With just a little pride I like to brag that I am a volunteer teaching instructor at the New School TESOL (Teaching English to Students of Other Languages) program:

Soon after we hot the COVID19 pandemic and all classes were moved online.
 

and the corona group, assisting with Christopher Nazzaro

February 2020:

Today, I was teaching my first English class. No, you read this correctly: teaching English. I started a masters program at Parsons and teaching a class is part of my Methods class. At first, I was supposed to be observing a few classes, but the main teacher needed a substitute this week and so, two days before the class- I had to talk about English grammar to an intermediate class. I hope I didn’t waste their time.

It’s a really cool free Outreach Program at The New School.

session 1

topics: introductions, moodboards, where to find inspiration

session 2

topics: posters & history, fileformats, RGB vs CMYK, bitmaps vs vector, computer shortcuts

session 3

topics: How posters work, Portfolio event Parsons

session 4

topics: library info session. how to critique

session 5

topics: Typography intro, homage vs plagiarism

session 6

topics: monograms, history of typography, the purple cow, writing workshop

session 7

topics: Learning Center session, collages

session 8

guest: Nikita Prokhorov

session 9

topics: guest: Kimberley Sampson, Designed to Create

session 10

topics: prepare all work for presentation

presentation

Student Work

the assignments:
Project 1: Me Poster (Self Portrait without a Face)
Starting with mood boards to introduce your personality, define a project that will serve as a self-portrait, revealing or concealing identity, without using a literal face. It can contain shapes of a face, just not a selfie.

Project 2: Monogram, Large Type Poster
Using a grid of checker-board squares (either 3 or 4 rows up and/or down) play with letters shapes & counter shapes. Sign the work with a monogram of your initials. This poster can be b/w or colorized in one or two colors, but the main focus should be the interplay of negative shapes.

Project 3: Valley of the Cute (and/or Evil) character design
Create a cute character, using illustrator vectors. It can later be turned into a silk-screened t‑shirt or fabric. If you have time, also design its arch-enemy antagonist and create a world and story around it.

Project 4: Artist Statement and “about” text in any application or cover letter
We always need a paragraph, or 2 or 3 to describe our work. This will be useful for your Linkedin, Tumbler about, resume, cover letter, etc. We will discuss several warm-ups and techniques.

Project 5: Animated GIF to post on social media platforms
to post on social media platforms. Choose a topic that reflects current world events, social issues, and personal experiences and interests as a springboard for your design inspiration. For example, you might choose issues of diversity and inclusion and how we can educate ourselves to contribute as informed participants of society.

we also worked on a collage and took pictures of typography around the neighborhood.

Alexandra Jefferson

My name is Alexandra Jefferson, I live in New Jersey, where I was born and raised, and as I am writing this I am 16 years old. For this graphic design course, I created a “Me” poster titled The World In Colors. It is named this way because it represents the “colorful” and bubbly personality my friends and family say I have. In my poster, I present this idea as the world around me is held in ominous black and white tones, and, in contrast, the world I see through my sunglasses is bright and colorful. I do this so my poster can show a good contrast of the idea that others see the world differently than me. I also do this so that others can see the point I am trying to get across very clearly.

I hope to one day show my designs to a big audience and be recognized as an artist at renowned organizations. I also hope to go to school in New York for either fashion or graphic design and jump-start my career in design. 

Sabrina Leber

Anton Maunier

Aivery Jade Pena

Music: vocal or instrumental sounds (or both) combined in such a way as to produce beauty of form, harmony, and expression of emotion. Music consistently plays in my ears, my mind; it surrounds me. The slightest sound can turn into a melodic masterpiece. By artists and musicians embedding emotion through their songs or pieces, it leaves the listeners to interpret how they feel when listening to it. Music alters or amplifies people’s moods. And how they exert that feeling while listening to music is remarkable. 

I am Aivery Jade Pena, a 16-year old based in Jersey City. This piece describes the fluid motions of what goes on in my head while listening to music, how it creates a domino effect leading me to make art that I enjoy. My mind wanders a lot which can be very distracting. Everything spurring out of my headphones is what manifests into my imagination. The background results from indescribable feelings compared to how the outside world makes me feel. Music and my headphones let it run wild, inspired by tempo, beats, harmonies, etc., enhancing how I feel. 

Zara Raza

Hi, My name is Zara Raza. I live in Queens, New York and I am 16 years old. I am an artist who enjoys all mediums of art, but is mainly experienced in traditional mediums such as sketching and painting. This Graphic Design course taught me new ways to draw and utilize technology to make meaningful art. The poster I created showcases elements of my culture and demonstrates my spontaneous personality. The repetition of the henna patterns with different colors and in different directions depicts a visual map of my creative mind. I’m someone who always develops new ideas and finds ways to express them. After this course, I want to learn more about digital art and gain valuable skills in that area to bring my traditional pieces to life. 

Gerard Renodo

The art I create all has 1 thing in common. They are all inspired by the rabbit holes I go down. Now the rabbit holes I go down aren’t exactly planned, and nothing, in particular, will get my mind going, but every once in a while I might see an image, a sign, a concept, or even another piece of art and my mind will start. I leap from a connected idea to another in rapid succession. But the beauty of the rabbit hole is that it takes you as far as you want, you could end it early after 2 connected thoughts, or spend an entire day navigating the ideas around the inspiration. And wherever my mind ends, is where the pencil starts.

Lulu Romer

Hello, my name is Lulu Romer. I was born in New Jersey but grew up in Beacon, NY. I am an artist interested in many different art media- photography, painting, music, pottery, etc. For my Graphic design class, I created a poster called Crazy Sun. It represents my personality and the things that I love, including movies with friends, represented by the Studio Ghibli stars, or the sun, representing my crazy mind. I hope one day to create art that means something to everyone and help other people create art that means something to them personally. I hope to be an art therapist or something along with that one day.

Tara Sugavanam

My name is Tara Sugavanam. I’m 17, and I live in San Diego, California. I enjoy creating and learning about different forms of media: film, photography, and graphic design, for example. My “Me Poster” is set in space because I feel like that represents my personality; my friends and I always talk about how outer space fascinates us. Sometimes it feels like my mind is in space, thinking about something else. My first name means “star” in my parent’s language, also represented in my monogram. I hope that I can have a career where I can express myself creatively in the future.

Notebook

The most important personal accessory for any graphic designer.
Keeps all info in one place; makes you look interested and interesting.
Get into the habit of note-taking, very often we forget names, places, authors, mentioned facts… soon after the meeting
Always useful to explain a concept with an illustration.

What is Graphic Design anyway?

Graphic design is, as Robert Jensen puts it, a “mongrel profession,” combining the separate disciplines of photography, printing and typography, art, and advertising. The field of “graphic design” has only been around for 100 years or so, yet the pervasiveness in our society affects more people than traditional fine arts. Many of the artists remain anonymous, and there isn’t a much-written history besides the books the artists themselves published. A lot of graphic design is still a service industry. It is goal-oriented. If it doesn’t make money, it’s art.

1. You Are Lucky

to be here in NYC for the first time. Your eyes are open to things, like a zoom lens.
I did short movie clips when I lived in Tokyo, using an iPhone attachment, edited and stabilized with afterEffects. One of the assignments will be a poster or booklet about a place in NY that you got to know closer. We will talk about that later, but keep an eye open for a place that interests you and start thinking about the best ways to do the research.
If this is your first time in NY, you’re lucky because it’s like watching a classic movie for the first time. The world is kind of obsessed with this place, its culture, and its people. When I get asked about my favorite places here I show them this.

2. I will Burst Your Bubble

Critiques can be crucial. In art school, all of a sudden, your exceptional talent will be just average. To critique doesn’t mean to find something wrong. It is an assessment of whether the goal was reached, and how. There are many ways to reach the goal, we want to find the most successful ones.
Some of my former students told me that after my class they are scared to go into the real world. NYC is a competitive place. But it is not about how often you fall down, it’s how fast you can get up.

Motivation

What can be the motivation?
Money, bragging rights, the satisfaction of doing things, personal growth, fun, satisfaction with a job well done, ego, status, validation, professional recognition, fear of rejection, ridicule, or failure.
Over time fear will be overcome by confidence,

How can we Critique Graphic Design?

Goals, purpose, stakes, (Allison Yasukawa cards)

3. File Names

File naming conventions are important: I worked in many companies, that all organize their server a little differently. Within each company, it would get confusing if there wasn’t a specific file naming system for co-workers, and yourself, when you need to find a file 10–20 years from now in your back-ups. Then you know what to search for.
I usually name my files “Client_ProjectName_2019-06–19_R1v1.ext”.
It’s good because:
1. Easy to find project name and client
2. A date will let you find the latest version, and if a client looks at the file I send to approve, we can double-check that we are looking at the same version. the Asian way (Y/M/D) will order the files in the folder alphabetically, the US (M/D/Y) or European (D/M/Y) will not.
3. R1 means the first Round before the client sees it, v1 is internal versions before showing the client.

Problematic file names:
It’s not good to call a file “// The Final&%20Thing060519”, why?
Not good because:
1. Using slashes can confuse servers to mistake them as folders. 
2. There is rarely anything “final,” and the word “final” will be hard to search.
3. When we add spaces in a file name, the computer adds an invisible code, a “%20”. This shows up when the file copied to a server. Not terrible, but it could be confusing.
4. ‘&%$#@&*{}[]<>/\|… These extra glyphs are all symbols that are used in computer code and might create mistakes.
5. always add an extension to a file, like a .psd (photoshop document), or .ai (Adobe Illustrator), or .jpg (Joint Photographic Experts Group). That way, the computer knows how to open the file.
Camelcase:
One last thing; thisIsCalledCamelCase. It’s how programmers name their files. The first letter is lower case, and then each new word starts with a capital letter. Spaces confuse programs, discs, and servers.

CMYK vs RGB

CMYK (Cyan Magenta Yellow Black (K‑stands for the Keyplate)) is the printing colors that are printed in a traditional 4‑color offset printing process.
RGB (Red, Green, Blue) are the monitor’s colors. Their brightness is measured from 0–255, it’s a binary system if you like nerdy computer stuff.
So, CMYK is for printing, RGB for monitors. When you set up files keep that in mind or you might be surprised how the colors change because RGB can be much brighter and electric-looking.

Pixel vs Vector

We’ll discuss that when we start the tutorial on Adobe Illustrator, InDesign, and Photoshop.
Short version: Vector programs like Illustrator, 3‑d programs, or shape layers in photoshop work with points that have Bézier handles. If you stretch the bezier handles longer the curves running to that point will get smoother. Pixels record each individual pixel. For example, a printed photo on a postcard usually has 300dpi (dots per inch). If the resolution get’s below 100 our eyes can start to see the printed dots. TV screens all used to be 72dpi (pretty low) but retina screens doubled that and I am sure pretty soon it will be even higher.
The advantage of vector points is that the file size is small and it can be scaled up to any size. For photos or paintings, only pixels are possible, but once you scale it down you cannot enlarge it anymore. And there is a maximum of file size that the printer can manage in case you are printing a billboard. However, the vectorized graphic or type will always look sharp.

Postmodernism

We will talk a lot about how trends and conventions evolved. For graphic design historic events like the printing press, the industrial revolution, and the 2 world wars questioned the value system and the status quo and therefore people started looking for new alternatives. Bauhaus and the “International Style” intentionally designed democratic and unadorned grids. there is a sense of order and equality. After that Postmodernism opposed and distrusted at its heart the grand theories and ideologies. Right now you might say the sustainability of products with low carbon footprints and the green deal will influence the graphic designers’ work, as well as social media trends and emerging technology.

Strategies if the Job is too Large?

What can be done to make the job a little less difficult?
Make a plan, breaking it into smaller steps
5‑step-plan

There is much more we can talk about, like…

Where can You do Research?

Writing a Blog

Public Library

Used Books on eBay or amazon