May 27th

Hello and welcome back from Quebec! I hope you all had a great time. If you can believe it we only have 7 classes left! Today at beginning of class I'll post a calendar so that you know everything that will be happening between now and the last day so you can plan accordingly. We will take 4 more classes to finish our current inDesign unit and then on June 6th we will start our culminating activity.

For today:

Last class we created text portraits and they turned out great! If you're not done, quickly finish and EXPORT it as a jpeg or png. If you see a black line around the image where you traced, then go to your pentool and make sure that you don't have a black stroke selected.

Today we will do the following:

If you had your own magazine, what would it be about? What would be on the cover?
Using InDesign, design a magazine cover that looks as “real” as possible. You can duplicate an existing magazine or come up with your own original idea.
Include the magazine name, a picture or illustration and the usual text describing what’s inside the magazine (as well as a date/volume/issue number etc)
What are some things that all magazine covers have in common? Why do certain magazines look the way they do?
This site gives a detailed breakdown of some standard elements of magazine covers.
A google image search for “magazine cover” should provide plenty of inspiration.
Make it “Bleed” – the images on most magazine covers will go right over the edge of the page (in the design world this is referred to as a “bleed”). Make sure your images are large enough to roll off the edge of the page so there won’t be a border on your image.


Here is a great tutorial to get you started in inDesign:
inDesign Magazine Cover Tutorial

May 20th

Today we are going to experiment with the area type tool.

We will create a couple custom shapes and I will show you how to fill an area with type. After this you will do the following on your own:

1. Go to photobooth and take a photo of yourself (with muted volume). Don't worry if it's not "good" you will be so photoshopped you won't be able to recognize yourself! Drag it onto the desktop.

2. Open the file in photoshop. Unlock the background (double click on the layer) and then go to "posterize" under adjustments. Posterize yourself until you look very graphic in black and white. You could have clear areas of black, and clear areas of white and not many greys in between. Under filters you can try a gausion blur to make the posterize not so harsh. If you have too many greys then up the contrast. When you are happy save it as a jpeg on your desktop.

3. Now open the picture in inDesign. Trace all the areas of black with the pentool. Fill the area with placeholder text using the area type tool. Continue to individually fill in all the black areas (or vice versa try white). Your end product should look something like this: To avoid the black outline, make sure you don't have a colour selected under the stroke.

May 15th

Our internet is back-up and running!

Last class was our first class with inDesign and we started an indesign project creating a flyer with Terry White. Today we are going to continue working on this video independently. We will start off as a class, and after that you will work away on this at your own speed with a headset and the video below. You should finish this tutorial by the end of class.

10 things beginners want to know about inDesign

May 9th

Hello!

If you didn't get to finish your video editing last class you can take the first 15-20 minutes to finish that up.

It's such a beautiful day out that it would be a shame to waste it all inside! We are going to go outside as a class with the cameras and take some photos around the area (and NOT disturb any gym classes) . You'll need to share a camera with 1 or 2 other people. After that we will come back in and we will do some editing in photoshop (there should be enough that we all get our own computer with photoshop). I'll show you the basic workflow for enhancing your photos, and a few other helpful photo editing tips that you can use. When you are done you can upload them to the blog.

Happy Friday!

May 8th

Hello!

Today you will have time to edit your video and submit this via youtube and e-mail me the link through gmail. If you happen to finish this, then you can catch up on old blog posts. One post that I don't believe anyone finished was the one about design, please complete this and finish up any of the video101 tutorials (shooting and editing) that you missed. If you finished them, I have not yet marked them so you can still go make and make your answers better.

If you finish all of the above, then take some free time to play in garage band and see what abilites it has. Also look at vimeo. com. What difference do you notice between vimeo and youtube?

May 6th

If you'd like to add a voiceover, check out these instructions (you'll need to use a headset from the library and set up the microphone to be your microsoft lifechat under input/output in settings).


How to add a voiceover

May 6th

Last class you finished all of your planning with your group and today you will need to get to work right away! You will need to film today (you have 20 minutes to film) and edit your video. I would like you to finish your video by the end of class and for speed, you should work on your guest account. If something happens and you're not done by the end of class at you were using guest then I would still export your video but perhaps delete any audio that you are not finished used and just focus on having all of your scene transitions edited. That way it will be easy for you next class to add in your audio separately.