Logo created by SW on flaming text[/caption]"We need to understand the importance of graphics, music, and cinema, which are just as powerful and in some ways more deeply intertwined with young people's culture." (George Lucas on Edutopia).
Lucas recognises of course that literacy and numeracy are important skills too; his point is that we are neglecting other fundamental means of communication. Just as language has a grammar which can be learned, so do visual ways of getting a message across. Yet our culture, which arbitrarily elevates some forms of expression such as literature and science, does not value as highly a literacy of visual communication.
"There is grammar in film, there is grammar in graphics, there is grammar in music, just like there are rules in math that can be taught. For instance, what emotion does the color red convey? What about blue? What does a straight line mean? How about a diagonal line?" (Lucas again)
I was reading for this post, immersed in ideas of visual literacy, typographical hierarchy and informivorous humans, when an email from a colleague pinged onto my screen asking me to:
"teach a short lesson on graphic design: use of color, placement, streamlining the final product…."
I've been asked this before and have squirmed because I don't feel particularly qualified to do it. The principles of design have not been a part of my education (which would not surprise George Lucas). I appreciate good design when it is pointed out to me, but I am in awe of those people who are capable of communicating beautifully (in my experience, the great majority is not capable, even some of those preaching about it).
Increasingly, my teaching colleagues allow their students to express their ideas in more visual forms than just essays, such as infographics. As with many of their PowerPoints and posters, however, students do not always maximise the graphical potential of the medium. And as teachers, we often do not provide the best examples with our text-dense slideshows, (not to mention our copyright-busting use of images).
So, in the time-honoured tradition of teachers remaining one step ahead of their students, I will prepare an online slideshow both explaining and demonstrating the principles of good design (to be taught tomorrow!).
My first piece of advice to the students will be to organise their work in three stages:
Research it > Plan it > Create it
Obviously, I must do that too. Researching, I selected four good sources of advice and extracted the main points. I also added a few ideas of my own.
In the Plan It stage, which I shall also require of the students, we organise the information. At this stage, what was a chaotic melée of data starts its transformation to a visual presentation. This brilliant image is one I shall share with the students, but it's not clear that I'm allowed to reproduce it here even with attribution. In the planning stage, I organised the information under headings which logically express my understanding. Once I knew what points I wanted to make, I sought out images which told the same story. This slideshow is what my slides looked like when I had organised the data and sought out some visual examples to make my points.
And finally, my Creation ...
I am not a professional designer (evidently), but the advent of desktop publishing and its descendants have introduced an expectation of production values even for the amateur. We have an obligation to employ the principles ourselves and to pass them on to our students. Furthermore (and I have experienced resistance from colleagues in this regard), our evaluation of student work should extend beyond the content and recognise skillful use of the medium. A project poster is not just a colourful essay. It must communicate visually, as well as textually. We must teach our students to parse the visual grammar of a presentation, not just its words. And we need a good rubric for that, but I haven't been able to find one yet.
The presentation, as you see it above, is my attempt, from a position of relative ignorance, to communicate ideas of visual literacy to our teachers and students.
How would you go about it?
How can I improve my message?
Dear Steve,
ReplyDeleteI like how you incorporated color and contrast into your post. This definitely helps to make sure that important points stand out. Thanks, too, for the clear process of researching, processing, and designing necessary in Graphic Design. I like, how you applied this to your About Me page--really nice touch.
I looked up a couple of presentation rubrics--they seem to incorporate some of what you talk about at the end of you post. Check these out: http://www.teacherplanet.com/pdf/PosterDisplay.pdf?ref=rubrics4teachers, http://www.teacherplanet.com/pdf/PhotoshopPoster.pdf?ref=rubrics4teachers, and http://www.sunnyvaleisd.com/cms/lib3/TX01001155/Centricity/Domain/254/High%20School%20Project%20Poster%20Rubric.pdf. I agree that none are perfect--maybe this is fodder for another collaborative project. :)
Also, wanted to say--nice use of questions at the bottom.
And finally (and I wrote this in response to your comment), I was inspired by you to delete FB from my phone during the holidays. Though not a complete social media break, I was definitely on there less and this was a really good thing for me and my family.
Best wishes,
Valerie
Hi Steve,
ReplyDeleteI really like your Design Choices final product. It was easy to understand with the emphasis on less text and more images.
Some of the infographics were a bit blurry. I really wanted to know more about "11 Ways to Know If You're a Mobile Girl" and "Nerds vs. Geeks". Not sure how to solve that, I have that problem sometimes with Blogger??
I may "borrow" your idea of "research it-plan it-create it" with my Grade 2 students. I would have to modify it to their level. They are very familiar with Pic Collage but they are all over the place when comes to sizing images, fonts, and color palette.
This might be a good opportunity to teach the basic fundamentals of graphic design to our little learners. The topics would not be as exciting as your students, but I hope my students would eventually create visually pleasing digital posters about kittens, unicorns, and Pokemon.
Thanks for sharing!
Erin
Hi Steve,
ReplyDeleteWay to use contrast with color with fonts in your blog! I also want to "borrow" your slides. Thanks for breaking it down!
I agree desktop publishing can make anyone look like a pro however it is only as good as it's content and prep by the presenter. I had a rubric I reworked. I will see if I can dig it up...
I taught infographics to Grade 4. We used Easel.ly. I printed out infographics in color and had the children point out principles of design we discussed prior. The kids then shared what they saw with one another and the whole class. We then googled infographics to share and use as resources.
Your slides are also a great resource! Hope things went well.
Regards,
Debra
You're off to a good start, Steve. And things like Presentation Zen can provide further ideas - example - putting one photo per slide to better focus ideas. All too often we think we need written words/bullets next to images when in actuality, much of what we write can be conveyed verbally. And just to provide a small piece of feedback - be careful that your words don't get lost over a busy background. I'd say you're still ok as-is but you're approaching the level in which readability takes a hit.
ReplyDeleteThanks for pointing out that too often educators themselves use copyrighted images without citation.
Thanks Valerie. Thanks for the links to the rubrics. I'll look at them as I formulate a new one. My ideal would be to develop one set of descriptors which I could apply to a variety of types of visual work (poster, infographic, slides), focusing on general principles of communication. Earlier in the course I adapted a rubric from the educational origami wiki which has loads of them. But I have always found it hard to work with anyone else's lesson plan or worksheet or rubric - for me it seems so personal, maybe how you'd feel if someone else were deciding your clothes for you (a bit of an extreme example, maybe!).
ReplyDeleteSteve
Thanks Erin. The posters all came from the thumbnails on the infographics websites, so you could see less blurry examples by following the links in my sources. I'd love to hear how the lesson went. I developed the slides for grade 6 but have already shown them to grade 8. In the long run, I would like to develop resources which are widely applicable throughout the age range (even teachers). In that respect, the more visual and less text-based the better. Show, don't tell, they say.
ReplyDeleteHi Debra, I think the ability we now have to make things look great can be quite counter-productive given, as you say, that the content is the crucial part. That's the intangible skill which we need to instill in our students as consumers of information, to see through the BS. What you describe about your 4th graders is what I also like to do with any age-group, namely discuss other people's communications for good and bad practice.
ReplyDeleteThanks Brandon. I've started to look at PZ. I like the simplicity I have seen in his work, paradoxically hard to achieve. I take your point about making sure the background is not a distraction (in Google slides you can increase the transparency of the background and I could have gone even further). Also the idea of one picture per slide. I often say to my students: If you've got X bullet points, that's X ideas, so how many slides should you make?
ReplyDelete