Reflection on your experience in creating the newsletter. What skills did you used in creating your newsletter? What design principles did you apply to your design? What was your learning experience?
It took me a long time to get started on the newsletter. It seemed like I just didn't know where to start. Even after I decided on a subject matter, I was very uncertain what to do first. So, I decided to pick a color scheme by selecting several swatches. Then I created my banner. Using the Mississippi State Cooperative Extension Service materials provided me a wonderful source of information and photographs. At that point, I suddenly realized I was well on my way to creating a newsletter.
As a result of this assignment, I finally learned the use of master pages. Unfortunately, I learned the hard way. When I started putting elements on the newsletter, I was not thinking about whether I was working on a master page or not. It was difficult enough to remember to separate elements into different layers: text, graphic, background, etc. When I was almost halfway finished with the newsletter, I realized I had been putting all elements on the master page. So, I decided to cut all the items from the master page and paste them onto regular pages. Unfortunately, something about this action caused Indesign to crash. In fact, it got to the point where every time I tried to do anything to a particular portion of my document, Indesign crashed. I was afraid I was going to lose all my work to a damaged file. After struggling for quite a while, I decided to create a brand new blank document, and move each element individually to either the master pages or the regular pages. This solved the problem, but cost me a lot of time.
Another problem with this project related to the use of decorative fonts for many of the design elements of my newsletter. There is a website called fontspace.com where you can download and install many free fonts. I found three fonts that consisted of small floral designs rather than letters. I used these glyphs in numerous places on my newsletter. I used one of these glyphs to create a border for my table of contents. I used another for a large background motif. I placed other small glyphs to mark the end of articles. I took my newsletter Indesign file to Office Depot to be printed, but in the finished product all of my glyphs were changed into various plain letters of the alphabet. I was very disappointed, but I did learn that I should convert Indesign files to pdf files before printing.
The peer review revealed a few changes I should make related to clearer separation between articles. Once again I was dissatisfied with the colors as they turned out in the printed piece. It did not look like what was on my computer monitor.
Ok, this project is a biggie! It is not one I would choose to do alone. I also know I probably could not have completed it with anyone other than the two folks with whom I worked. David and Cheryl demonstrate patience beyond belief with me. Thanks!
Again, this is a project that I know I am not up to completing alone. The extent to which ID3 knowledge is needed is what slows me down on such a big project. I learned from watching and coaching tips from David and Cheryl. I learned how important design is with so much information. The improper design can ruin a newsletter. The impact on the information conveyed in a newsletter is definitely affected by the design. There is a lot of layers, consistency issues, and coloring that can make or break a newsletter.
The only way I will continue to improve with design is to continue to design. I know I need to work on the consistency with all of the short-cuts available in ID3. I also discovered this takes a lot of pre-planning and re-planning after putting all of the information together. There also needs to be lots of attention to the widows, etc. These are items that I will pay more attention to now that I see the negative impact it has on a publication.
Practice, practice, practice is what I need to continue to do to improve with design and implementation. The only limit to success with ID3 and the design rules is my imagination!
Where do I begin? Loved It! Loved It! All of the pieces started coming together. The newsletter was a lot of work and was extremely time consuming: however, it was a meaningful assignment to measure our knowledge from the entire semester. I was frustrated over the little things which I knew could be added to the project, but I couldn’t remember where to find the option at first. I had to dig “a great deal” for information and techniques, but found this project both intriguing and rewarding. The peer reward opened my eyes to the fact that my design looked “very” young in nature. My project is a High School Newsletter featuring bright coloring, limited white spaces, and multiple fonts. While I thought the multiple fonts were young and fun, in reality they were overwhelming and exhausting. I updated the design by limited the number of fonts, and increasing the amount of white space. To summarize, I believe this project is a wonderful way of tying all of the course concepts and ID techniques together. I LOVED IT!
This was a BIG assignment. I am thankful Dr. Wang allowed us to work in groups if we choose. I was not in class the night this project was discussed and somehow was assigned to work with Adele Byrd and David Mora. I could not have asked for better group members. The three of us came together like a team and enjoyed designing our Olympic newsletter together.
The first decision was deciding the topic to be discussed in our newsletter. The upcoming Olympics seemed like a good choice with plenty of information to be found for the creation of the newsletter.
The newsletter format was the next decision to be made: two or three columns, placement of pictures, table of contents, etc. WOW, decisions to be made. But our group came together and made wise decisions which are shown in our newsletter.
As with all software, practice and use is the only solution to becoming proficient with the software.
Newsletter Reflection The newsletter certainly acted as a mixing pot for all the skills I’ve been developing and working on since the beginning of this class. The mix of colors, the use and styles of fonts and their attributes, the placement of articles and images on the page, the connections between pages. The newsletter was, for me, an excellent way to just throw everything into a project at once and really get an overall feel of considering everything together. Of course, this came with plenty of difficulties. At times, I felt overwhelmed by the sheer amount of possibilities of how the newsletter could turn out, forcing me to focus on how I wanted it to turn out. The end result wasn’t as well as I hoped. My worst problem, and one that has been plaguing me all semester, is my inability to relate how the item looks on the screen to how it will look on the page. The only way I’ve found to fix this problem is to assume everything that I want average size is too big and to assume everything I want large is too small, printing it, and then changing as I can. I certainly put to use all four of the design principles of contrast (in the colors, such as the green borders and the yellow underlines), repetition (the heading and subheading styles), proximity (of the images to their subjects), and alignment (again of images and text bodies, as well as alignments to borders). Again, I was often plagued with the thought “Does it look right?” to which I could only answer by just printing the thing out and adjusting as best I could. My learning experience with this newsletter was definite a hard but effective one. It’s tough to see projects so much more professional looking and feeling entirely lost as to how they got that way. But, by examining the small details, and considering the tools I’ve learned to use, I believe I’m more capable now of at least shortening the gap between my own projects and the “experienced” professional. I need more practice of course to improve my abilities, but they have certainly improved since my monochrome glossary project.
The Newsletter was my favorite of the assignments. I decided to choose a topic I was very interested in, the Unreal Engine. The Unreal Engine is used to make some of the most popular video games in the world. I settled on a design that reflected the muted, militaristic color scheme of the majority of games designed on the engine. In addition to grays and a muted yellow highlight color, I used an image of a grungy piece of paper set to ‘soft light’ to break up the background. I searched for news on topics related to or about Unreal and found a few that were interesting and used the text in my newsletter. Images were not as easy to find as I originally thought they would be, because I needed images that focused on one or two particular objects instead of a whole virtual world. I found some images and logos that I thought would work well and placed them in their respective stories. I employed different numbers of columns between stories to give a visual break between them. I feel this worked well. In my first version I forgot to add my name as editor and added that to the subsequent version, as well as a logo that was hidden in the first printing.
Newsletter Reflection The newsletter was an adventurer. I had to stop and remember everything that I have learned in InDesign and apply it. I had to first make me a master page, which made it so much easier because whatever I did to the master page could be seen on the rest of newsletter. I had problems with my widows and I also had problems with my text around my pictures. I did a lot of copying and pasting from the internet, which has its advantages and disadvantages. The text isn’t always formatted well on the internet which makes it not look so good. But it saved time and gave me more time to spend on my graphics and pictures. I also remember that my pictures needed to be of high quality so they would look good when I printed them. I didn’t copy any pictures from the internet because they are not of good quality.
It took me a long time to get started on the newsletter. It seemed like I just didn't know where to start. Even after I decided on a subject matter, I was very uncertain what to do first. So, I decided to pick a color scheme by selecting several swatches. Then I created my banner. Using the Mississippi State Cooperative Extension Service materials provided me a wonderful source of information and photographs. At that point, I suddenly realized I was well on my way to creating a newsletter.
ReplyDeleteAs a result of this assignment, I finally learned the use of master pages. Unfortunately, I learned the hard way. When I started putting elements on the newsletter, I was not thinking about whether I was working on a master page or not. It was difficult enough to remember to separate elements into different layers: text, graphic, background, etc. When I was almost halfway finished with the newsletter, I realized I had been putting all elements on the master page. So, I decided to cut all the items from the master page and paste them onto regular pages. Unfortunately, something about this action caused Indesign to crash. In fact, it got to the point where every time I tried to do anything to a particular portion of my document, Indesign crashed. I was afraid I was going to lose all my work to a damaged file. After struggling for quite a while, I decided to create a brand new blank document, and move each element individually to either the master pages or the regular pages. This solved the problem, but cost me a lot of time.
Another problem with this project related to the use of decorative fonts for many of the design elements of my newsletter. There is a website called fontspace.com where you can download and install many free fonts. I found three fonts that consisted of small floral designs rather than letters. I used these glyphs in numerous places on my newsletter. I used one of these glyphs to create a border for my table of contents. I used another for a large background motif. I placed other small glyphs to mark the end of articles. I took my newsletter Indesign file to Office Depot to be printed, but in the finished product all of my glyphs were changed into various plain letters of the alphabet. I was very disappointed, but I did learn that I should convert Indesign files to pdf files before printing.
The peer review revealed a few changes I should make related to clearer separation between articles. Once again I was dissatisfied with the colors as they turned out in the printed piece. It did not look like what was on my computer monitor.
Ok, this project is a biggie! It is not one I would choose to do alone. I also know I probably could not have completed it with anyone other than the two folks with whom I worked. David and Cheryl demonstrate patience beyond belief with me. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteAgain, this is a project that I know I am not up to completing alone. The extent to which ID3 knowledge is needed is what slows me down on such a big project. I learned from watching and coaching tips from David and Cheryl. I learned how important design is with so much information.
The improper design can ruin a newsletter. The impact on the information conveyed in a newsletter is definitely affected by the design. There is a lot of layers, consistency issues, and coloring that can make or break a newsletter.
The only way I will continue to improve with design is to continue to design. I know I need to work on the consistency with all of the short-cuts available in ID3. I also discovered this takes a lot of pre-planning and re-planning after putting all of the information together. There also needs to be lots of attention to the widows, etc. These are items that I will pay more attention to now that I see the negative impact it has on a publication.
Practice, practice, practice is what I need to continue to do to improve with design and implementation. The only limit to success with ID3 and the design rules is my imagination!
Where do I begin? Loved It! Loved It! All of the pieces started coming together. The newsletter was a lot of work and was extremely time consuming: however, it was a meaningful assignment to measure our knowledge from the entire semester. I was frustrated over the little things which I knew could be added to the project, but I couldn’t remember where to find the option at first. I had to dig “a great deal” for information and techniques, but found this project both intriguing and rewarding.
ReplyDeleteThe peer reward opened my eyes to the fact that my design looked “very” young in nature. My project is a High School Newsletter featuring bright coloring, limited white spaces, and multiple fonts. While I thought the multiple fonts were young and fun, in reality they were overwhelming and exhausting. I updated the design by limited the number of fonts, and increasing the amount of white space.
To summarize, I believe this project is a wonderful way of tying all of the course concepts and ID techniques together. I LOVED IT!
This was a BIG assignment. I am thankful Dr. Wang allowed us to work in groups if we choose. I was not in class the night this project was discussed and somehow was assigned to work with Adele Byrd and David Mora. I could not have asked for better group members. The three of us came together like a team and enjoyed designing our Olympic newsletter together.
ReplyDeleteThe first decision was deciding the topic to be discussed in our newsletter. The upcoming Olympics seemed like a good choice with plenty of information to be found for the creation of the newsletter.
The newsletter format was the next decision to be made: two or three columns, placement of pictures, table of contents, etc. WOW, decisions to be made. But our group came together and made wise decisions which are shown in our newsletter.
As with all software, practice and use is the only solution to becoming proficient with the software.
Thank you – Adele Byrd and David Mora!!
Newsletter Reflection
ReplyDeleteThe newsletter certainly acted as a mixing pot for all the skills I’ve been developing and working on since the beginning of this class. The mix of colors, the use and styles of fonts and their attributes, the placement of articles and images on the page, the connections between pages. The newsletter was, for me, an excellent way to just throw everything into a project at once and really get an overall feel of considering everything together. Of course, this came with plenty of difficulties. At times, I felt overwhelmed by the sheer amount of possibilities of how the newsletter could turn out, forcing me to focus on how I wanted it to turn out. The end result wasn’t as well as I hoped. My worst problem, and one that has been plaguing me all semester, is my inability to relate how the item looks on the screen to how it will look on the page. The only way I’ve found to fix this problem is to assume everything that I want average size is too big and to assume everything I want large is too small, printing it, and then changing as I can.
I certainly put to use all four of the design principles of contrast (in the colors, such as the green borders and the yellow underlines), repetition (the heading and subheading styles), proximity (of the images to their subjects), and alignment (again of images and text bodies, as well as alignments to borders). Again, I was often plagued with the thought “Does it look right?” to which I could only answer by just printing the thing out and adjusting as best I could.
My learning experience with this newsletter was definite a hard but effective one. It’s tough to see projects so much more professional looking and feeling entirely lost as to how they got that way. But, by examining the small details, and considering the tools I’ve learned to use, I believe I’m more capable now of at least shortening the gap between my own projects and the “experienced” professional. I need more practice of course to improve my abilities, but they have certainly improved since my monochrome glossary project.
Jeremy Wright
ReplyDeleteThe Newsletter was my favorite of the assignments. I decided to choose a topic I was very interested in, the Unreal Engine. The Unreal Engine is used to make some of the most popular video games in the world. I settled on a design that reflected the muted, militaristic color scheme of the majority of games designed on the engine. In addition to grays and a muted yellow highlight color, I used an image of a grungy piece of paper set to ‘soft light’ to break up the background.
I searched for news on topics related to or about Unreal and found a few that were interesting and used the text in my newsletter. Images were not as easy to find as I originally thought they would be, because I needed images that focused on one or two particular objects instead of a whole virtual world. I found some images and logos that I thought would work well and placed them in their respective stories.
I employed different numbers of columns between stories to give a visual break between them. I feel this worked well. In my first version I forgot to add my name as editor and added that to the subsequent version, as well as a logo that was hidden in the first printing.
Newsletter Reflection
ReplyDeleteThe newsletter was an adventurer. I had to stop and remember everything that I have learned in
InDesign and apply it. I had to first make me a master page, which made it so much easier because
whatever I did to the master page could be seen on the rest of newsletter. I had problems with my
widows and I also had problems with my text around my pictures. I did a lot of copying and pasting
from the internet, which has its advantages and disadvantages. The text isn’t always formatted well on
the internet which makes it not look so good. But it saved time and gave me more time to spend on my
graphics and pictures. I also remember that my pictures needed to be of high quality so they would look
good when I printed them. I didn’t copy any pictures from the internet because they are not of good
quality.