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Denotative Imagemaking 1

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Fundamentals of Graphic Design

California Institute of the Arts

4.8 (6,445 ratings) | 220K Students Enrolled

Course 1 of 5 in the Graphic Design Specialization

Graphic Design is all around us! Words and pictures—the building blocks of graphic design—are the elements that carry the majority of the content in both the digital world and the printed world. As graphic design becomes more visible and prevalent in our lives, graphic design as a practice becomes more important in our culture. Through visual examples, this course will teach you the fundamental principles of graphic design: imagemaking, typography, composition, working with color and shape... foundational skills that are common in all areas of graphic design practice. I don't just want you to watch a video of someone talking about design, I want you to MAKE design! If you want to be a designer you have to be a maker and a communicator, so this course will offer you lots of opportunities to get your hands dirty with exercises and with more practical projects. At the end of this course you will have learned how to explore and investigate visual representation through a range of image-making techniques; understand basic principles of working with shape, color and pattern; been exposed to the language and skills of typography; and understand and have applied the principles of composition and visual contrast. If you complete the course, along with its optional (but highly recommended) briefs, you will have a core set of graphic design skills that you can apply to your own projects, or to more deeply investigate a specialized area of graphic design. To succeed in this course you will need access to a computer. You can complete this course without one but it will be tougher. Access to, and a beginner's level knowledge of Adobe Creative Suite programs, such as Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign will help you, especially if you want to complete the optional briefs.

Skills You'll Learn

Creativity, Graphics, Design Theory, Color Theory

Reviews

4.8 (6,445 ratings)

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GA

Aug 21, 2018

Very interesting, I liked the format. Easy to follow, nice excercises. It's actually good to cover the basics of design, even if you are not an absolute beginner, and especially if you are self taught

KK

Oct 26, 2016

Great class. I really enjoyed all of the assignments. At times, I wish the lectures would have been a little longer so as to include more information / detail. All and all, really enjoyed the course!

From the lesson

Week 1: Fundamentals of Imagemaking

This week we are going to look at how images function in terms of conveying denotative and connotative messages, I'll show you a range of analog and digital imagemaking techniques and discuss how they work. In the first peer review assignment you'll create your own series of images, experimenting with formal techniques. Later, you'll have the opportunity to rework those images to enhance their ability to communicate an idea through connotation in an optional assignment: give it a try, it'll help you develop your communication skills as well as your formal skills!

Introduction to Imagemaking2:32

Denotative Imagemaking 14:50

Denotative Imagemaking 22:43

Taught By

Michael Worthington
Faculty, Program in Graphic Design

Transcript

What is denotative imagemaking? Well, it sounds quite complicated, but in fact, denotative imagemaking is the simplest kind of imagemaking. Let's say you're making an image of an object. Denotative imagemaking is when you make an image of that object, and it is exactly what the object is. Your image is an exact representation of that object. There's no other meaning attached to it. It literally is what it is. So for this project we're gonna look at some every day objects. And we're gonna use those as the basis for some image making techniques and skill development. So, let's start out by looking at a few good ideas for what those objects might be. So, here's a very denotative image of a pencil. It'd be quite hard for a viewer to look at this and really get any other message from this image other than the fact that it's a pencil. A lot of denotation is really trying to get the essence of an image. Trying to strip it down to its core communicative value, and that's a useful skill to have as a designer. So here for instance is a pair of glasses. Again, it'd be hard to read that as anything else. Other good objects for this project might be something like a cup. Or perhaps even a pair of scissors. Something where it's an object that has a range of possibilities, but also has a level of simplicity to the object. So you could use something like a bunch of keys. Perhaps a cork screw. Or a shoe. I'd pick something that is an everyday object, something that's just laying around the house that you can use. Something that has a level of simplicity to it in terms of how it can be represented visually, but also has the possibility for a little bit of complexity as well. So it could be a pair of headphones or the object that I'm going to use for this example, which is an apple. When you make an image of an object, a denotative image that is, the first thing that you have to really think about is, what is the essence of that object? How do we recognize this image, for instance, as an apple? Well, it's partly the shape. It's partly the color, the texture, it might be the proportions of it, and it might be that it has certain elements that help us recognize that it's an apple and not something else. It's important to understand that a single object can exist in many different states and still communicate itself. So, for instance, here's half an apple. It has very different signifiers, very different things that tell us it's an apple than the first image. But we still understand it. Now the pips and that stalk and the shape of the apple, communicate much more than just the skin of the apple and shape of the apple in the first image. And we can break that image down to an even smaller segment and it'd still be recognizable as an apple. We can even use the pieces to make up a new whole and still understand that it's an apple, and we could also change our viewpoint. If you think of yourself as a camera you can move all around the object and see it from different angles. So the apple in real life can exist in many forms or states, but apple as a representation, as an image, well, that also exists in a lot of different states, but we have to make that. We have to communicate that to an audience, and we're making marks here as designers and illustrators, so we have to understand, well, what's the essence of that object? How am I gonna make a mark on a piece of paper that's gonna communicate that to an audience. So here's our half an apple again. And we still recognize it as an apple, but now it's got a visual style to it because the image has been made by a designer instead of photographed in a realistic way. And here we can see just a part of the apple, the core of the apple, standing in for the whole. But we still understand that it's an apple, and the designer is controlling the communication here. And you can see what happens when it goes wrong. Is this an apple or a cherry? It's hard to tell, because the designer hasn't really got the quintessential aspect of the apple and communicated them to the audience. Instead there are some elements that can read as a cherry in there. So we get confused, and what's making this image confusing might just be as simple as the relationship in scale between the stalk and the body of the fruit. And part of the designers job is to control those messages, control those visual queues that might mean other things, and make them mean the thing that you want them too. And later on we're gonna look at how you can deliberately mix those messages and use them to your advantage. But for now let's stick to denotation. And let's try and unravel all the different ways that an image of a single object can be made.

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