Principles of Visual Communication

In Class Assignment # 1

On Monday, June 22nd I commenced my Principles of Visual Communication class. Originally, I thought it would be focused around the marketing of items from a theoreticaly perspective. Much to my initial fear, it was all about literally utilizing Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator to create a portfolio of work utilzing different design processes. Therefore, I was actually quite excited because I have been eager to take a course like this to supplement my skills in publishing. The first class went over who our instructor and tutors were and their Media and Design backgrounds. We also went over class expectation and the different assignments we were to complete over the six week course.

Our first inclass assignment revolved around "Creating a machine that magnifies your creativity 100 times".

Initially, I took it as a metaphor and started writing in bubble letters "creativity". Since it was "my" creativity, I also drew a cartoonish looking magnifying glass over the words creativity, to make it look like I was magnifying my creativity.

Anyways, as I was in class and was listening to the tutor and instructor going around talking about inputs and outputs. So I re-envisioned the machine to be a "calculator", which like an Ipod can be attached, so to speak to a canvas, papers, and other objects. In place of number functions, the calculator would have tools like a paint brush, colour pallete, texture options, pencil, pastels and sculpting tools. This design idea came rather quickly and my sketch seemed agreeable. However, as I was sitting there, I came up with more ideas featuring the use of buttons to enable or enhance creativity. I also liked to utilize the idea of "pocket creativity", therefore I started sketching out a pocket knife. In place of the knives and other tools I put in paintbrushes, charcol pencil, colour pallete. I was told it doesn't have to be believeable but I still wanted to attempt to create something that could be designed in the future, but probably on a slightly larger scale.
Finally, I started sketching a helmet. Recently, I have been seeing a lot of ads for helmets that relieve headaches and helmet massagers. Then, I started sketching a helmet with different creative tools which you could press, to enhance your creativity. The end of the class finished and seeing that I knew I had ideas, I was hopefull that this class could teach me to realize some of my ideas though a better understanding of graphic design. The class was informed there would be beginner tutorials for Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator on June 25th.