Visual Design Concentration

One of the most exciting aspects of the graphic designer’s work is to create symbols and images, which not only communicate messages, but also engender an aesthetic response for a viewer. In this course you will tackle basic symbol-making and message-communication challenges, practicing your recently gained knowledge of, and skills in, perspective drawing, formal two-dimensional design, tonality, color theory, and digital art-making to solve visual communication challenges through a genuinely personal creative process. Basic art supplies are required.

An understanding of typography is fundamental to your professional graphic design practice. Through an historical overview of the evolution of letterforms, you will understand the visual evolution of the Latin alphabet as a result of social, cultural, and technical influences. You will gain an understanding of the nuances of type design and develop proficiency in speaking the language of type specification, in creating beautiful designs using letterforms and blocks of text, and in setting typography digitally.

Building upon the history and basic use of letterforms, students will now extend their typographic practice by focusing on font usage, paragraph and page structure and grid development. Working with more complex issues of hierarchy, contrast, scale, rhythm, and spatial relationships in typographic projects that focus on sequential designs, such as the pages of a book. Historical context and current technologies will also be discussed.

Professional graphic design practice requires skills and knowledge both in producing digital artwork and in supervising the print production process. This course introduces the requirements of digital artwork, pixel, vector, and page layout, in preparation for the offset printing press, and the protocol a designer must follow to execute the production process accurately and efficiently. This information is of vital importance to the junior designer because in their first job they will be expected to work on production-ready digital artwork, and participate in the job management process.