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Visual Unit Studio 1

Work to have achieved:

Plan for the day:

  1. Gathering questions (12-15 min)
  2. Looking ahead
  3. Guiding thoughts for studio
  4. Studio time! (pomodoros optional)
  5. Exit note (5 min)

1. Gathering questions (12-15 min total)

1a. Private writing (3-5 min)

Start by making two lists: what I’ve learned about using GIMP, and what I want to know about it. (Substitute Photoshop if that’s what you’re using.) This step can be private writing, but you’ll use it as a basis for public writing in a moment.

1b. Sharing (3-5 min)

Next, head over to our shared notes doc, and share a question or two that you’d really like answered soon: in particular, I’m curious to know if there’s anything that’s holding you back in visual editing. Are you stuck somewhere with GIMP, even after viewing the tutorials for homework? Do you want help clarifying something about visual hierarchy?

1c. Crowdsourcing (5 min)

Finally, skim through the questions in the doc, and weigh in:

  • If you see a question you’d also like answered, add a +1.
  • If you see a question you’ve seen a good tutorial on, share the link.
  • If you see a question you’re able to demonstrate the answer to, let us know!

2. Looking ahead

In a moment, I’m going to open up breakout rooms for folks who’d like to dive into their own projects; I’ll stay here, where I’ll do my best to answer questions in the order of greatest interest. In some cases, I, too, would like to find a good tutorial: learning can be lifelong with complex tasks and complex software!

For those diving in, I will ask that you begin by writing some goals and intentions in the google doc, and that you end by replying to those notes with how it actually went.

To help you think about possible goals, I want to preview the homework.

3. Guiding thoughts for Studio (5-15 min)

As in the past, I’m going to put these words of advice here for you to peruse at your own speed. If you don’t get to them today, come back over the weekend.

Tips on navigating GIMP
  • GIMP's toolbox is kinda crowded, but the tools are also helpfully indexed by category in the menu bar, under Tools. If you prefer to see all the tools in the sidebar, rather than have them nested, you can change that setting in Preferences, under Interface > Toolbox: toggle the Use Tool Groups checkbox.
  • Every tool also has a keyboard shortcut, and it will save you time to memorize those for your go-to instruments.
  • Something not behaving as it should? First check that you're in the right layer. If you are, check that the layer is big enough; you might need to use Layer > Layer to Image Size. (Or give yourself more room overall with Image > Canvas Size.) If even that's not working, check the tool settings area (usually below the tools, but they're movable).
  • Remember that there are often extra tips for the tool you're using under the editing window, in a tiny font; try holding shift, alt, control, command, etc while you click or drag to see what it says/does. Most of the time, these are temporary adjustments to the tool settings that you can also change more long-term in the tool settings area.
Remember our strategies for drawing attention , which you can use to signal your hierarchy through scale, value, color, proximity, and style: see the notes from last week on "Keywords toward a Visual Rhetoric."

According to Thompson (our reading from last week), you can reliably convey only about three levels of dominance; after that, it starts to get mushy. At some point as you work on your proposed visual argument / rhetorical collage, therefore, you might want to reflect in writing:

  • What options do you have for your top three objects of attention? What's next in line?
  • How would the layout need to change if you changed your ranking? That is, if you put one of your current tier-twos into the top slot, what rearrangements would that entail?

Don't forget permissions

As I hope you saw on the site resources page, there are lots of tools to help you find images you're explicitly allowed to use, whether with Creative Commons or other permissive licenses.

You can also use copyrighted images if you can make a case for it being a Fair Use. That is, in either a credits file or your reflection (or both), you can argue that the balance of the four factors is in your favor:

  • purpose and character of the use
  • nature of the copyrighted work
  • amount or substantiality of the portion used>
  • market impact

4. Studio Time!

Some preview of the project will be due before next class, just to make sure you’re all getting started on it.

Therefore, the rest of today’s class is all about working on your individual projects! Find source images or text, level up on layering, watch relevant tutorials on effects or on layout, and see what happens when you apply them to your own digital canvas.

As usual, please set a daily goal in the shared notes doc, both for accountability and so I can look for ways to help.

Pomodoros are optional today, but encouraged; you can keep your own time, or coordinate to chat with partners. In the latter case, each time the break bell rings, ask each other:

  • What do you feel good about?
  • What challenges came up?
  • What questions do you have?
You can find me in the main room, or call me in to your breakout room if you have a question in common: just use the "Ask for Help" button ask for help button, which shows a question mark in a circle in your meeting menu.

To get credit for asynchronous participation, add your working goals to the google doc when you start your session, set your timer, and when the bell rings, add a brief reply to your initial note with a status update. (This can be very brief.) Run through this cycle at least twice.

NB: To make it easier for me to find your additions to the doc, please use either Comments or Suggestion Mode.

5. Quick report back (with 5 min left)

Just as a way for me to check in, I’d like to hear more about what happened today: did you find images? Level up on a particular GIMP skill? Which ones? Decide something about your project (what was it)? Raise a question in a new way that you’d like some help with?

Take five minutes to reply to your own notes in the doc. If everyone finishes early, we can hear from a few volunteers out loud.

Homework for next time

  • Read about fonts, if you haven’t yet, at https://trydesignlab.com/blog/how-to-choose-the-right-font-for-your-design/.
    • Optionally, play a font-matching game at www.typeconnection.com to get a sense of (a) what sorts of fonts are out there and (b) how designers go about pairing fonts for what Thompson called hierarchy by “style.”
  • Compose a Visual Argument Preview: an early snapshot of your progress, to get the gears turning, to get practice with GIMP, and to start testing out the ideas from your proposal (or beyond).
  • To submit, please Push to your repository the following:
    • A layered GIMP project file (.xcf), showing the arrangement of your images and text so far (need not be a complete argument or collage yet).
    • A static screenshot (.png or .jpg) of your GIMP file in progress (for comparison later to subsequent drafts). If you can capture a moment of success or stuckness, all the better.
    • A plain text (.txt) or markdown (.md) file, explaining in around 300 or more words what you're showing us in this preview. Feel free also to ask questions or lay out next steps for yourself!
    • An updated assets.md file, now with the files you're actually obtained. As you go, add source documentation for any outside sources – and your permission to use them (e.g. licenses, fair use; see Writer/Designer p. 160-165).
    • An exported .png file. As with Audacity, GIMP's default save mode is a complex / modular "project file," of type .xcf; should the project fail to load, it would be great to have a simple image file as a backup. We won't be able to see how you achieved your layout, but we will be able to see the image.

Where possible, bear in mind the guiding thoughts from above