Introduction to Imagemaking

About this course: During this course, we’ll be making exploratory images to expand your visual vocabulary. We'll create pieces that are expressive, meditative, or 'design-y' to instigate, evoke, experiment, record, explain, or to try out a media. The first two weeks are experimental and exploratory; we won’t be concerned with meaning or communication (although, to be honest, every image does exist in a context, and therefore communicates—or can convey—meaning, connotation, associations, and expressiveness). In the second two weeks, we’ll invite the images to deliberately and intentionally carry meaning and communication through relational moves like juxtaposition, composition, and context. Everyone has a natural, intuitive way of putting things together. We’ll look at developing and expanding the range of approaches for putting things together, composing page spreads with your images. Since nothing exists without context, we look at how to intentionally drive the image’s connotations, meanings and associations generated through elements of composition and “visual contrasts.” through style, juxtaposition, closure and figures of speech. Ultimately, we will take the images that you create and make a book from them.

Created by:  California Institute of the Arts

• Taught by:  Gail Swanlund, Faculty in Graphic Design

  School of Art

Basic Info Course 3 of 5 in the Graphic Design Specialization Level Beginner Commitment 4 weeks of study, 2-4 hours/week Language English How To Pass Pass all graded assignments to complete the course. User Ratings 4.4 stars Average User Rating 4.4See what learners said Coursework

Each course is like an interactive textbook, featuring pre-recorded videos, quizzes and projects.

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California Institute of the Arts CalArts has earned an international reputation as the leading college of the visual and performing arts in the United States. Offering rigorous undergraduate and graduate degree programs through six schools—Art, Critical Studies, Dance, Film/Video, Music, and Theater—CalArts has championed creative excellence, critical reflection, and the development of new forms and expressions.

Syllabus


WEEK 1


Week 1: Image-based Research



Welcome! This we will introduce image-based research and investigate these images in a design context using a range of techniques. You will then choose a subject of your own to research that will become the basis for your experiments and designs in the coming weeks.


3 videos, 7 readings expand

1. Video: Course Welcome
2. Reading: About this Course
3. Reading: About the Assignments
4. Reading: Course Tools
5. Reading: Additional Resources
6. Video: Practice
7. Discussion Prompt: Forms of Practice
8. Reading: How to Critique
9. Video: What Images Do
10. Reading: Visual Research
11. Reading: Forms of Presentation

Graded: Select and Research Your Subject

WEEK 2


Week 2: Making Images



This week is a making session! You will take the subject you selected last week and think about it in different ways. From simple to complex, hand to digital, realistic to abstract and everything in between, we'll explore and experiment freely. We'll also consider different modes of representation, and try a hand at creating our own ranges of representation with images.


3 videos, 3 readings expand

1. Video: Making Methods and Techniques
2. Reading: Making Methods
3. Reading: Sparks: Even Making Methods
4. Peer Review: Experimentation and Improvisation
5. Video: Denotation & Connotation
6. Reading: Tangible, Sensory & Expressive Quality of Materials and Line
7. Video: Range of Representation

Graded: Range of Representation

WEEK 3


Week 3: Composition is Relational
In this third week, we will define and investigate core principles of composition, and begin to compose simple spreads for your book.


7 videos expand

1. Video: Composition is Relational
2. Video: About Hierarchy
3. Video: Scale
4. Video: Space
5. Video: Figure/Ground
6. Video: Narrative
7. Video: Simple Composition: Creating Page Spreads

Graded: Composing Simple Spreads

WEEK 4


Week 4: Designing a Book with Your Images
In this final week, we will pull together your work from the previous weeks to make spreads using 10-20 of your favorite images from your assignments and compile them into a self-bound booklet.


3 videos, 9 readings expand

1. Video: Bookishness
2. Video: Complex Composition: Putting your book together
3. Reading: Introduction
4. Reading: Make thumbnail sketches
5. Reading: Make copies in multiple sizes
6. Reading: Creating spreads
7. Reading: Make printer's spreads
8. Reading: Assembling your spreads
9. Reading: Introduction
10. Reading: Setting up your document
11. Reading: Exporting spreads & printing your book
12. Video: Two simple bookbinding techniques

Graded: Composing a Complex Narrative (in a book)