Graphic Design Minor

Students are introduced to the basic concepts of digital image-making through projects that balance the learning of creative development, technique, and design tools as they pertain to the Graphic Design field.

Here is your opportunity to bring your communication ideas to life. You will learn how to plan, design, typeset, produce artwork, proof, and manage production for brochures, posters, and other communication collateral materials. You will learn the basic language of design and the overall production process-all to help you produce these projects yourself or work with design and production professionals to produce complex projects. Some basic art supplies will be required.

Students will explore various aspects of basic web page organization, design, and construction. The web page will be considered as a visual challenge – exploiting a relatively restrictive format to maximize visual impact and effective communication, and organizing the content into an easily navigable hierarchy. Basic HTML authoring and digital kinetics will be introduced, and visual principles and digital artwork skills from earlier coursework will be reinforced through introductory web page projects.

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.

This course offers students the opportunity to work with a diverse group of CCM students and professionals working in the field. Students participate in workshops to investigate a variety of approaches to applied practice. Emphasis is on solving real-world problems in a professional studio atmosphere.