Graphic Design I is an introductory course open to all students at McDaniel College. The course introduces the broad field of graphic design and covers concepts such as an introduction to typography, expressive typography, page layout, gestalt principles, promotion and engagement, and an introduction to professional portfolio development. Students utilize Adobe Photoshop and InDesign to create their projects and are encouraged to incorporate other media where appropriate. Students create a range of projects for print including posters, business cards, postcards, and a final book project.
ABC Glyphs Posters: An introduction to typography and type anatomy.
Type Crime Solvers: in this project, students re-design posters, postcards, and flyers that exhibited "type crimes." They also designed a business card inspired by Milton Glaser's work.
Expressive Typography: students created a physical artwork based on two Langston Hughes poems and digitally manipulated the artwork to produce proposals for a public art project on McDaniel's campus.
Promotion & Engagement Posters: students created a poster for an upcoming local exhibition titled Icons of Animation. They had access to high-resolution files of the artwork included in the exhibition and had to use a modular grid to organize their composition.
Holiday Greetings: students were inspired by famous album cover artwork and created postcards that expressed holiday greetings.
Final Portfolio Book: students compile all of their previous projects into a final portfolio book. The book is 24-pages long and student utilize mockups and a template from Blurb books to create their document.
