Updating the dining experience

Posted on February 21, 2016 by admin

The GDC staff are big fans of the Bismarck State College Mystic Marketplace. If you aren’t on campus frequently or don’t know much about BSC, the Mystic Marketplace is the dining hall. The food is great and the staff are very nice people, plus, they have free ice cream on Wednesdays and Fridays.

Food Services Manager Mike Wavrin pointed out a few weeks ago that the wide open tile walls were begging for art work, so we put the freshmen GDC students to work fixing that problem.

Each student piece is the same size – 7 3/4 inches by 15 1/2 inches, half of the students did a vertical layout and the other half had to use a horizontal design. Students were further constrained with a design style, possibly using other students’ thumbnail sketches or a continuous line drawing. Some students were limited to only working with type, others had to use photos for their piece.

The finished wall looks great and the Mystic Marketplace staff has been very complimentary. The students like it too – most stuck around and shot a photo of the installation.

The work is in

Posted on February 13, 2016 by admin

Last week I posted thumbnails of a sophomore assignment. The assignment was to photographically illustrate a common saying. The task wasn’t easy, several students talked with me about the challenges with the assignment. The process of both shooting and compositing images is challenging, even for experienced professionals. The images below are some of strongest student work. See if you can decipher what is saying is that goes with the photo.

A surprise visitor

Posted on February 13, 2016 by admin

4ofusSM

Today we had a surprise visitor – Donna Vallarano. Donna is a retired faculty of the Graphic Design and Communications department (Commercial Art while Donna was teaching). She was also one of the instructors that taught all three of the current GDC faculty. To clarify that, she taught Sean, Tom and Jason about graphic design at BSC.

Donna took time to give a quick hand lettering demonstration that the students watched closely. After 16 years of retirement, Donna still knows how to talk to a class and deal with students.

Spending time with Donna was definitely the highlight of our day.

demo

TV Title Typography

Posted on February 8, 2016 by admin

Type is a powerful design element, one that greatly influences the mood and emotion of any creation. When era-specific typefaces and styles are used in a design the perceived age of that design changes accordingly.

First year students in BSC’s Graphic Design and Communication’s Typography class recently demonstrated how, just by changing a typeface, a modern television program can be transported back to an earlier time.

Click on the image above to load some examples of vernacular TV titles.

The start of something great?

Posted on February 1, 2016 by admin

The sophomore Graphic Design and Communications students are working with Photoshop compositing, or building one image from multiple pieces.

Their goal is to build a literal interpretation of a saying from three or more photos the student shoots. So far the thumbnail sketches showing student concepts look promising.

Watch for finished work next week.