Syllabus cover credit: J.Staley

      Publication Design
      Course Description

Holy bat guano, ladies and gentlemen, fellow designers! This may be as good as it gets, academically or professionally. When you die and go to heaven, you get to design books of literature. Pinch me so I know I'm still living!

Not only are we going to design and illustrate an anthology of short stories, we are going to print it out and case it in - a 60 page book! And the collection of short stories, is provided by the award winners of the Fiction Writing Department (yea!) Story Week Reader competition. When we are done, each member of the class will have a 60-page, illustrated book. I have died and gone to heaven!

And then there's the Zine.

Most Graphic Design students are not illustrators. But this exercise demonstrates that designers can be convincing image makers and that they can employ those images in a significant publishing effort. This class and the Wednesday section will sample 5 different image making techniques and use the most successful method to illustrate a visual solution that combines the text of a nationally syndicated writer and their own images. The result will be a graphic feature with an underlying structure and theme that commands reader attention. The class advises which spreads should be included in this semester's Zine Columbia.

Come prepared to work like your design career depends upon it.

Course Objectives
1. You will learn to design conceptually.
2. You will learn to think prolifically (large quantities of ideas).
3. You will learn the power of metaphor on a publication page.
4. You will learn about the extension of a design motif through multiple pages or screens of a project.
5. You will learn how to maximize creativity despite financial and other limitations.
6. You will move your design solutions across media from paper to web site.
7. You will learn how to work within a team.

Course Prerequisites
22-1101 History of Art I: Stone Age to Gothic
22-1102 History of Art II Renaissance to  Modern
23-1100 Foundations Of Photography
23-1101 Darkroom Workshop I
22-1210 Drawing I
22-1220 Fundamentals of 2-D Design
22-1310 Beginning Typography
22-1320 Design Lab
22-2170 History of Communications Design
22-2330 Intro. to Graphic Design
22-3340 Intermediate Typography
22-2510 Advertising Art Direction: Introduction
22-3530 Photo Communications
35-2400 Designing for the Web

Course Overview

1. THE ANTHOLOGY
Feature Design
Everyone will be assigned a choice story, just like in the real world.Your job is to make it come alive on the page. Stories vary from 675 t0 800 words - a very manageable legnth. Each story will be illustrated by at least two images one large and one small. To keep the book looking homogeneous (so it looks like one illustrator completed the whole book), a simple illustration stategy will be employed.

TOC, Introduction & Credits (i.e. the front and back matter) The stories in your book and the illustra-tions are your choice. By the end of the exercise, folios indicating 60 pages will have been asssigned to each page. The TOC needs to be designed in a way that makes the reader look forward to the entire publication. The Introduction will inspire the reader further, and the back of the book will have credits for everyone.

THE ZINE
Lesss traditional than the anthology,and surely less reverent, the Zine is a great place to grow as a designer. You will have opportunitys to work expirementally with type and images.You get great text, great images and great printing - a bonus piece for your portfolio.

Feature Design
Everyone will chose a Chuck Shepherd story.Your job is to make it come alive on a double page spread. Features vary in length from 40 to 100 words.

Illustrated feature
This exercise is about combining the right fonts and the right images with your choosen story. It's about creating a little piece of culture in 72 pages. You don't have to be an illustrtor to make engaging images, but you may need to learn some stategies to be succesful.

TOC and Cover
The TOC lists all the stories and designers contributing to this semester's effort. Each Publication Design section will name their own Zine, design its cover complete with its own masthead.

Prepress Production
Two classes will be spent on how to prepare all files for our Chicago printer. You will be issued a set of guide-lines keep near you at all times of file preparation. There will be pre-flight software to assist you in  making perfect files for our printers.