It’s time to show off what you’ve learned and created this semester, by creating a portfolio that you can hang on to and show to others. Whether you signed up for this course next year or not (and I sincerely hope that you did!), I want you to have something that shows that you made some cool things and learned some new skills and techniques in this course. If you have something impressive and interesting, it will be great to look back on later in life and may even help you to get a job or apply for other opportunities that may come up in life!

Using InDesign, you’ll put together a multi-page document that combines your best work from the course and describes some of the things you’ve learned and created along the way.

Using Adobe InDesign software create a MINIMUM eight-page portfolio of your best work completed in Graphic Tech. Page size is letter (8.5X11 inches) and orientation Landscape (horizontal) or Portrait (vertical). This portfolio will serve as the final exam for this course.

Original files must be PLACED into your document. Check for missing links or other errors using the Preflight Panel before you attempt to hand in. The finished portfolio must be properly packaged without any missing links and handed in to your usual folder. You may have a printed copy if you wish.

Your portfolio should include:

1. An opening page: Title, image (either a photo of you or one of your best pieces of work), your full first and last name, section (class), and graphic design elements that make the page aesthetically pleasing. (Use contrast, high quality, appealing elements, effective colour choices, etc.)
2. AT LEAST one Illustrator project that you created.
3. AT LEAST one InDesign project that you completed.
4. AT LEAST one Photoshop project that you completed.
5. AT LEAST one other project of your choice.
6. A final summation of what you learned, accomplished, or gained from the course.

EACH PAGE will contain enough information to explain the project/process/software to someone who did not take the course. Your parents, relatives, friends not in the course, or a prospective employer should be able to look at your project and understand the following things:

• What was the goal/objective/assignment? What were you supposed to learn/include/accomplish?
• What was your personal goal – how did you figure out what you were going to create/do/accomplish? Was your goal to make something classy, interesting, silly, serious, weird, etc.?
• What steps were involved in completing the task?
• What did you have to learn in order to complete the task?
• What did you struggle with along the way?
• How do you feel about your work in hindsight?
• What would you do differently if you had to do this project again?

Make this as informative, interesting, and appealing as you can. This will show that you learned and accomplished something in this course and will demonstrate some of the skills that you should have picked up along the way. You will get a good mark if you do a good job, and you should be able to bring this portfolio to a job interview to show what a creative and intelligent person you are!

Sample pages:

I want you to have something to show for all of your hard work and creativity this semester, so I’d like you to put together a portfolio of your best work, as well as a demonstration of the skills that you should have picked up along the way.

I will guide you and show you a great way to do this, but if you prefer to take the information and display it another way (create a website, put together a video, or some other creative use of your talents), that might be fine (check with me). This should be the kind of thing you could take with you to a job interview to dazzle someone with your skills, or prove to your parents that you’ve learned and created a lot this semester.

Your job in your portfolio is to display a range of projects that you’ve created and explain the skills that you’ve gained along the way. You should be demonstrating work completed in Illustrator, InDesign, and Photoshop, as well as coming up with a few new pieces made specifically for this portfolio.

 

Using InDesign, you’ll put together a multi-page document that combines your best work from the course and describe some of the things you’ve learned and created along the way.

Using Adobe InDesign, create a MINIMUM eight-page portfolio of your best work completed in Graphic Tech. This portfolio will serve as the final exam for this course and should provide you with something useful to document your time here up to now.

All previous projects should be PLACED in this document so you have an editable copy of those files along with the portfolio. The finished portfolio must be properly packaged without any missing links and handed in electronically. You can even publish electronically when done and you may have a printed copy, if you wish.

Your portfolio must include:

• A new title page, created in Photoshop: Title, image(s), your full first and last name, section (class), and graphic design elements that make the page aesthetically pleasing. (Use contrast, high quality, appealing elements, effective colour choices, etc.). You could put together a new composite image or use clipping mask Photo Letters for the title, or use one of your Fun with Photoshop tutorials, or just come up with something interesting in Photoshop! Remember to use HIGH QUALITY images and set up your file to be the correct size and resolution (8.5 x 11, 300 pixels/inch)
• Somewhere in your portfolio (probably the first or last page), you will create a NEW LOGO in Illustrator that has your name AND “Graphic Tech” or “Design” or something along those lines.
• AT LEAST one Photoshop project that you previously completed. (creature, photo letters, trading card, Fun with Photoshop, etc.)
• AT LEAST one Illustrator project that you created. (vinyl cutting, original sticker design, logo design, etc.)
• AT LEAST one InDesign project that you completed. (postcard, brochure, quiz, etc.)
• AT LEAST one other project of your choice. (personal project that you completed, or just another one of the above projects)
• A final summation of what you learned, accomplished or gained from the course. What kind of things have you learned and how could you use these skills in the future? What types of things are you qualified to do/create?

In order to print these properly, they need to have 8 or 12 pages. If you don’t care about printing, you could have a different number, but ideally, 8 or 12 pages would

EACH PAGE will contain enough information to explain the project/process/software to someone who did not take the course. Your parents, relatives, friends not in the course, or a prospective employer should be able to look at your project and understand the following things:

• What was the goal/objective/assignment? What were you supposed to learn/include/accomplish?
• What was your personal goal – how did you figure out what you were going to create/do/accomplish? Was your goal to make something classy, interesting, silly, serious, weird, etc.?
• What steps were involved in completing the task?
• What did you have to learn in order to complete the task?
• What did you struggle with along the way?
• How do you feel about your work in hindsight?
• What would you do differently if you had to do this project again?

Make this as informative, interesting, and appealing as you can. This will show that you learned and accomplished something in this course and will demonstrate some of the skills that you should have picked up along the way. You will get a good mark if you do a good job, and you should be able to bring this portfolio to a job interview to show what a creative and intelligent person you are!

I would recommend setting this up to be Letter size. You can decide whether to add a bleed and cut it out or just accept a bit of a white border. You definitely want Facing Pages for this one:

 

As explained, you will be designing album art for Leaf Rapids. The album will be called Night Shift.

You can find out more about the band here: leafrapids.org

See/hear the band: youtube.com/@leafrapidsmusic

Dimensions:
12 inches by 12 inches
(300 pixels/inch)

Title track:

Lyrics:
I wake the birds
I send them off into that day
Make sure the sun’s up
Making the rounds in any way
After the nightshift
I turn the stars off one by one

I leave the moon
She’s a wily satellite
Love in the darkness
Sneaking out into the light
Even the nightshift
Is bound to catch a glimpse of sun

Wednesday morning will always be
Tuesday night to me

My quiet industry
In the hours that memories keep
The fox and owl agree
The darkest hours are not for sleep
Here on the night shift
We tuck the days in one by one

Wednesday morning will always be
Tuesday night to me

Mr. Donohoe whipped up a poster that he wants put up in the Electronics room. It could use some help. You could surely come up with something much better:

Make your page 18″ x 24″ (if you’re using Photoshop, make sure the resolution is 300 pixels/inch)

Use/create vector or HIGH QUALITY art/elements

Use your design skills to come up with something appealing

The goal is to get a message across, so make it clear!

Use Spell Check (Mr. Donohoe, sadly, did not.) Feel free to reword.

 

It’s almost time for Graduation, and that means the annual Safe Grad party is coming up! This is a fun way for graduates to close out their time in high school before real life begins. One of the highlights is the casino, where grads can play games with “fun” money.

Your job is to design/redesign the money for this year’s graduates.

Here’s what we used last year:

It came in 5000 and 1000 denominations. The $1000 was green and very similar.

In the past, they’ve made subtle changes by putting in a different photo and changing the year, but it’s looked fairly consistent

I say it’s time for a new design!

Your job is to design new bills for this year’s graduating class

Bills are 6 inches wide and 2.5 inches high. Add a .25 inch bleed, please.

These can be designed in Photoshop, Illustrator, or InDesign.

If you want a photo of the school, look HERE.

If you want a Westwood logo, look HERE

You can get photos of the graduating class HERE

 

Perhaps the most challenging pages to create for the yearbook are the portrait pages. If you can get these pages right, the rest of the pages I’ll ask for should be no problem!

There are many yearbooks from past years and other schools available to have a look at for inspiration, if you’d like. You can see some sample pages of different types HERE

 

When adding elements to your pages, remember what the different areas of the page are for!

The outer box (red area) is the BLEED. This part will be cut off. You extend page backgrounds or perhaps some images or shapes to the edge of the red, but it will be cut off. If you want something to go to the edge of the page, extend it into the red.

Anything inside the black box should be safe, but don’t put anything important too close to that black box.

That’s what the margin (the inner, purple box) is for. That’s your margin and the area that is totally safe to use for whatever you like. Your page numbers sit between the margin and the edge of  the page. Again, you could use that area, but it’s kind of a “danger” zone, where things could get cut off.

 

 

 

Between the pages there’s a “GUTTER.” This is the area where the book folds. You probably won’t be able to see or read anything in that area. Backgrounds and shapes should go into that area for sure. Some pictures can go in there, but try to keep faces out of there. Text should NEVER go in that area.

NOTE: I am showing you MY DESIGN. YOUR DESIGN should be different! I do not want a bunch of pages that look exactly like mine! You get marks for creativity, and copying me is NOT CREATIVE!

The first thing you may wish to consider is the BACKGROUND. That place holder image that I put on my Parent page is not designed to be used on more than one spread (a spread is two pages side-by-side). You need to choose your own backgrounds. Those can be fairly plain (colours and shapes), artistic (things drawn/created in Illustrator or Photoshop), or a photo that is fairly plain and doesn’t need to be paid attention to. Look at those sample yearbooks for some ideas.

On my PARENT pages, I have 3 layers. The page numbers are on the TOP layer. I would LOCK THAT LAYER and never put anything else on it!

My background image is on the bottom layer. You can choose whether to keep the layer with the background image UNLOCKED

When I switch to my individual pages, I will put all of my page content on Layer 2 (content)

Switch out of the Parent page and onto one your spread (two pages beside each other)

To edit the background and replace it, activate the Selection tool (press v or click it in the tool bar) then hold SHIFT and Ctrl and click on the background. Now you can place something new in there. Of course, not every page should have a picture in the background, so you could use colours, shapes, or artistic elements instead.

Keep in mind that any changes made on the Parent/Master page will appear on EVERY page. If you make changes to the background or whatever on individual pages, it will only apply to that page/spread.

You may also want Westwood logos somewhere on your pages. You can find those HERE.

The makers of our yearbook, Friesens, have provided some images and clip art that you could use on your pages. It is in the Handout folder. Personally, I think a lot of it is terrible, but you’re welcome to have a look and see for yourself. HANDOUT

If you want to use Westwood logo colours in your design, you can put the following values in when choosing a colour:

Maroon : 9f1c36

Grey : 939598

Once you’ve placed your background into that frame on Layer 1, I highly recommend locking it!

 

ADDING PAGE CONTENT:

Again, I HIGHLY recommend locking both the Parent Items layer and the background layer

And make sure that you are adding your new content in between.

At the top of the page (or both pages), you should have a title that indicates which pages you are designing. You can choose to do grade 9, 10, 11, 12, or the staff portrait pages.

If your background is plain enough, you could probably write on the page, but it usually looks better if you put a Fill into the Text frame or put something behind, if you prefer. I like to Fill in my Text frame with a solid colour.

Remember that if you do that, it’s good to move your text away from the edge of the box. To do this, go to the Object menu and choose Text Frame Options, or press Ctrl+B on your keyboard:

I like to add some Inset Spacing on all sides. If it’s linked (see the chain in the middle?), clicking one number upward should move them all. You shouldn’t need to move it up more than one or maybe two times. Remember that if you do that, you will have less room for the text, so you may have to adjust the size of your text to make sure that it fits in the frame

I also like to change my Vertical Justification to Center

If you do this and your text disappears or you notice a little red cross on the right hand side of the Text frame, you’ve made the frame too small for whatever text is in there and you now have Overset Text

If you have Overset text or another problem, you’ll notice an error light at the very bottom of your window:

If you have a problem, you should open the Preflight Panel:

On there, you will see whatever the problem is

To fix this problem, I could just make my text smaller or make the box a bit bigger:

Extending the box a tiny bit fixed the problem and now my text appears and there’s no red cross:

Most importantly, there’s no error on the Preflight Panel

If you want the bar/box to go all the way to the edge of the page, make sure that it extends all the way to the outer edge of the red (and beyond.) You can make that as far past that line as you want. I like to make mine extra big. You can press W to see what it’ll look like:

Keep in mind that part of it will get cut off, but without the guides and lines, it looks pretty nice:

Again, all of my added elements will go between the background and the page numbers! You can have as many layers as you like in between, but I’ll keep everything on that “content” layer

 

I’ve learned through years of trying to solve & fix problems that it’s easier if I take a moment and put the images and the names on separate layers. I’ll add two more layers

Use the plus sign at the bottom of the Layers panel to add more layers, then double click on those new layers and change the names

This step is optional, but HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

My layers look like this:

 

For the next step, I’ll be working on the “photos layer.” I’ll activate the Frame tool (press F). You can click and hold on the tool in the toolbar if you want frames that are circular/elliptical or polygonal for a more creative and unique design

I’ll drag out a rectangular frame. I’ll have to guess the size.

Make sure you can see your Properties panel. If not, all panels can be found in the Window menu. With that frame still selected, I’ll change a couple of options in order to make life a lot easier.

I’ll open those Frame Fitting Options. I HIGHLY recommend turning on Auto-Fit, setting the Fitting to Fill Frame Proportionally, and making sure that they Align From the centre.

You may wish to add a stroke to your frames. That way the pictures don’t just kind of blend together. I personally like to use Westwood logo colours fairly often, so if you wish to use them anywhere, you can put in those colour values I listed near the top of the page (Maroon : 9f1c36 or Grey : 939598).

 

Each picture needs a name. I usually do those below each picture, but some layouts have the names in a list on the side. You can choose how to lay yours out. Doing a separate name box with multiple names in it on the side might be a bit easier than doing a name below each student, but I’ll show you both options.

 

Switch to the “names” layer.

Activate the Type tool (press T) and draw out a smaller box that’s the same width as the picture frame.

I’ll fill mine with school logo grey. Since the picture frame has a 1pt stroke, if I want my text box to be exactly the same size, I’ll add a 1pt stroke to the text box as well.

 

When I use text frames, I like the text to sit in the middle of the box, not the top. Select the box with the Selection tool and press Ctrl + B. I recommend changing the Vertical Justification to Centre. I also want a very tiny bit of Inset Spacing.

. I

Still with the Selection tool, I’m going to select the picture frame and the text frame by dragging a box over both of them

 

I need a lot more of these but I don’t want to go through all of the steps to make them look the same, so I’ll copy those. Press and hold ALT to drag out a copy. To make sure that they line up, press Shift as well. So I’ll hold Shift + Alt, click on those frames and drag a copy to the right.

You can leave a bit of space in between if you like or line them up side by side.

You could keep doing that one at a time OR once you’ve got two, select both and drag those out to make it four.

Once I’ve got four, I like to select again and drag out another 4. 7 or 8 across is probably a good number but you can add more if you like, depending on the layout you’ve chosen.

I’ll turn off my background so it’s easier to see what I’m doing in the images below, but you don’t really need to do that.

I recommend a grid of 7 columns and 7 rows OR you could make it 8 by 6

8 x 6 (names below):

8 x 6 (names on the side)

7 x 7 (names below)

7 x 7 (names on the side)

 

Depending on which you choose, your page might look a little different than mine in the examples below, but hopefully you can follow along.

 

I’ve still got a bunch of space on the right side of this page and I don’t want to add more boxes to the row:

So I’ll select them all and pull the little white square on the right hand side to stretch them to fill up to the middle gutter guide:

Much better. Now I’ll Alt + Shift and drag a copy down.

I’ll keep doing that until I have about 6, 7, or 8 rows (depending on which layout you choose):

 

There’s a bit of space at the bottom now, so I’ll select all of those and drag the square in the middle of the bottom edge down

Much better!

I want the right hand page (3) to look just like the left (2)

Using the Selection Tool, I’ll click in a blank spot off the page and draw a box over all of my frames to select them all

Once they’re all selected, I’ll hold Alt and Shift and drag out a copy onto the other page

I also copied over my banner at the top and took one word out of each box. You can (and should) choose what goes at the top of the page

If you have the names on the side, your pages will look more like this:

 

Make sure you SAVE your work! You really don’t want to lose all of that!

In the next set of instructions, we’ll Place in the content.

 

Before you start, do yourself a big favour and create a YEARBOOK folder in ONEDRIVE. Put ALL of your elements in there! Every time you download or create anything for this project, put it in that folder! (and, of course, make sure that OneDrive is running on your computer!)

Putting everything into a folder now will save you a lot of headaches, trust me!

Go to the HandOut folder and download the files into your yearbook folder: YearbookPagesTemplate

Start by opening the supplied Template file (yearbookPages.indd)

 

Save your file into your Yearbook folder.

 

When using InDesign, I prefer to use the Essential Classics workspace, so that’s what my screen will look like, but choose whichever workspace is best for you.

 

Your Pages panel right now should look like this:

I recommend going into your Layers panel. Right now you have two layers:

The Parent Items layer is locked. It contains your page numbers.

If you want to change the look of the page numbers or add text to the bottom of every page (like the year or school’s name or whatever), you would go into the Parent/Master pages by double clicking on A-Document Master in the Pages panel

Either now or later, after you’ve decided on a page design, I recommend unlocking the Parent Items layer and customizing the look of the page numbers

On the bottom left and bottom right, you will see a capital A. This will be replaced by the number of whatever page it appears on. You should at some point highlight that

and choose your own Font, Size, and Colour (or any other option you wish)

You could also add the school’s name, the year, or any other elements that you would like to appear on all of your pages

For example:

 

If you want to, you could add a background image or a logo or something that would appear on all of your pages. Note that it would be highly unusual to have the exact same background on a bunch of different pages, but sometimes they have a similar look. If you do want something to appear on every page, while you’re in the Parent/Master page, you could use the Frame tool (press F on your key   board) and draw a frame that goes to the edges of your pages (or put a smaller box at the bottom or whatever)

 

PUT THE FRAME ON A SEPARATE, BOTTOM LAYER

Add a new layer at the bottom of the Layers panel:

Move that new layer (layer 3) down to the bottom of the pile:

you can double click on the layer name to change it

 

For the next step, I’m going to stay on the bottom layer (background). Use the Frame tool (letter F) to create a frame that goes all the way to the edge of the page. This will be my actual page background for each page. Place any picture in there to act as a placeholder. I used a picture of the school, because if I ever forget to replace it, at least I’ve got something appropriate. You can get school photos HERE if you want to do that too.

The photo that I used doesn’t fill the frame:

So I’ll have to go into Frame Fitting and “Fill frame proportionally” (the first one.) I always like to turn on Auto-Fit as well:

That looks much better:

 

Now I have a frame ready to go that I can change on individual pages.

 

I notice now that my page numbers and that text aren’t showing up well, so I’ll take some time to edit that. I’ll add a fill colour into the Text frames:

If you fill in a frame, you’ll notice that the text is too close to the edge. I recommend adding some Inset Spacing, which is basically a bit of a margin in a text box. Select the text box with the Selection tool and press Ctrl + B

For my text, adding about .03 in of Inset Spacing fixed the problem and still allowed my text to fit. I also like to make sure my text aligns to the Center instead of the top:

 

Lastly, I recommend taking that top layer and locking it. Do not put any page elements on a layer above this unless you want to cover the page numbers. This layer should always be at the top.

You can decide whether to lock the background layer or not. I’ll lock mine and cover it up or edit it later as necessary

Now if you switch to any other page, you’ll see its number in those spots! If you put all of your designs on the layers below, those page numbers will always show on every page.

If you haven’t done so already, SAVE your work!

 

There are four main principles of design that we’ll look at this year, Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, and Proximity. That’s right, we’re aiming for CRAP in our work!

Contrast is probably the easiest and most obvious one. I mention contrast all the time when looking at your designs, and there’s good reason for that – it’s essential.

The most obvious type of contrast is colour/lightness, white and black. You put those two things next to each other, or one on top of the other, and things are going to appear opposite. It doesn’t get any more opposite than that. White is basically all of the colours of light, and black is none.

But that’s too easy. You don’t get to take credit for that one in this assignment. It doesn’t count.

Instead, you’ll focus on:

• colours (other than black/white)
• size
• shape
• scale
• layout
• type
• alignment
• and more!

Assignment: You’ll design a poster for an upcoming event. You can use a real event or make one up. You can make it for a sporting event, concert, meeting, bake sale, art showcase, whatever! You need to use AT LEAST THREE types of CONTRAST (again, white/black doesn’t count.) Pick 3 off of the list above to utilize, but you’ll need to EXPLAIN the types of contrast you used. If you think you can fit in more than three, even better.

You’ll put your poster together using InDesign, but you can incorporate Photoshop or Illustrator files. Make it 11 inches by 17 inches (either portrait or landscape orientation, up to you) with a .25 inch bleed. Resolution should be 300 dpi.

You need to incorporate images (high quality), some kind of shape(s), and text that is different levels of importance (such as a headline and details.)

Once you’re done, your reflection will consist of explaining the types of contrast that you used and how they drew attention toward or away from elements in your poster. Explain that clearly in a document and hand it in for your reflection mark.

More about contrast:

How to use InDesign:

Open the program (DUH!)

Click “New file”

Give your file a name (NO UNTITLED FILES WILL BE OPENED)

Change the Units to Inches

Make it 11 inches by 17 inches. You can make it Portrait or Landscape orientation (your choice!)

InDesign is often used for multi-page documents, but you only need one

Make sure you have a .25 inch bleed

Click Create

The first thing you should do is Save. Open the File menu and choose Save, or press Ctrl + S

Save it in OneDrive! (and make sure that you OPEN THE PROGRAM)

Like Illustrator, there are different Workspaces you can use. The program usually opens on Essentials, but I’m a big fan of Essentials Classic. Up at the top right of your screen, you can choose a different workspace (and I recommend that you do.)

Any other panels can be opened from the Window menu. I HIGHLY recommend opening the Properties panel:

Many of the tools on the left hand side will look familiar to the ones in Illustrator and Photoshop. Perhaps the most important one here (other than the Selection tool, of course) is the Frame tool. Every element you add MUST BE IN A FRAME. This tool looks like a rectangle with an X through it. You can also press F to activate the tool:

With that tool active, you need to draw out a frame:

You can use frames for images, text, or just use it as a shape by changing the Fill and Stroke.

If you want to put a picture or Photoshop or Illustrator file in a frame, you NEED TO go to the File menu and choose Place (or Ctrl + D)

IMPORTANT: images and files Placed in InDesign are not automatically embedded. By default, they are linked to wherever the file is on your computer. When you create something in Illustrator or Photoshop, or when you download a photo (preferably from Unsplash or The Noun Project), PUT THEM IN A FOLDER IN ONEDRIVE!

If you need more help getting started with InDesign, I recommend visiting THIS PAGE and checking out some of the InDesign Get Started course tutorials.

When you are done, MAKE SURE YOU PACKAGE your file to drop it off! If you don’t package, I won’t open it!

InDesign is one of the most useful and interesting programs we work with. So far, you should have created a Postcard and a Greeting Card. Building on those skills, we’ll build something slightly more complicated, a tri-fold brochure. To make it easy, you’ll complete a tutorial that will show you how to do the project that I want you to complete:

Download these files to follow along with the sample. Those files are “zipped” together, so you’ll need to Unzip the files in order to use them. This is a very common way of delivering files, so you should know how to unzip a folder…

If you prefer to have the files unzipped for you, you can also find all of the files in the HANDOUT FOLDER, although you’d have to download those one at a time or download a zipped file anyway… If you’re really struggling, I could give you the files, if you ask nicely (although I might roll my eyes a bit.)

Follow along with the tutorials here

Complete those videos and create the sample brochure. Show it to me when you are done! You will complete your own, original brochure for marking in the next step!

If you show me the completed brochure, you don’t really need to hand it in. Remember that if you are handing anything in that is created by InDesign, you need to PACKAGE the files!

So far, we’ve worked with two image creation and editing programs, Photoshop and Illustrator. Now it’s time to turn to InDesign and see what it can do. InDesign is the industry choice for creating professional documents of all shapes and sizes and is amazing for multi-page documents.

If you need some background/review:

See what you can create with InDesign

Explore InDesign basics

First up, learn how to create an appealing postcard!

If you have never used InDesign before or want a good review, I encourage you to do the sample contained in the tutorials below. You DO NOT have to hand in the “Design Talks” postcard shown in the tutorial, but creating it might help you get started with the actual assignment that you will hand in:

You will need these files in order to follow along with the tutorial

Click the image below to go to the tutorial, or click this link

For your assignment, I want you to DESIGN YOUR OWN POSTCARD! Yours should use the same tools, size, and layout as the sample, but SHOULD NOT RESEMBLE IT AT ALL! Yours should look entirely different.

This should look like the kind of card that you would buy on vacation and send home to some poor sucker who didn’t get to come with you. You’ve surely seen these in a gift shop or at the Forks or something.

I’d suggest using one of high quality photos from Unsplash to create a postcard for a destination that you would like to visit. If you wanted to use a camera to shoot some photos and create a postcard for Winnipeg or the Westwood area or Westwood Collegiate, that would be amazing! If you are from another country or have visited another country and have photos that you would like to incorporate, that would also be great.

Your postcard must be put together using InDesign, although you could potentially incorporate some elements created in Illustrator or Photoshop.

Most postcards are 6 inches by 4 inches with a .25 inch bleed. I recommend setting up a .25 inch margin to keep important text and elements away from the edge of the page.

Setup:

You could rotate your card if you wish. You will design a front and a back. The front is usually just a beautiful photo or multiple photos from the place you are visiting. The back contains a space for you to write a letter and a space for you to write the address that you are going to send it to, as well as a stamp (or at least a place to put a stamp). We could print these out when you are done and you could even mail it to someone if you wish!

Remember that in this program, everything goes in a frame. You’ll PLACE your files into frames (File/Place or Ctrl + D).

When you are done, you’ll PACKAGE your file to drop it off!

Check for errors or missing links!

That will create a folder that includes your file as well as any linked files and fonts that you may have included. Check OneDrive for a folder when you are done.

Have fun and be creative. Where would you like to visit?

Samples of finished postcards created by past students: