – Highlight three of the thumbnail ideas that you consider the best options and state why. Hand in an A4 with visuals of the three chosen thumbnails; include reasons for choosing each of these three options.
Construction – Use sketching techniques and redraw ONE of your chosen concepts until you’ve reached a conclusion on a successful logo. Hand in your drawings as scanned PDFs.
Testing – Experiment more with your favourite options from Step 3 and ask the opinion of a few people. Hand in examples of the logos shown to people and write their feedback or opinion on each.
Refinement – Choose your final design and execute it in Adobe Illustrator, along with the name of the product. Hand in your final logo as an A4 PDF.
