Generating Visual Ideas

Work to have achieved:

• Read about graphic design principles (positive & negative space, dominance & hierarchy, rhythm & movement)
• Find a graphic or visual design that makes a claim or argument
• Analyze the designed artifact through the lenses of graphic design principles.

Plan for the day:

1. Building our vocabulary (25-30 min)
2. Loop writing into offline sketching (15 + 10 min)
3. GIMP Practice (20 min)
4. Concurrent GIMP Demo: foreground extraction
5. Homework for next time

1. Building our vocabulary (10-15 min)

We have a bunch of new terms! Let’s try to annotate these – just a few key words each - so we know we’re on the same page. Head on over to bit.ly/cdm2021spring-notes, under “Keywords toward a Visual Rhetoric.” I’ll open up the breakout rooms so you can discuss.

• Visual Dominance/Hierarchy
  • Scale
  • Value
  • Color
  • Style
  • Proximity
  • Density
• Visual Rhythm
  • Repetition
  • Pattern
  • Flow
• Positive and negative space

EXT: Using our vocabulary (5-10 min)

If your group feels finished and others are still working, share the images you posted to the forum within your group. See if you can level up on your comfort analyzing visual design, using the terms from the reading (and now google doc).

2a. Loop writing

For this generative exercise, adapted from one by Sondra Perl, you’ll need somewhere to write and somewhere to draw. Printer paper would be great; a notebook is also okay; the computer’s probably not. I like pencil, but your preference may vary.

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.

2b. 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.

3. GIMP Practice (20 min)

Option 1: take your profile image and an alternative background you find online to put yourself in a new location. (Use Google Image search’s fair-use search, found in search results under Images > Tools > Usage Rights, or see our course site’s other resources.)

Option 2: take the image you found for homework and alter it (slice it into layers, modify the layers) to get a better understanding of how its parts add up to a greater whole.

4. Concurrent GIMP Demo: Foreground extraction (15 min)

For those who aren’t sure where to start, you can follow along with me as I do some noodling around as well. I’m going to focus on a fairly common task, extracting a foreground object from its background.

Here’s what I’m using, and you can find it already in your repo (under “in-class exercise”):

Homework for next time:

• Skim the visual media resources on the course site, and read/watch more deeply in anything that seems like it would help you, whether advice or material to work with.
• In particular, I highly recommend the LinkedIn Learning series of videos on “GIMP Essential Training.” I’ve been using GIMP for years, and I confess I learned some things even from the basic tool options videos. The whole series is about 5 hours of material, but as before, I’ve marked some highlights and starting points: please at least view at those, which total around 45 minutes runtime.
  • Note that there are exercise files, should you want to follow along and make sure it works in practice.
  • If you’ve been having trouble with LinkedIn Learning, try this LIL link, which routes through MyPitt; you should have to log in with Pitt Passport once, but then all those direct links should just work! (Fingers crossed.) I also am happy to troubleshoot with you during office hours.
• Review the unit-assignment goals and options for the rhetorical collage / visual argument, including the Parachute Prompts if you’re not sure what to propose.
• 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 in the proposal or place it as a file in your repository, to more easily track changes.
  • Link to your project repository, so it’s easier to find when we get to group work.
• Post your proposal to the appropriate forum on the Issue Queue.