Cate
Goodman
JOUR 390
Visual Communication for the Mass Media
Theory and application of visual communication in today's media. Visual communication's power to inform, educate and persuade. Production of visual media across digital, broadcast and print platforms. Course may be offered in classroom-based or online format.
Project 1 - Photoshop Editorial Illustration
DIRECTIONS
Take a headline from a recent newspaper article, opinion piece or magazine article and illustrate it visually using multiple Photoshop techniques. Adhere to the basic graphic design principles of contrast, balance, unity, and hierarchy (see Graphic Design (Links to an external site.) slides).
PROCESS
I choose an article about how you can now pay the parking meters in San Luis Obispo with a number of apps on your phone because right when I read it I could think of the image that I wanted to create. I wanted to pick something local to San Luis Obispo as well so I can stay updated on what is happening in San Luis Obispo. I started by finding all of my images and naming them well so I can move easily back and forth between the layers. I masked almost all of my photos I put on my image. I like masking because then you can draw with black or white and add or subtract items to the picture. I masked the photo of the phone then distorted a blue rectangle on top of it to match where the screen should go. I masked, resized, and rotated all of the apps and erased/drew to make sure they were all the same size and shape. I adjusted the brightness and contrast on the money and also turned up the saturation on it. I really liked this project because you got to take an already made article with either a graphic or photo already associated with it and create a fun graphic that people know aren’t real.
Project 3 - InDesign Newspaper Clone
DIRECTIONS
Find a newspaper front page and clone it using Adobe InDesign. You will be graded on how well your version matches the original layout; the content (text, photos and graphics) can be anything of your choosing.
PROCESS
I really liked this assignment. I’ve used InDesign for a lot of class projects to create magazine and newspaper spreads. Using the bounding box tool I laid out before where the text and graphics should go. I would switch between the mode with the guides and without so I could see where the bounding boxes end and then change it to see how it would look when it was printed. Also, turning on and off the layer with the original newspaper so I can see where it matches and doesn’t and how it looks on its own. I tried different fonts to find the fonts that match the ones on the newspaper and messing with the kerning and tracking to make it match. I used the Adobe Fonts image search to try and find fonts that match or look the closest to the fonts on the page. I used justification as well to make sure the alignment is perfect on each side. I realized how newspaper designs can be simple yet look really complex and flow well. This project has really helped me get an idea of newspaper designs. I have never thought about it before and this project has given me a chance to practice.
Project 4 - InDesign Magazine Spread
DIRECTIONS
Integrating everything you've learned about graphic design so far, create a multi-page feature spread that would appear inside a magazine. You must have between 1,000-1,200 words in the article and the entire feature must be at least five pages (more than that is fine).
PROCESS
I had a really tough time finding an article that fit the word count. I really wanted to make a magazine layout that fit the pictures too. I first was looking at sports but then moved to travel and I found the article about different treks across India. I choose this one because I have gone to India a lot and I knew that I had a bunch of photos if I needed to use some. I really liked this assignment and being able to use a creative side and make it look how I want it to. I liked the newspaper clone assignment but I think I liked this one more because I have the freedom to change and move something if it didn’t fit with what I wanted. One thing that was nice about the article was that I could choose from so many photos. The typefaces I picked I think work really well together and are easy to read. I changed up the number of columns on some of the pages so that every page didn’t look the same to help the readability of the article. I also made sure that every page had a different layout of photos to text. For the infographic, I made a bar graph of all the different lengths that the treks are and I made it so that each point was the top of a mountain top to match the theme of the article. Overall, this assignment was so much fun and I had a blast being able to design my own article.
Assignment 1 - Photo Collage
DIRECTIONS
This assignment is intended for you to become a bit more familiar with Adobe Photoshop, including the basic workspace, some of the tools and jargon and how to make simple corrections to photographs. You will be
finding two rights-free photos on the web and creating a diptych, or side-by-side photo composite. When
finished, you'll be submitting the assignment here and to the associated gallery (Note: most assignments in
J390 require two submissions -- one to the original assignment on Canvas and one to the public gallery (in
this case, the Composite Photo Gallery).
PROCESS
I chose a photo of someone wake surfing and another photo of the dash of a boat. I think they go
really well together and have the same theme because you can’t go wake surfing without a boat
involved. I tuned down the saturation on the wake surfing photo because I liked the look of it more
mellow and less jumping colors with the calming background. Then I color matched the boat photo
to the wake surfing photo. The boat photo had a lot more bright colors and hard so color matching
it really softened the photo and made it match more to the colors of the photo next to it.
Assignment 2 Photoshop Masking and Blending
DIRECTIONS
In this tutorial, you’ll learn the basics of layer masking, copying and blending.
PROCESS
In this assignment I get to refresh my skills on how to mask and blend images. In the first picture, I used the mask tool to crop around the players and put them in front of a lacrosse field. I was able to draw with white or black to add or take away what I wanted in the photo. I messed with the overlay to try and make it look cohesive.With the second photo, I fused two photos together. I choose a lion and a wave because I think they both have a sense of calmness and danger within them. Changing the blend mode to screen and changing the opacity got the photos fused to where I like them. I then used the mask tool again to erase or add where I wanted to the wave photo on the lion and have certain parts of the lion to stand out. The last photo I combined the body of Florence Pugh and the face of Timothée Chalamet. To put the face where I wanted I used the perspective and skew tool. I also used the clone stamp tool to cover any parts of Florence's face that you could still see.
Assignment 15
DIRECTIONS
Using only photos, create an illustration in Photoshop that depicts 'virtual learning.'
PROCESS
When starting this project I looked back on how me and my friends would do our online classes. Only the teacher would have their camera on, maybe one or two students. When seeing most people with their cameras off it made others students do it as well. I also know, most students are always doing something while they are in class. I decided to add both of those, watching tv or doing something else on another screen. To make this photo I layered a bunch of different photos on top of each other. I started with a tv, then a table, lastly I added the two computers and the show on the tv.