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Generating Visual Ideas

Work to have achieved:

Plan for the day:

  1. Gather thoughts on fonts and/or sources (3 min)
  2. Share questions and insights (12-15 min)
  3. Loop writing (20 min)
  4. Offline sketching (10 min)
  5. Studio time (15-20 min)

1. Gather thoughts (3 min)

In your notebook or on-screen, make two lists:

  1. Questions I have about fonts or GIMP
  2. Things I’ve learned about fonts and GIMP

Fill in as many items as you can in a couple of minutes.

2. Share questions and insights (12-15 min)

Look over your questions, and decide what’s most urgent or most important. When you have one to share, share it around your table!

Work together, using what you’ve each learned to answer as many of each other’s questions as you can. We likely won’t have time to get through everything; what questions remain, please post to the Issue Queue!

3. Loop writing

This exercise is adapted from one by Sondra Perl. Take a few minutes to think in writing about the visual arguments you might want to make. I’ll read a series of questions aloud. Repeat them silently to yourself, and when you feel yourself answering, make a list.

These lists will remain private, unless you choose to share. I won’t ask for them.

  1. What ideas do you want help remembering?
  2. Or what do you want to persuade others of?
  3. Is there something you’ve noticed that you want to bring to the attention of others?
  4. Is there anything else you’d like to add? Something from a course? From an activity or group you participate in? Something you’ve been reading about? (If there’s an idea you thought of working on before class, be sure to add it now.)

Take a moment now to read back over your lists. Is there something that stands out, that says, me, pick me? Choose one thing to work with, at least for today, and mark it in some way. Then copy it into a clean page.

With that chosen subject, write again:

  1. What terms or images come to mind when you think of this subject? … Think about categories of words: actions vs things. Descriptors.
  2. Is there anything you’re forgetting to add to your list? A line from a song? A color?
  3. Who else might be interested in this? Who, that is, could be your audience?

See if you can summon up the whole of this idea, like it’s right here in the room with you. Where does it live? Is it above you? Inside you? In the palm of your hand? Just sit with your idea for a moment, feeling where you connect to it.

4. Offline sketching

And now, draw. Take a piece of paper, fold it in quarters, and in each quarter sketch out some possibility, some version, of what your idea might look like.

If you can, try to make each image significantly different from each other, to give you options; you can use your lists for inspiration. If you can’t think of very different ones, then work to make just some change.

We’ll work here for a while.

EXT: Start homework / studio time

Use the remaining time to work toward a project proposal for your visual argument / rhetorical collage.

Once you feel good about that, work toward the project itself. (A preview will be due by next Thursday, when we’ll talk about baseline criteria and aspirational goals. Tuesday’s class will be dedicated to studio time.)

Homework for next time

  • Review the unit-assignment goals and options for the rhetorical collage / visual argument.
  • Write a project proposal, thinking in words about what you’d like to make:
    • What idea or argument will you try to represent? What claim will you try to make – or, at least, what is the triggering idea (starting point) of that claim?
    • Include or link to a prospective assets list, i.e. a table of the images you think you’ll need and where you might be able to source them. You can choose to include that assets list here or place it as a file in your repository, to more easily track changes.
    • Link to your project repository, whether on GitHub or as a shared Box folder, so it’s easier to find when we get to group work.

  • Post your proposal to the appropriate forum on the Issue Queue.

  • Finally, next class will be a studio; bring headphones if you’d like sonic isolation while you work among your peers.