ALBUM DESIGN
One of my favorite projects with intro design students is album design. I find the square format so appealing. My own twist for this assignment is that I randomly assign music from a Spotify playlist I created called "Music You've Never Heard Of, But Should". Here is a selection of work from those projects.
My favorite album project is shown above. The student took an image of a child and used the much-overused glitch effect but put it to incredibly smart use as if the child was being blown up by an IRA bomb as they play with toy soldiers. The colors are pulled from the IRA colors of green, orange, and white. I want to work with them on the typography on this but it's one of my favorites.
MOVIE POSTER
At the midpoint of the semester in my intro course, I like to show students how to move from flat vector images to bringing their vector files into Photoshop and filling them with their own textures. I find this is also good for those interested in 3D work. This project begins with them taking a stylized movie poster they created earlier in the semester that features one iconic symbolic image from a movie and moving the vector work into Photoshop. Here is one of those student projects.
CHARACTER DESIGN
Another popular intro project is character design. We use it to learn Illustrator techniques but in this case, the student went on to turn their original characters into a campaign for the Chapel Hill Libraries which I really love. Below are a few more examples.
PATTERN & SURFACE DESIGN
In just the first few weeks of the intro to visual communication course students work on pattern making and learni about brushes in Illustrator as they come to understand surface design. I use mock-ups to show them just how much is possible with what they create and to give them a quick and early victory with their work. Later we do the same with analog pattern making and Photoshop. Here are a few examples of the early projects from Illustrator.
