Here’s a quick and easy project where you could take home a mouse pad with the design of your choice on it. Everyone will design one (for marks). You do not have to put your design on a mouse pad unless you want to and you meet a few simple conditions. Your design will only be put on a mouse pad if:

• your file is dropped off with the right name and it is the right size
• you have finished your earlier assignments and dropped them off correctly
• your parents have paid the $10 course fee
• you aren’t a pain in the neck

This same process could be used to apply a design to other items, which we can discuss.

The actual mouse pad is about 9.25 inches by 7.75 inches, but we make our design a little bigger so it covers the entire surface and there are no blank spots around the edge. Part of your design will be cut off on the finished product.

Set up your file: 9.5 inches by 8 inches, 300 pixels/inch, CMYK color

you can choose whether to create your design the wide way (Landscape):

Or the tall way (Portrait)

Once you have created the file, SAVE it in your OneDrive. As usual, make sure that OneDrive is running on your computer!

You can create the artwork yourself using whatever program you wish. As always, we want the quality of the artwork/photo to be as high as possible. If you want photos, I always recommend Unsplash, if you want icons, use The Noun Project, and if you want logos, visit Brands of the World. If you insist on using Internet images, make sure you know how to limit your Google search to Large images (REVIEW.)

Once you have created or found the images you want on your mouse pad, make sure you Place Embedded:

Depending on the image and the orientation of your canvas/background, you may need to resize the image. I’m using a tall image on a wide background, so I’ll need to resize it a bit:

Grab one of the corner handles and pull diagonally to resize. I need to make my image much smaller than my actual canvas/page:

You can add as much as you want to your design! Add other images, icons, or text, if you wish. Have fun and be creative!

Once you are done, you should, of course, save your Photoshop file, but you will not drop off the original file!

You need to drop off an image file that is not .psd. You can use .jpg or .png, but I prefer PNG. To create that image, go to File/Export/Export As…

You shouldn’t really have to change anything in the box that pops up. Yours should look like mine (with a different design, of course.)

Once you are done and have dropped off a .png, you could, if you wish, raise your hand and ask me to check that you have completed the conditions at the top of the page. If you meet those conditions and I have enough supplies available, I will print your image and show you how to apply it to the mouse pad.