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.

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’s fine too. 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.

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 software 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:

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 Photoshop project that you completed. (Acronym Banner, Trading Card, Sign, etc.)
3. AT LEAST one Illustrator project that you created. (Mandala, artwork, vinyl cutting, original sticker design, logo design, etc.)
4. AT LEAST one InDesign project that you completed. (postcard, poster, menu, etc.)
5. AT LEAST one other project of your choice. (independent learning project, personal project that you completed, or just another one of the above projects)
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!

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:

Congratulations, you’ve just been named the publisher of your very own magazine! You’ll put together the first issue featuring whatever topic and content you like. Along the way, you’ll demonstrate your knowledge of all 4 of the design principles, Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, and Proximity. Watch the full video below to review and find out about the last two:

This time, use all four principles and in your reflection afterward, explain how you used each one.

You absolutely have to use InDesign to do this correctly. You could design elements (like your cover or ads or logo or whatever in Photoshop or Illustrator, but it has to be put together with InDesign.)

SAMPLES from previous students

Your document setup will look like this:

You can (and probably should) just leave your pages laid out the way they are created:

SAVE your file On your Computer and in OneDrive (and make sure OneDrive is running on your computer!)

You will be creating a magazine about a topic of your choice (school appropriate….) It could be about your favourite sport/team, favourite animal, a place you like to visit, or just make one about Westwood Collegiate! Pick a topic that is interesting to you and that you already know something about.

Magazine topic ideas:

• Music / Musical Instruments (finding high quality photos of your favourite bands/artists could be tricky, so you may want to keep it somewhat generic, eg. about guitars or something like that.)
• Cars
• Animals – you choose your favourite animal or type of animals (eg horses, barnyard animals, whales, sea animals, etc.)
• Food
• Vacation/Travel (where do you or would you like to visit)
• Household items (around the kitchen, tools, furniture, etc.)
• Makeup/Beauty
• Sports
• Westwood Collegiate
• another topic APPROVED BY ME

You need to have HIGH QUALITY IMAGES in your magazine. I HIGHLY recommend using a photography site like Unsplash or perhaps Flickr where you can download high quality photos!

You will have ARTICLES as well. You could write those yourself if you really want to impress me, but likely you will find your text online. Using a site like Wikipedia would be acceptable, but you’ll have to do some work to make text copied from there look good.

Whatever you choose to do, you must have:

• An appealing cover page that lists some of the content inside of your magazine.
• 12 pages, all containing good quality content
• Pages must be numbered! No page number on the front or back cover! You can decide whether there’s a separately numbered table of contents page or index. InDesign must do the numbering for you! (ie you can’t just add a text box on each page and write in your own number – CHEATING!)
• It’s rare for a magazine article to contain only one photo. You could have one larger photo alongside text or multiple photos on most pages.
• Remember that magazines have different articles with different authors. While it isn’t important for you to write a lot in your magazine, you should have some appealing text setting the different articles apart. You should have an author listed close to the article title, and there should be some kind of text alongside the image(s).
• Magazines contain advertising. Often, a lot of advertising…

Perhaps most importantly, you need to incorporate (and explain how you used) the 4 main principles of design:

• Contrast
• Repetition
• Alignment
• Proximity

You also are going to learn and apply new and important concepts:

• Parent Pages
• Text Wrapping
• Paragraph Styles

The first step is to decide on a topic and find some content. This is going to be very important because you’ll be marked on how realistic/interesting your magazine is. It should look like something that someone might actually buy.

You have a fair bit of creative freedom here, but you have to make sure that your content is appropriate and that it makes a good magazine. You also of course have to use all of the tools you’ve learned in InDesign to create this properly.

There are some older tutorials that could help you get started on this, however, some of the SETUP INSTRUCTIONS ARE DIFFERENT IN THE VIDEO. Especially if you would like to print out your magazine, please use the size and settings you see ABOVE.

First, make sure you understand how to effectively use contrast. Review the last assignment if you aren’t sure.

Here’s a good review of Contrast, and a look at the next principle, Repetition (stop at 3:46 for today. You don’t need to worry about the other two elements yet):

Just like Contrast, Repetition can be used in different ways. You can repeat colours, fonts, shapes, design elements, layout styles, and more. You will once again try to incorporate at least 3 different types of repetition. Also, keep Contrast in mind and use Contrasting styles and elements effectively.

Here’s your task:

Congratulations! You’ve just opened a brand new restaurant. Now, to design the menu! Use Repetition and Contrast when you’re creating it to make it look great, and to help draw attention to or away from elements.

When you are done, you will also include a reflection that explains how you used repetition. Mention at least 3 repeating elements and how they help your design.

Use InDesign to create this. Set up your page like this:

5.25 inches wide

8 inches tall

4 pages (turn on Facing Pages)

Bleed: .125 inch

Or you can set it up like the page below:

You’ll need to adjust the layout of your pages so we can print this out later.

When you create your document, your pages will look like this:

You need to go into the three stripes at the top right of the Pages panel and TURN OFF “Allow Document Pages to Shuffle” but LEAVE ON “Allow Selected Spread to Shuffle.”

Drag page 4 so it is RIGHT BESIDE page 1. Pages should renumber and look like this:

When printed, your pages will appear like this:

So keep in mind that the front of your menu is on page 2 and the back is page 1.

Once you set up your document SAVE IT IN ONEDRIVE (and of course, make sure OneDrive is running on your computer!)

To make life easier, you can leave out the prices and just list the items you’ll sell. Believe me, if you want to list prices, you’ll probably do it wrong and I’ll probably lose my mind. We’ll get into that later…

A restaurant menu usually has a few different categories:

• Appetizers
• Main Course
• Side Dishes
• Dessert
• Drinks

Use design elements (shapes, images, icons, colour, etc.) to separate the categories. Make a list of what you’d serve at your restaurant. Have fun with it!

Make it look IMPRESSIVE and PROFESSIONAL. No more goofy clip art. Find HIGH QUALITY photos from Unsplash if you can. Use icons from The Noun Project if you’d like.

Here are some samples that I like:

Help decide who should be Artist of the Month for December!

This is a pretty easy project that will review some skills and hopefully teach you a few new ones, as you take a picture of an existing sign and change the letters to say something new and creative.

PLEASE USE ONE OF THE PHOTOS I HAVE PROVIDED OR TAKE YOUR OWN PHOTO. If you want to use something else, you MUST DISCUSS IT WITH ME FIRST.

Click this link to choose one of these signs, please OR borrow a camera and go find a sign to change. Make sure the light is good and take your photo STRAIGHT ON (the more level and even it is, the easier this will be).

It is possible that you MIGHT find something useful on Unsplash. If you want to look there, you can, but you NEED TO SHOW ME YOUR SIGN FIRST. I will tell you whether it’ll work or not. https://unsplash.com/s/photos/sign

Your job is to match new text and elements to whatever is on the original sign.

The more you change, the better your mark will be. If you change one letter, your mark will be MUCH lower than someone who makes a lot of changes.

Be creative and original! Believe me, I’ve seen more than enough “STOP” signs changed to “GO.” I never need to see that again. It wasn’t that interesting the first time.

Some tips:

You can use Photoshop one of two ways:

QUICKLY or WELL

Guess which one I want… If you’re doing this quickly and get it done in a few minutes, it’s going to look terrible and I’m going to ask you to do it again. This project should take some serious time and effort. You’re going to mess things up and redo or fix them. It’s part of doing a good job.

You do not need to create a new file. Just open the sign image in Photoshop and…

ALWAYS make a copy of the original sign before you start. You should have a layer at the bottom or turned off with the untouched image of the sign!

If it’s obvious that you changed your sign, you did not do a good job. If it’s easy to tell what you changed, you did not do a good job. If you did not do a good job, you will have to go back and try again.

Start by CAREFULLY SELECTING elements to replace. Please DO NOT REPLACE EVERYTHING! Your job is to match new elements with what is already there, so don’t get rid of everything!

Please make sure you know how to CAREFULLY SELECT objects using different SELECTION TOOLS. Look here for some tips/review/info: Photoshop Selection Tools

Video instructions/examples: (use headphones. Watch the video for a while then pause and do what I say, repeat until done)

Examples:

Your next project will use InDesign in an interesting way. Hopefully by now you know that InDesign is great for creating documents for print, but you can also use it to create all kinds of documents and files and projects online as well.

You will create an interactive, multiple choice quiz. You can make yours about whatever you are interested in. I’d suggest/encourage you to ask questions about yourself, since that’s a subject that you know more about than anyone else! This way, we get to know each other better. If you prefer, you can make a quiz about whatever you are interested in & passionate about, like hockey, dogs, Pokemon, music, or whatever else you specialize in!

• You will start from a blank document, not a template!
• Your quiz will have a title/welcome page
• You may wish to have an intro page that explains what this thing is and how it works (optional)
• You will come up with at least 5 multiple choice questions
• Each question will have at least one right answer and at least one wrong answer
• Each question will have corresponding “Right” and “Wrong” pages (these can be copied to save you some work!)
• There will be a page at the end that tells the viewer that the quiz is over and will offer a chance to try the quiz again
• Each page should have AT LEAST one HIGH QUALITY image on it.
• You will use your design skills and add elements to make each page look amazing!
• Do not use the default font! Always make your own design/appearance choices.

These will be published online, so you could easily show these to friends & family outside of school. The link is private, so nobody will just stumble on it, but do keep in mind that you are publishing information online, so you may wish to keep personally identifiable details out!

Here’s my example:

Video tutorial: (NOTE! Never watch the entire video when it’s as long as this one (sorry not sorry.) Watch a little bit until I do something, then pause the video and go do what I showed you in that section. Come back and watch a little more, pause it again, etc.)

part 2:

part 3 (adding the buttons and links that make it interactive!)

Finally, once you’ve got all of the links in, it’s time to check it out and hand it in: