The awards page group is using old-school production skills to create their layout. The magazine will hopefully be printed by portfolio review day – May 5.

Weather is a universal topic of conversation, especially in the upper plains where the temperature changes rapidly. These photo assignments are meant to showcase how the weather feels through the use of photos and layout.

The sophomore students worked hard shooting photos with a green screen background and adding their subjects into different scenarios. Below are a few of the best examples.

 

 

 

 

Shane Balkowitsch has been a great friend of the Graphic Design and Communications department at Bismarck State College. Each year he has generously welcomed students into his wet plate photo studio to see the process he uses to create amazing images. Thank you for your generosity Shane!

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First year students rose to the challenge of rendering an item using nothing but the tools offered by Adobe Illustrator to achieve realism. Time-consuming and rewarding work that pushes the boundaries of what can be done in software that is usually producing flat designs. It’s always amazing to see the results.

Photoshop handles vectors a tiny bit different than Illustrator. After I’m positive that Sean has done the heavy lifting of teaching the freshmen the pen too, we spend one day looking at vectors in Photoshop culminating in a 25 minute vector car drawing challenge with a $1 prize. Jaiden Ziegler from the M,W,F class and Sophia Jilek from the T,TH,F class both walked away a dollar richer.

I make an attempt to come up with a replacement assignment for the Photoshop creature almost every year. I’ve modified the assignment a couple times, but eventually have come back to almost the spot where it started. This assignment does a good job of showcasing all of the skills the freshmen students have learned up until this point and provides some creative scenarios to learn a few new skills.

The class of 2020 created some spectacular beverage photos. I’m looking forward to seeing the food photos coming in a couple weeks, they will likely be even better.

We’ve all seen them, but nobody admits it … little green people in spaceships. Okay, maybe we haven’t – but it’s easy to imagine images of UFOs visiting good old mother earth. Here are a few that students created.