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Graphic Design: Book Cover and Film Poster Design in response to Edgar Allan Poe's "Silence"

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Graphic Design: Book Cover and Film Poster Design in response to Edgar Allan Poe's "Silence"

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Wacky Repurposed Buildings and Stamp Design

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Wacky Repurposed Buildings and Stamp Design

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High Quality

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Higher* Quality

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As this was a pilot for my short course, the importance of its success mattered a great deal to me as a teacher. There was many issues though as it progressed, the response of the students to the subject matter, the correct process in which to complete the final stop motion. In the end after weeks of trying and failing at many different strategies, a new and improved plan needed to be put into place.
The project was a struggle to work through. The students' interest in the project was diminished and we tried different methods to keep some light of interest burning. The end project is similar to the original plan, but instead of it being individual stop motions or even multiple groups, in the end due to time constraints, it became a whole-class project. This led to a whole class effort too both in myself and the students, not just to complete the project but to revive the overall atmosphere surrounding the class. The students responded well to the new plan and the last two weeks involved a major turnaround in their attitude and motivation to learn and most importantly to create the stop motion. This is a scheme that I would prepare more for across the board under planning, investigating, exploring, making. Everything!

Although I'm somewhat happy with the final group outcome, I realise the many mistakes made along the way led us down a difficult path which all of us were dilapidated with. I would rate this scheme 3-4/10.

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Identify the changes that you would make to the scheme to achieve better quality student work.  Address under the following headings

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Identify the changes that you would make to the scheme to achieve better quality student work.  Address under the following headings

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The subject matter for this scheme was Folklore. Investigating, gathering and sharing were key elements of the subject matter to develop understanding. In the beginning of the scheme there was a lot of individual gathering which did lead to some fun and informative storytelling and sharing.  The morale of this enthusiasm was lost though in the coming weeks through my own fault in teaching strategies that didn't suit the groups learning needs.

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This scheme involved investigating and exploring through illustrating and drawing. I feel I wasted a lot of time on the illustration aspect and this led to the students lack of interest. We spent weeks on this element, without any introduction formally to the digital aspect. My lack of clarity in instructing tasks and demos led to a poor outcome of work.

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Again, my planning and preparation was very weak and in turn i wasted a lot of classtime. It was only in the last few weeks that the project came together and this happened through planning and preparation for making. I really regret not introducing more artists and animations to the group.

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The pacing and timing was left very, very thin for this project, with only the last few weeks to make and bring all the elements together. I feel that the students were very eager to complete the work, only reason being that it would be out of the way for them.

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Medium Quality

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Low Quality

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High

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Medium

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Low

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Overall I feel this was one of my more successful schemes in terms of the proposed outcomes coinciding with the final pieces.
I felt that each student was motivated and responded and interpreted the passage to a creative and informative standard that led to an overall level of high quality work.
In comparison to my last SP and the unsuccessful poster design project, I ensured the students worked towards COMMUNICATING through their designs, both the book and the poster. I realise upon reflection that the main success lies in the students taking ownership of their work and guiding them in critique moreso than telling them about critical design decisions to be made.

I would rate out of ten the success of this project overall as a 7-8.

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Identify the changes that you would make to the scheme to achieve better quality student work.  Address under the following headings

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Identify the changes that you would make to the scheme to achieve better quality student work.  Address under the following headings

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The subject matter for both final learning outcomes of this scheme was 'Silence' a short story by Edgar Allan Poe. When first introduced to the piece the students responded well to identifying key themes and imagery from the passage through reading and discussion in the group.

Post inspection, it was pointed out that when turning the project towards the poster design element, the subject matter was lost in the processes of digital image making. Instead of reintroducing the passage and further reviewing, the students were left working on images that had little to no context. In doing this, the students technical image-making skills were of a quality standard, but the content of the images was incredibly weak. This was problematic and would lead to communicating the wrong message on the posters, if any message was to be received by the viewer at all.
If I could revisit this time with the benefit of hindsight I would treat the beginning of the poster design as the beginning of a new project, and reintroducing and investigating the subject matter to ensure a fresh and healthy direction towards image-making and designing takes place.

Below are a comparison between first images took and final for the poster. The image on the left was (with my direction) created using light and shadow to give a sense of the overall passage theme of darkness. The second image was recreated by the student himself. It responds more directly to the passage's sense of dread and anticipation. It's edgy, fiery, and the strong contrasts lead to a technically stronger image. I'd have rather begun with showing the students how to create strong images like the second from the beginning.

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A lot of the development and investigating was done through discussion strategies at the beginning. I found though that the students themselves grew tired of talking about the investigating and were ready and willing to start developing and drawing/figuring out concepts for themselves.
I reflect on how I treated the talented class with little maturity and understanding their own levels of ability. In my head at the time, I believe I handed out a lot of the answers to them instead of allowing them to think for themselves.

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Harry Clarke was one of the main contextual artists investigated for this project.
Below is an image we discussed and critiqued in relation to the book cover designs. We looked to Harry Clarke's illustrations and investigated how he responded to Poe's writings to articulate an image.

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High Quality

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Medium Quality

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Lower Quality

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This was a bitter sweet scheme. Extremely bitter with the unsucessful quality of the building construction, but I felt the stmap designs were of a higher quality. the students keyed in and used their technical skills to produce the stamp. Although, upon completion of the stamp and review, the class discussed how the stamps could actually resemble location postcards, which was an interesting concept for me. The class itself was very open and insightful towards the scheme, yet the scheme itself I felt at times didn't respond or develop towards this insightfulness.

I would rate the success of this scheme 4-5/10

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Identify the changes that you would make to the scheme to achieve better quality student work.  Address under the following headings

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Identify the changes that you would make to the scheme to achieve better quality student work.  Address under the following headings

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I really believe the students enjoyed working with this subject matter as they had an opportunity to both reinvent and have fun! Repurposing the old Bannatyne Rank Silo, Dock Road, Limerick or investigating 'Adaptive Reuse' was a really exciting concept in the beginning stages of the project and as a class we had some very intelligent discussions on the benefits of adaptive reuse in the community. Being in close proximity to the building itself was also a great aspect as we were able to visit the site, produce observational drawings and really interpret the overall scale of the building the students were repurposing. Using the concept development table of 'Expected Unexpected Bizzare' or EUBs for short, really opened up the students minds to develop ideas that were wild and wacky.

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Sample EUB

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My downfall in teaching this scheme was with bringing the students to a high level of construction and making in the first outcome. The students were supposed to be creating a cardboard sculpture and instead because of my lack of effective evaluation of work, we ended up producing half decorated cardboard boxes. It was a huge disappointment and I do regret allowing it to happen. The students deserved clear and direct instructions, samples of what was expected in each class and what they got didn't cover those at all. They were poorly led by my teaching strategies and in turn produced very low quality work.

The stamp making was more of a success in my opinion as the students used and developed their technical drawing skills to a great level. I did learn from my mistakes with the first construction element and introduced each following class with demos and samples of expectations.
I would if doing this again spend more time doing very quick exercises as a way of assessing if the students understood exactly what I was looking for as an outcome.

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I felt I led informative presentations of work and samples to the class and brought in a lot of familiar examples of adaptive reuse on the way.
I would change though how I actually brought the class through the project by means of the critical studies. I again answered most of the questions myself and at times, too 'babied' them instead of letting them think for themselves. I needed more than one presentation every few classes. I should have prepared a constant routine of discussion-clarifying tasks-making-reviews with the class. I also believe that the downfall of the construction was also because of a lack of sculptor/sculpture examples.

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The timing and pace of this project turned right towards the end, but was disastrous at the start. Everything about the construction element was slow and tedious and although we were supposed to revisit and fix/finish our buildings there wasn't time because of all the waste at the start. Very dissapointed overall, although the students worked very efficiently on the stamp design.

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Many of the students images for the book cover were similar in the theme Clarke envisioned from the story. One in particular really stands out and is from my point of view a highly creative response to the passage. The student focused on personification of the theme and from there developed thematic characters based on the key themes drawn from the passage.
I would have liked to have introduced a further variety of artists who work to a similar style of Harry Clarke to display to the students a higher level of contextual art. I did display the influences and influencers of Clarke, but I feel I should have discussed and critiqued them more with the class, but not in an overbearing way where were once again trapped in a lifeless classroom where all we did was discuss.

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The pace and timing was steady for this project and the class group were very capable of sticking to deadlines.
The only downfall was that in the poster design, we were left with three working computers for the poster making. If it wasn't a class of 8 students this would not have been any way plausible. I did find there was a delay in terms of each student being able to complete his poster through the sharing of computers but this was only because we had a timetable for each class. I think as well, it would have been easier if I had prepared myself for an accurate time-management method that ensured each student progressed and worked while waiting to use the computers.