Unit 1: Introduction to Design and Layout
1.1 – Design, Introduction to graphic design – goal, audience, venue and budget.
1.2 – Design elements – line, shape, value, format, texture-visual and tactile, type, color, and space-negative and positive.
1.3 – Design Principles, Balance – Symmetrical and asymmetrical – Optical Centre, Unity, Emphasis, Contrast, rhythm, proportion and harmony.
1.4 – Layout, definition, stages of layout – Visualization, Thumbnails, Rough layout and Comprehensive/final layout.
Unit 2: Typography
2.1 – Measurements followed in typography – Point and Pica. Anatomy of types –- X height, Ascender and descender, base line and body width. Parts of type face – arm, stroke, bracket, bowl, terminal, serif, hairline, count, stem and spine.
2.2 – Type groups – sanserif, serif, novelty/decorative, black letter and roman old style, type face, type font, type family, type style, modern typefaces, display types, true type and open type. Initials – raised and dropped.
2.3 – Importance of Legibility and Readability, Vector fonts and bitmapped fonts, Logos and trademarks.
Unit 3: Colour Dynamics
3.1 – Fundamentals of Colour, visible spectrum, primary, secondary and tertiary colours, subtractive colour and additive colour theory, process colour, spot colour/pantone, tint, shade and tones.
3.2 – Colour wheel – purpose and diagram, monochromatic, analogue, complimentary, split complementary and triad colors.
3.3 – Psychological effects of colours – warm and cool colours
3.4 – Setting the environment for Colour works – Color Temperature.
Unit 4: Page Layout
4.1 – Style of house, style of work, grids, guides and columns, templates, master page, style sheet, caption, quotes, headers and footers, folio, headlines, sub headlines and margins.
4.2 – Handling originals/photo – cropping, scaling and skewing.
4.3 – Imposition scheme – half sheet work, sheet work /work and turn, work and tumble and work and twist.
4.4 – Layout format for Magazine, Newspaper, and Bookwork.
Unit 5: Print Publishing
5.1 – Dummy preparation, proof reading, proof reading marks, printers mark – crop, trim, bleed slug and registration, considerations for print production.
5.2 – Designing of other printed products – brochure, leaf let, visiting card, invitation, booklet and folders.
5.3 – Feasibility of various graphic designing and pagination software (Photoshop, Illustrator, CorelDraw, Adobe In-design, Quark Xpress or FOSS)
5.4 – Understanding file formats – TIFF, JPEG, PDF, GIF, EPS and PNG.
Text Book / Reference Book:
1. Fundamentals of copy and layout (third edition): National text book company, Illinois,
USA
2. Exploring Publication design: by Poppy Evans – Publisher: Thomson – Delmar learning;
UK
3. Exploring Typography: by Tova Rabinowitz – Publisher: Thomson – Delmar learning; UK
4. Making digital type look good-Bob Gordon-Thames and Hudson
5. Typography and typesetting- van Nostrand Reinhold,Newyork
6. Magazine Design-Stacey king-Rockport Publishers.