Reviewing Design Standards
When reviewing the design components of color, typography, layout, images, audio, video and animation this week, I was surprised that I had picked up more than I realized over the course of my career. I was also surprised about how complex it can be to blend all of these things to create a quality multi-media project. There were two ideas that really stood out to me as I studied these things. One was that moods or emotions can be elicited or communicated using just color, and the other was that font choices can communicate a message of their own (color video; typography video). Both of these make perfect sense, but neither had really ever entered my consciousness.
Choosing colors is not a strength of mine whether decorating, quilting, or designing media projects. I had heard of some of the terms discussed in the color video (GCFLearnFree, 2016A), and had even played with a few when trying to edit pictures, but some were brand new to me. The color wheel and the different color harmony formulas that can be used with it are tools that could be helpful to me going forward. They definitely will save me some time trying to guess which colors would look good together!
The typography principles provided in the Beginning Graphic Design: Layout & Composition video (GCFLearnFree, 2016B) were also very helpful. In my training as a teacher, I was taught about the importance of white space, especially for special needs students. The other four principles proximity, alignment, contrast, and repetition as design elements were fairly new to me. The video stated that getting alignment right can be tricky, and I’ve found this to be true in the small amount of design work that I have done. Contrast and style repetition are important for gaining and directing the attention of the reader, and these are two things I had not ever thought much about.
The PowerPoint animation video was also enlightening. I’ve used this program for decades, even the animation and transition features, but I would have never thought of using it to make an animated video. This is something I will definitely try out in the future (Crown, 2020).
Design Process
After studying these standards, it was fairly easy to apply them to the media assignment that I completed this week. I recently started in a new position in my school district’s technology department, which is also a new position for the district. Coworkers have been having some trouble knowing who to go to in the newly expanded department for different technology needs. I had been thinking about making some kind of document to delineate job responsibilities, so this assignment helped me to do this. Using the information I learned this week, I was able to make a better quality product than I would have made otherwise. The most enjoyable part of this media project was getting to be a little creative and making something that would be helpful to my colleagues.
As I mentioned earlier, choosing colors is not a strength of mine, so I started with a template from Canva, which I modified quite a bit. As I was working on the job responsibility columns, the song Help! by The Beatles came to mind, giving me the idea to add their image to the project. It was a little difficult to get the picture colored and cropped just right, and to find the color of text that would show up on it. Since I was playing off their image and song lyrics, I wanted to include a font similar to the one the Beatles used for my title and headers. After that, I worked to find a contrasting simple serif font for the main content. The biggest challenge of the project was getting the spacing between the different sections to look uniform and balancing the header information at the top of each column.
References:
Crown, E. (2020, October 10). How to create animated videos with Powerpoint | Beginners Guide. YouTube. Retrieved September 4, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoyE48W3RUY
GCFLearnFree. (2016, October 5). Beginning graphic design: Color. YouTube. Retrieved September 4, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2LLXnUdUIc
GCFLearnFree. (2016, November 22). Beginning graphic design: Layout & composition. YouTube. Retrieved September 4, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5KYlHNKQB8
Comments