Design

Design In My Classes

JRNL 494 – Pollner Seminar “The Infographic Story”

In this course, the Pollner Professor (Guest Journalism Professional Instructor) was Geoff McGhee. He taught us about infographic journalism.

Applications and Programs

Adobe Illustrator

The first project we worked on was exploring Adobe Illustrator to make an infographic map of The University of Montana. I followed instructions from a PDF that Geoff gave us, but I didn’t have a visual to work off of. This is what I ended up with:

Flourish

I have learned how to use Flourish through this class. Here is my finished product from a lab we did in class on Montana Covid-19 Vaccination Rates

Excel & Google Sheets

I have learned how to use Google Sheets and Excel through this class. Here is my finished product from a lab we did in class using data on current journalists that are imprisoned in other countries. The chart below shows imprisonments since 2000.

And this chart is current journalist imprisonments in 2020.

JRNL 270 – Reporting

In this class, I learned how to design a infographics for news.

MART 111A – Intro to Photoshop

In this class, I learned the basics of Adobe Photoshop.

Art Collage: In this lesson I learned about managing layers, working with artboards and layer comps, and learned tips about how to align and distribute layers

Non-Destructive Editing: In this lesson I learned about non-destructive techniques, including adjustment layers, layer masks, layer styles, and smart objects.

Design Concepts Color Palette: In this lesson I learned about elements of design, principles of design, layout & composition, and color. We took the photographs ourselves.

Emotional Impact: I this lesson I explored different ways to create emotional impact within my designs and images, including blending modes, exposure, texture, and mood.

Typography: In this assignment, I learned typography techniques and incorporated the other techniques that I learned in the course up to this point.

Graphic Elements: In this assignment, I worked with techniques to create graphic elements. I created this using graphic elements and typography ONLY to create a graphically designed book cover based on an existing book title — Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safar Foer.

Photo Retouching: In this assignment, I explored photo retouching techniques to alter images. The first image was the original, and the assignment was to remove the sign from the photograph.

Abstraction: In this assignment, I worked with abstraction techniques and styles to create a finished piece of completely abstract artwork.

Composite: In this assignment, I worked with compositing techniques and styles to create a finished piece of artwork.

Animation: In this lesson, I created a short GIF animation.

Self-Portrait: In this lesson, I created a conceptual self-portrait using any of the techniques learned during the course.