branding, figure/ground, gestalt, hierarchy, concept development; skills analysis, writing copy, promoting yourself; design principles, elements, and process
FINAL ARTIFACT: YOUR OWN BRAND LOGO, RESUME, PORTFOLIO UPDATES

This starts with an evaluation and coaching consultation of your existing work including resume and portfolio. Through this process you will be given some feedback on your strengths and weaknesses, but you will also be required to conduct a series of self-analysis exercises prior to starting the design process for creating your own brand. This is an advanced course and one should have at least a grasp on typography and basic design. Recommendations after initial consult may include backtracking and taking one or more lessons to improve your design sensibility. Once you go thru the self reflection and goal setting exercises, you can start working on the design process receiving written feedback at various stages and 2 additional skype coaching sessions as you work towards final execution. Feedback also includes resume writing and organizing your digital portfolio.

From:

$449

FIRST COURSE

This course emphasizes the creative process of wonder, experimentation, observation, and excitement that is integral to the design process and key traits of successful graphic designers. It is exploratory in nature and will provide solid foundation of design principles and elements through investigation of various assignments that require you to be curious, inquisitive, and a risk-taker. You will be encouraged in the coaching process to understand how to recognize happy accidents, implementing trial and error in learning, observation turned into practice, and a bit of fun thrown into the mix.

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Course outcomes:

• Learning and utilizing graphic design principles and elements and creating compositions.
• Learning various tools including handcraft, ie. sketching and collage that leads to basics of Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign.

• Discovering concepts such as figure/ground and gestalt that provide fundamentals for design problem solving.
• Exploration of the design process which includes brainstorming, research, ideation, conceptualization, exploration, and actualization.

Projects will include smaller speed problems that are not necessarily completed; an image-based assignment in place emphasizing Photoshop and InDesign; and creating shapes, marks, characters from hand and digital for a final fun project.

VALUE:

$1000 usd

FOURTH COURSE

Branding is storytelling. In this section of the program you will use skills developed in the previous classes to hone in on brand identity. The primary client is yourself for personal branding, resume development, portfolio production. You'll be asked to go through a skills and goals assessment process to begin the foundation for concept development. Because it's tricky to design for yourself, you will try out this methodology for two other brands first which will provide a broad array of portfolio quality work. In addition, you will work on creating your personal website and brand space on various social networks such as indeed, linkedin and behance.

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Course outcomes:

• transforming the design process into a self-evaluation in creating one's own brand.
• Learn about skill assessment and goal setting to use also as concept development for your brand.

• Reinforce the use of gestalt, figure/ground, and innovative typography in your visual solutions.

• Exhibit understanding of brand identity and brand story through creation of identity manual and collateral material.

• Create a comprehensive portfolio, resume, and website that reinforces your personal brand.

We'll start with your own goal assessment and brainstorming process, but to allow the brain to mull all that over you will move into two smaller brand projects along with exercises to stretch your creative muscles with symbols.

VALUE:

$1000 usd

SECOND COURSE

Step to is to become a wanderer in the mind and in physical action. This course is a combination of thinking and making. You will be introduced to the basics of typography including anatomy, history, and classification. You'll be encouraged to explore hand lettering versus digital solutions and within the digital become adept at hand-eye coordination of composition. The design process is emphasized and the projects become more complex building on what you learned in WONDER100. An emphasis will be placed on the meaning of words (connotation vs denotation) and the personality of typographic expression.

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Course outcomes:

• Learning and utilizing typographic forms from hand lettering and hand craft to digital solutions.
• Understanding the historical context of typography and the classification and anatomy to be able to make good conceptual and aesthetic decisions.

• Exploration of the design process and a more complex problem-solving challenges including grids.
• Become a wanderer by allowing for experiments in the design process.

• Understand how meaning is communicated with word & image.

Projects will include smaller speed problems that are not necessarily completed; a a research based exploration of the typographic form, and at least one actualized project with expressive typography. This will include digital solutions but have less digital instruction than WONDER 100.

VALUE:

$1000 usd

FIFTH COURSE

This is an advanced level graphic design course. What is the role of the designer in society? What does it mean to be a citizen designer? What are the more advanced creative innovation tools one can use to become a design thinker? You'll explore forms of visual rhetoric and examine symbols and communication with a semiotic matrix as part of the design process for the assignments in this module.

You'll become an explorer physically and mentally as you develop the skills for advanced critical thinking.

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Course outcomes:

• Understanding of creative innovation tools including visual rhetoric and semiotics.
• Become an explorer as you examine objects, time and place in developing a creative artifact.

• Integrate all of the skills you have learned so far, but with coaching continue to stretch yourself.

The assignments will have creative prompts but open ended as far as solution to allow the process to determine outcome using the ideation tools you'll discover and practice more than once.

VALUE:

$1000 usd

THIRD COURSE

This is a journey into the history of graphic design. We'll start in the 1980s with the introduction of the Macintosh and jump back in time to discover threads between cultures, social, economic and historical contexts. Having a contextual foundation for the discipline of design and how cultures communicate can inspire and inform your decision-making in the design process. Perhaps you are an appropriator or attempt to be a pure modernist. This course will include reading, links to contextual videos in content that exists in the interwebs along with short lecture style overviews of course material, and critical thinking exercises to make connections over time. You will be encouraged to produce a short writing assignment that will be integrated into a design project that emphasizes the book format producing your own document using InDesign primarily and other digital or hand craft tools to complete the visualization process. Throw out the test anxiety syndrome and take this course for the love of learning and discovery as if you were a time traveler.

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Course outcomes:

• Understanding of the historical context and significance of graphic design and visual communication throughout recorded time.
• Flex muscles in a creative way in a research investigation as a time traveler.

• Utilize your evolving design aesthetics for actualizing design artifacts that integrate copy.

• Overview of the grid and visual hierarchy, how to structure a book format, and creating a unifying visual statement.

One large project combining word and image in a multi-page document with a smaller assignment sprinkled through the production of the other work to give your brain the breaks it needs for a-ha moments.

VALUE:

$1000 usd

ADDITIONAL CONTENT

Taste. Trek. Globetripping.
Three unique in person workshops including travel opportunities.

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Once you complete the sequence of five modules, it is highly recommended that you participate in at least one in person workshop with several others (maximum 12 participants). Taste is all about food and design, from farm to table experience gardening, cooking, and even making pottery not only as creative inspiration but as potential subject matter for creative project.

Globetripping is a travel experience emphasizing designer as author as you explore an immersion in place. Some destinations include Dublin, Japan, Italy, and Spain.

VALUE:

$750 + up