Inside Graphic Design

Have you ever wondered how logos are designed? Are you interested in learning more about the different types of lettering? Well, graphic design is a great place to start. Here at the Girls Academic Leadership Academy, Graphic Design is taught by Jennifer King and is offered as a course for high school students, as well as a middle school elective. A second course for the class is on its way, which will be offered to students in Graphic Design currently.

Since the beginning of the year, students have carried a sketchbook with them to either plan out some of their projects or just to doodle in. Some of their projects that started out with a design in their sketchbook include name logos, Lichtenstein portraits, comic panels, and album designs. They have also created their own characters in their sketchbooks.

Every day, the first thing students do is look at the prompt on the whiteboard and draw on a card to submit to Ms.King as an attendance method of sorts. The prompts can be anything, from drawing yourself as a flower to drawing yourself in a treehouse. Sometimes students get to take more time on their cards and make them a bit special. For example, students did a Christmas attendance card, where they drew themselves in a winter wonderland or drew what they thought of when the phrase “winter wonderland” came up. Some of these cards were featured in GALA’s Winter Concert 2021 video.

Graphic Design students have done multiple collages. Their first collage project was a letter collage, where they found letters from magazines to create their collages. Two of their collage projects include their alphabet collages (both lowercase and uppercase letters). They started out with the uppercase alphabet collage, where students cut out letters from the alphabet, cut up the letters, and glued them into their sketchbook, creating new letters with the existing ones. The lowercase alphabet collage was the same idea just with lowercase letters from the alphabet. Students have also done projects like drawing portraits, food packaging drawings, comic panels, and a history project on graphic designers and types of graphic design.

Currently, students are working on multiple different projects, the latest being their album designs. Students designed the cover of an album for an artist/band, existing or created along with the project, and made a vinyl record. Students are now working on their mandala collages. They are using photos from magazines, scrap papers, and pieces of maps to create their mandala collages. Some students sketched out the design of the mandala, then found images to glue onto the collage. Some also decided to color parts of the collage using markers or watercolor.

The students of Graphic Design are constantly working on projects, they are constantly coming up with new ideas for each project. Students in the Graphic Design classroom can always be seen working on something, whether they have watercolors at their desk or are cutting up magazines for their latest collage.

If you love creating designs or new characters, Graphic Design might just be the class for you. Hopefully, this article gives you more information on what types of projects the Graphic Design students do on a day-to-day basis and makes you want to take the class in the upcoming years!