VART 240 – Introduction to Digital Graphic Design
Discipline(s): Fine Arts
Credits: 3
Instructor: Brunetti Francesca
Description
Graphic designers create visual concepts, using computer software to communicate ideas that inform, inspire, and captivate consumers. They develop the overall layout and production design for applications such as magazines, advertisements, brochures, and reports. This course offers fundamental skills relevant to the discipline of graphic design. Through studio projects, students learn the vocabulary of visual communication design and become familiar with its digital and analog production processes. By engaging in lectures, reading assignments, discussions and projects, students will become familiar with the fundamental elements of graphic design’s composition such as grids, typography and colour theory. They will explore how these concepts have been successfully conveyed by famous graphic designers such as John Maeda, Max Miedinger, Seymour Chwast and many others, and they will learn how to apply them to visually convey balance, tension, dynamism, coherence, variation and contrast. Students will do this by learning the fundamentals of software applications such as Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. from the sourcing of raw materials, to the product manufacturing stage, to retail, and – finally – to product usage and disposal.
Learning Outcomes
After successfully completing this course, students will have:
• Completed projects that demonstrate a basic understanding of graphic design.
• Developed skills, competencies and processes needed by professionals in the field of
Graphic Design.
• Developed creative capacities related to thinking, inventing and designing.
• Learned to analyze and critically evaluate ideas, concepts, and points of view.
• Ability to successfully create designs using Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign.
Course descriptions may be subject to occasional minor modifications at the discretion of the instructor.