Attack of the ART 210

For your final project, you’ll turn in two 11 × 17 pages: one with your illustration alone, and one with your illustration placed into a front page with your article’s title (and dummy text).

There are two PDFs for each article; one for taller illustrations, and one better suited for wide illustrations. Use these templates to place your final illustration into the page layout.

• “Naming the ’00s”
• “Naming the ’00s” wide
• “The Battle Between the White House and Fox News”
• “The Battle Between the White House and Fox News” wide
• “Wall Street’s Spin Game”
• “Wall Street’s Spin Game” wide

Okay, folks, this project is the big time.

You’ll be illustrating a front page article for the New York Times Week in Review section. Choose one of these three articles and create an alternate illustration to fill the top of the page.

I’ll provide you with an Illustrator page template. Your illustration will live behind the page headlines and text.

Wall Street’s Spin Game

Naming the ’00s

The Battle Between the White House and Fox News

Here are some older composed pages, for example:

Timeline

Tuesday, November 24

Introduction to the project. Read all three articles and figure out what some of their themes are. Think about ways to convey those ideas graphically. Select one, and begin sketching your concepts.

Thursday, November 26

No class! Happy Thanksgiving!

Tuesday, December 1

Before class, complete 20 rough thumbnails of your different ideas. Before class, scan them and upload them to the Flickr group. Tighten up your sketches and narrow them down to your favorites. Upload your progress to the group.

Thursday, December 3

Execute your final design. Bring your printed design to class for a group critique. Place your design into the page template and make any necessary refinements. Upload your progress to the group.

Monday, December 7

Our final meeting time! Complete your final design. Print it alone and in the template by the end of class. Upload your final piece.

Here’s a recap of how to mock up your shirt design on a photographed model. You might need to tweak these steps if you’re working with a dark shirt.

1. Find a good tee model. I’ll use a photo by Flickr user seventh.samurai from the Threadless Blank Tee Photos pool.
   
2. We’ll need a grayscale version of the model to make a displacement map. Open the model picture in Photoshop, select Image → Mode → Grayscale. Bump up the shadows by pressing ⌘L and moving the middle slider. Save this as a Photoshop document. Hang onto it for later.
   
3. Open the model image in Photoshop. Copy the Background layer and, using the polygonal lasso tool, select the t-shirt only.
   
4. Click “Add layer mask” at the bottom of the layers palette to mask out the model and background. Hang on to this layer for later.
5. If you need to change the shirt color, ⌘-click the shirt mask to load it as a selection. Click on the Background layer and press ⌘U for Hue, Saturation, and Lightness. Click the “Colorize” checkbox and play with the sliders to get the shirt color you want.
   
6. Open your t-shirt design. If it’s in Illustrator, select the design and copy it to the clipboard. If it’s in Photoshop, select all your design’s layers.
7. Paste your art into the model image in Photoshop as a Smart Object
   
   (or, if the design’s in Photoshop, select its layers, press ⌘E to merge them, and drag the resulting layer onto the model image). Press ⌘T to change the size and placement.
   
8. Play around with blending modes for your design’s layer. Depending on the design colors and the shirt color, different blending modes will look better.
   
9. Select Filters → Distort → Displace. 3 is a good starting place for both settings.
   
   Click OK, then select your grayscale model image. Your design should bend around the folds on the shirt a bit.
10. Now to add the shadows back in: drag your masked tee layer to the top and set its blending mode to Multiply. Adjust the opacity to taste.
    

There you go! Fancy model in your fancy design.

Ooey Gooey by Jen Stark

Project 4: T-shirt series

Create a series of three T-shirts. The shirts share a theme, color, and design concept. Design one with an illustration, one with a type design, and one with an allover pattern.

Chewbika by Black T-Shirt

This one’s completely open. Go nuts! You can use any cut of T-shirt you like. Except: no Live Trace.

Go to the usual sources for inspiration. Check out Rumplo, Threadless, Threadless Select, and Threadless TypeTees, but don’t get hung up on T-shirt sites. Draw from the rest of the world too! Can your shirts reflect your tastes in publication design? Packaging? Nature?

Minimal My Ass T-shirt by Wasted German Youth

Final presentation

Present your designs like the two examples below: mocked up on a model on one side, and the art alone on the other. The Threadless Submission Kit has Photoshop and Illustrator templates, and this Flickr group has images of T-shirt models you can use for your mockups.

Frowns Are Flesh by Geoff Mcfetridge

And You Don’t Stop by Paul O’Sullivan

Timeline

Tuesday, Novemeber 11

Present project brief. Begin research, exploration, and sketches.

Thursday, November 13

Before class, complete your initial sketches and post them to the Flickr group. In class, print a copy for small group critiques, then begin work on your final designs.

Tuesday, November 18

Before class, post your progress to the Flickr group. In class, work on your final pieces.

Thursday, November 20

Bring prints of your project for a final in-class crit.

Tuesday, November 25

Final printed project due at the beginning of class.

(This post is nicked from Nicole at The Friends of Graphic Design.)

In the next two weeks, you’ll see many huge posters in the Art Annex beckoning you to various classrooms to engage in various activities.

Go to those classrooms! Participate in those activities!

The students of Art 470, Contemporary Design Practice, have worked together in groups for the last three weeks to develop these interactive projects based on the theories of Social Practice Art.

This is a fun chance to get to know some of your peers while exercising your creativity, daydreaming a bit, and getting rid of some old confessions.

“Where would you rather be right now?” Join the project Anywhere But Here in Art Annex 170 from noon to 2 pm on Wednesday, October 21 to answer that question and make a flag. We promise cookies.

On Thursday, October 22, come Release Your Inner Monster at a drawing workshop.

On Thursday, October 29, come divulge your juiciest secrets (anonymously, of course) with Confessions of a Graphic Designer.

There are loads of other projects: watch for more details as I get the dates confirmed. Many of these project promise edible treats.

Stop in! Socialize! Draw with crayons.