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Instructional Technology & Learning Sciences - 4260/5240/6240

Course Description for Instructional Graphics Production II

  • You'll learn and apply the principles and elements related to graphic design and instructional technology!
  • You'll become familiar with the more powerful "under the hood" features of Photoshop!
  • You'll have the opportunity for real world experiences, where you produce graphics that will be used on campus, or in local organizations and businesses!
  • You'll learn how our brains process imagery, and how graphic design principles take advantage of those processes.
  • You'll have the freedom to be creative with creating portfolio exhibits you can share with potential employers.
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Student Work: Bethany
This course will provide you the opportunity to gain more advanced knowledge of the graphic design process in relation to producing instructional graphics.  First, we'll focus on principles and elements of design, related to creating well designed instructional, public relations and marketing materials.  Second, we'll focus on the use of Adobe Photoshop to build and design those graphic projects.

​You'll be mastering a set of required skills, but at the same time you will have the opportunity to chart a course through those skills that will best fit the needs of your desired profession. The required skills build upon, and then go beyond those learned in the ITLS 4230/5230/6230 Instructional Graphics Production 1 - Beginning Photoshop & Design course.   This course will take you through the more powerful mechanisms "under the hood" that make Photoshop a premiere tool for graphics production.

Assignments will be project-based, real world experiences, and you will be evaluated on clean, convincing, and effective application of learned skills, use of design principles and elements, originality, and visual creativity.

You will come away from the class with a portfolio you can use in job searches after graduation.  You will have the opportunity, through real-world projects, to have your work displayed on campus digital displays, or produced in print and used by the college or departments within the college.
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Student Work: Taylor
Course Goals:
​LEARN fundamental graphic design principles and generalizations
  • Understand and apply principles of instructional and graphic design, color, and typography.
    • Review in depth the principles of contrast, repetition, alignment, proximity
    • Learn new skills using typography, color, composition rules, balance, dynamic tension, figure/ground, rhythm, pattern, texture, perspective, depth, visual weight, motion, and more in your designs
    • Learn how to organize for the best visual perception, how to direct the eyes, how to reduce realism to get your message across quickly, how to make the abstract concrete, how to clarify complexity, and how to charge up emotions in images.
DEVELOP specific skills and competencies in Photoshop, Bridge, and Camera Raw
  • ​Understand how to use channels for masking, including the calculations and apply image commands
  • Understand advanced methods of adjusting luminance (color, value) in images         
  • Use multiple ways to sharpen an image to bring out detail, or blur sections of your image to create focus
  • Understand how to use the pen tool in depth, create vector masks, and more                 
  • Create and use styles, brushes, patterns, shapes, gradients, etc. Use the presets manager to organize, load, and save them.
  • Use the transformation tools: warping, rotating, skewing, scaling, liquifying
  • Use multiple ways to convert an image to black and white, and use this knowledge to also enhance your color images
  • Create and use smart objects effectively, (i.e., creating Photoshop templates)
  • Use the full power of Camera Raw tools to manipulate and adjust images
  • Understand more deeply multiple ways to deal with noise and detail in images
  • Understand more deeply how and when to use the blending modes
  • Use Photoshop's 3D drawing and rendering tools
  • Use Photoshop's video editing tools
Develop your creative capacity (CREATE) as you design instructional graphics and products related to your field and interests
  • ​You will have opportunities to work on real world design projects
  • You will have voice and choice in how you create your assigned graphic design project
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Student Work: Ford
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Student Work: Chelsey
IMPORTANT!
This is an advanced Photoshop class! To take this course, you should have first taken ITLS 4230/5230/6230 - Instructional Graphic Production 1 - Beginning Photoshop and Graphic Design. If you wish to take this course, you must first be comfortable with the skills taught in that course.  It is available online here. If you wish to go through that course on your own to prepare for this class - please contact me first!
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Required Text
Visual Language for Designers: Principles for Creating Graphics that People Understand
Within every picture is a hidden language that conveys a message, whether it is intended or not. This language is based on the ways people perceive and process visual information. By understanding visual language as the interface between a graphic and a viewer, designers and illustrators can learn to inform with accuracy and power.

Visual Language for Designers includes:
  • How to organize graphics for quick perception
  • How to direct the eyes to essential information
  • How to use visual shorthand for efficient communication
  • How to make abstract ideas concrete
  • How to best express visual complexity
  • How to charge a graphic with energy and emotion
Required Software
Adobe Photoshop Creative Cloud
You need to have access to Photoshop Creative Cloud to take this course
  • Utah State University students and faculty: USU has licensed the Adobe Creative Cloud for you - it's free while you are a USU student. To obtain your copy of the Adobe creative cloud apps, you must request it at this link: AdobeCC.usu.edu
  • To all others using this site as an open education resource to learn Photoshop: It costs $9.99 per month for the student photography plan (Photoshop & Lightroom - which includes Bridge, which is all you'll need for this course).  If you're taking other courses that require other Adobe products, you may wish to purchase the monthly subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud at $19.99 per month for the entire design suite.
​Digital Storage Backup - Back up your files!
Keeping a backup of your files somewhere other than your computer is a great habit to get into. I recommend that you keep a copy of your files on an external drive, a flash drive, and/or online file storage "clouds" such as Google Drive or Dropbox.com. Both provide free storage as well as higher quantities of storage space available to purchase.  USU students who have set up an aggiemail.usu.edu account have unlimited storage provided through Google Drive.  USU also offers students 50GB of free storage through Box.USU.edu.  Just log in with your A-Number and strong password.
Some great optional books!
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The Non-Designers Design Book (4th Edition) by Robin Williams

This was the required text for the ITLS 5230/6230 course - Beginning Photoshop and Graphic Design. If you're jumping into this course without having taken the pre-requisite course, then I'd strongly suggest purchasing this and reading through it. It's inexpensive, and a great read! A tried and true, easy-to-read guide to design terms and techniques from a "level 0" perspective. If your attitude is "I can't even draw a stick figure, how can I possibly design" then this is the book for you. This author's philosophy, introduced in the first few pages of the book, is that learning design can be simplified to 3 main steps: 
  1. Learn the principles (contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity, typography, and color)
  2. Recognize when you're not using them
  3. Apply the principles
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Information Design Workbook: Graphic approaches, solutions, and inspiration + 30 case studies by Kim Baer
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Opening with a very brief history followed by an instructive breakdown of the discipline, readers get an intimate understanding of the complexities of crafting information design to effectively improve communication both functionally and aesthetically. The back half of the book contains a wide range of case studies from design firms around the world so designers can see the techniques previously outlined in the first half of the book. The author also critiques and explains why the design is successful in terms of formal quality (Aesthetics) and function (How does it improve communication?).
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Before & After: How to Design Cool Stuff 1st Edition, by John McWade

Before and After magazine's focus on clarity, simplicity, and elegance has won it legions of fans--fans who will welcome this second volume of the definitive Before and After Page Design by John McWade. Truly an icon of the graphic design community, his insistence on approaching design not as mere decoration but as an essential form of communication is vividly apparent in this cohesive primer on page design and layout. And you could not hope for a better, more qualified teacher. McWade shows readers how to arrange and present information using today's powerful graphics tools. Readers will learn how to design single-page and multi-page documents, brochures, and ads; why one typeface works better than another; and much more. Best of all, they'll discover how to think visually transforming the images in their heads into something that communicates effectively on the page.
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Before & After: Graphics for Business 1st Edition, by John McWade

As the founder of the very first desktop publishing company (PageLab) and the publisher of Before and Aftermagazine, John McWade knows graphics. He also knows business–and the depth of that knowledge comes through in every page of this handsome primer on creating effective business graphics! In these pages, a master of the medium shows you how to use today's tools to create business graphics that communicate your business's identity in a variety of forms. From creating charts, graphs, calendars, and maps to designing newsletters, creating various types of stationery, coming up with an identity, using photos to convey a message, and creating gift certificates, Yellow Pages ads, coupons, forms, and more, this elegantly designed volume shows you how to present your business to the world graphically. Best of all, you'll discover how to think visually–ensuring that your perceptions of your business are the world's perception of your business through the effective use of business graphics.
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Before & After Page Design 1st Edition, by John McWade

Before and After magazine's focus on clarity and simplicity and its insistence on approaching design not as mere decoration but as an essential form of communication have won it legions of fans. If you're among them, you'll welcome the first book from B and A's founder and publisher. John McWade walks his own talk, bringing you a beautifully clear, cohesive, and elegant primer on page design. You'll learn by example how to design single-page and multi-page publications, brochures, and advertisements, applying the principles design professionals live by. You'll also learn how to choose the right font for your project, why one typeface works better than another, and lots more. Best of all, you'll discover how to think visually--transforming the images in your head into documents that communicate effectively on the page.
About This Class
This course was developed specifically for a 15 week college semester and is currently being conducted as a blended face-to-face & online course for Utah State University students.

Nathan Smith
nathan.smith@usu.edu
Subject: Advanced Photoshop and Graphic Design Course

This page was last updated January 23, 2019
Creative Commons License
Advanced Photoshop & Graphic Design by Nathan Smith is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.