Project 3: Choose your own adventure

Due dates

  • Project brief (assignment guidelines) due during your midterm conference
  • Project draft due on 3/20
  • Final due on 3/27

Overview

For this assignment, design and execute your own graphic design project. Think about what piece you would like to add to your portfolio, what technical skills you would like to develop, or what your “dream” assignment would be. Then, write your own assignment guidelines and create that project.

The project must be considered a work of “graphic design.” By that I mean: posters, flyers, brochures, book covers, brand design, advertising, illustrations, infographic (or data visualization), digital publication or magazine layout, website, or mobile app prototype. In general, the key difference between a project in graphic design vs. a project in art is that graphic design seeks to communicate with an audience for a specific purpose. Thus, you cannot choose to do a project that is a collection of digital photos, for example. However, you could use your own digital photography in a design for a book cover. You could also create some event posters, postcards, and/or invitations for an imaginary exhibit of your photography.

If you choose to create a mobile app or website design, you don’t need to actually execute these. You can create a prototype for the site or app using Illustrator or InDesign. Imagine your work serving as a visual mockup to present to a hypothetical client, who would choose a design idea to develop.

If you are having trouble coming up with a project idea, there are some ideas below:

Using previous work

Do not recycle whole projects that you may have created in digital storytelling or another class. This would be like submitting the same paper for a grade in two different classes, and it prevents you from growing and learning. It also limits your portfolio by denying you the opportunity to create something new. If you would like to recycle photographs, drawings or other elements created in a past class or internship with the intention to refashion them into something new, please indicate that in your project brief and bring it up during your midterm conference.

Project brief

In addition to the actual project deliverables, you must submit a project brief (or assignment guidelines) in order to articulate–for me and for you–the project purpose and outcomes. Your project brief should be a typed document written in response to the following seven prompts/questions. (You could copy and paste the list below, and then type your responses underneath each section.)

  1. Project name
  2. Project summary: provide a short overview of the project (50 to 100 words)
  3. Purpose and audience (200 to 250 words)
    • Who is your target audience? Avoid writing that your audience is just a general audience. Although your audience may be a general audience, try to get a little more specific so you can envision the people you are trying to reach with this design. Audience can be conceived along the lines of demographics (age, gender, culture, ethnicity, race, religion, educational level), attitudes (the audience’s attitudes, beliefs, and values), or context (in what place and time will the audience receive your design? Where will they be located, will they be moving or still, in what formats or places might the design appear, how will it circulate in the world?)
    • What is your purpose? What do you want to communicate with your work? What is your objective in this project, aside from getting a good grade or getting it completed by the deadline?
  4. What research will you need to do to execute this project? Consider research of your topic, but also technical research, such as tutorial videos or finding examples to model.
  5. What deliverables will be part of this project?
  6. How should I focus my feedback on the final version of this project? Since I don’t give grades on individual projects, I don’t need an assessment rubric. However, I would like you to give me approximately 3 to 10 areas in which I should focus my feedback. You may write your own feedback rubric or choose one of my examples: Example 1 and Example 2 uploaded here.
  7. Lastly, why do you wish to pursue this project? What benefit do you hope it will provide for your professional life, social life, or personal life? What do you hope to achieve? (100 to 150 words)

Requirements

Although this is your assignment to design and execute, the project still needs to fulfill some of the course goals. To that end, I am asking you to meet the following requirements, no matter what kind of project you choose to do:

  • Use Adobe CC app(s) for all or a major part of the project.
  • This must be a project in the area of graphic design. I wrote about what qualifies as “graphic design” above, or you can read this explanation: “What is graphic design?” 
  • All graphics produced or included in the project should be high quality (300dpi resolution), professional, and appropriate for printing or display on a large screen.
  • All images or graphics that are taken from or lightly adapted from another artist should be credited clearly in a works cited page or other method.
  • You must include a project statement of 150-200 words, written with a portfolio audience in mind — see an example project statement here. The statement should provide an accessible overview of the project, including project goals, and it should recount the key design choices made, connecting choices with the purpose and audience. The project statement must be submitted as a PDF or Microsoft Word document; no .pages files allowed.
  • You cannot recycle completed projects that you created for a different class.
  • Submit your project statement and all Adobe CC work files to Canvas as a .zip file no later than 11:59pm on 3/27.