Graphic Design and Visual Communications Standards and Skills - Under Review

Skills:

1. Demonstrate analysis of the historical significance of communication through illustration, print, and art, assessing their roles in the development and progression of advanced civilizations.
2. Describe the role of communication and printing, including moveable type, in the rapid dissemination of information ushering in the Age of Enlightenment.
3. Explain the significance of communication and printing in relation to the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.
4. Apply the regulatory roles of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in advertising practices and consumer protection, as well as the functions of the Copyright Office and Trademark Office in intellectual property rights and their application to graphic design and visual communications practices.
5. Assess the impact of the internet and social media on modern graphic design and visual communications within contemporary marketing and communication strategies.

Skills:

1. Explain and apply principles of design, including contrast, repetition, alignment, proportion, proximity, balance, movement, rhythm, emphasis, pattern, unity, and gestalt principles.
2. Explain and apply elements of design, including line, shape, form, color, value, texture, space, and size.
3. Incorporate the rules of basic color theory to fine art, design, digital media, and imaging projects.
4. Demonstrate and apply an understanding of the color wheel and its component parts, including primaries, secondaries, tertiaries, compliments, and color schemes.
5. Apply the seven designations of color contrast by Johannes Itten.
6. Explain the difference between additive and subtractive color principles and describe color modes, such as CMYK, RGB, grayscale, and spot colors.
7. Explain the fundamentals of how light and paper characteristics affect color perception.
8. Examine the history of typography, including its origins, the development of typefaces, and how technological advances, e.g., the invention of movable type and digital fonts, have influenced design.
9. Apply principles of typography including legibility, hierarchy, alignment, contrast, emphasis, consistency, and whitespace to project.
10. Demonstrate principles of font usage, e.g., spacing, kerning, tracking, leading, horizontal, and vertical scale, line length, and alignments.
11. Identify type selection using font classification, styles, and families and explain their relationship to a design project.
12. Analyze how different font choices affect the emotional impact and effectiveness of a marketing campaign or brand identity.
13. Explain and apply principles of visual hierarchy in composition to create visually engaging designs.
14. Explain and apply principles of composition in both photographic and cinematic contexts, e.g., aspect ratio, rule of thirds, foreground, background, color, tone, contrast, framing, depth of field, field of view, and white balance.
15. Using industry standard software, demonstrate improving color and tonal balance, retouch, modify, and correct images.
16. Compare raster and vector images, identify their distinct characteristics and applications.
17. Explain how concepts, such as resolution, scalability, color modes, and file formats relate to raster and vector images and impact image choice.
18. Read, convert, and measure using the pica and point system to specify measurements in print design layouts.
19. Apply accurate weight and measurement techniques and basic mathematical principles in design tasks to ensure accuracy and precision.
20. Evaluate the intended message and target audience of a project ensuring that design elements effectively communicate the intended message and resonate with the audience’s expectations.

Skills:

1. Demonstrate understanding of photography genres by explaining the distinguishing characteristics of commercial, journalistic, portrait, and fine art photography.
2. Demonstrate proficiency in using different types of cameras and lenses, e.g., DSLR, mirrorless, smartphone cameras, and their respective functionalities to achieve specific creative effects.
3. Identify and utilize manual camera settings such as aperture and shutter speed to achieve specific photographic effects, contrasting them with automatic settings.
4. Explain and apply lighting techniques, including natural, supplemental, and flash lighting, to optimize photo quality for various design contexts.
5. Photograph a variety of subjects using appropriate photographic principles, styles, and techniques to enhance design projects.
6. Integrate photography into design projects by selecting and incorporating images that align with design objectives, branding, and audience needs.
7. Utilize digital editing software, e.g., Photoshop, to enhance photographs, applying techniques such as cropping, color correction, and retouching to achieve desired design outcomes.
8. Analyze how photographic composition, e.g., framing and perspective, affects the overall design and visual narrative of a project.
9. Evaluate and refine photographic choices through feedback and critique sessions to enhance the effectiveness of design solutions.
10. Explain ethical practices in photography, including copyright issues, permissions for image use, and the importance of authentic representation in design.

Skills:

1. Demonstrate applications of marketing and advertising principles, such as target audience, demographics, psychographics, branding, and advertising campaigns.
2. Apply legal and ethical considerations for using third-party content, such as copyright, permissions, and licensing, e.g., creative commons, public domain, intellectual property, derivative work, commercial use, attribution, work for hire, fair use, fair dealing, and stock images.
3. Identify when and how to obtain permission to use images of people and locations.
4. Apply basic project management concepts, including project scope, scope creep, cloud utilization, and file management.
5. Apply practices of scheduling project workflow, managing both personal time and team time allocations, to optimize productivity and project efficiency.
6. Demonstrate estimating costs, establishing a budget, and producing a quotation for the customer.
7. Develop and implement a comprehensive project plan, defining the roles and responsibilities of the creative team, establishing project timelines and goals, and providing regular updates to the clients.
8. Maintain organized project documentation, including contracts, invoices, and design drafts.
9. Demonstrate presentation skills, presenting original design pieces that meet client objectives and timeline.
10. Monitor and assess the performance of yourself, other individuals, and team progress to make improvements or take corrective action.
11. Identify and mitigate potential delays or obstacles in the design process and implement cost-effective solutions.
12. Demonstrate fluency with cloud-based client proofing systems and procedures.

1. Explain and apply key steps in the design process: 1) Understand project purpose; 2) research and analyze; 3) establish goals and objectives; 4) brainstorm ideas; 5) develop sketches or prototypes; 6) refine and iterate; and 7) finalize and produce.
2. Demonstrate active listening skills by giving full attention to others, taking the time to understand their points, and asking appropriate questions to meet job expectations and production methods.
3. Create original copy and develop draft-quality drawings, including layout dummies, prototypes, thumbnails, roughs, comps, storyboards, and site maps.
4. Develop and maintain a sketchbook to foster creativity, explore ideas, solve problems, and document the creative journey.
5. Assess whether content is relevant to the purpose, audience, audience needs, user experience, and has an appropriate design for target devices.
6. Develop a cohesive brand identity by creating visual elements such as logos, color schemes, and typography that align with brand messaging.
7. Design for accessibility by ensuring interactive elements are user-friendly and comply with accessibility standards, e.g., Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) across devices.
8. Examine typography considerations for digital media, including responsive design, web-safe fonts, and readability across devices.
9. Explore interactive typography, including hover effects, animated text, and how typography can guide user interaction in digital designs.
10. Apply criteria used to analyze and critique a product and participate in the critique process from both the client’s and designer’s perspective.
11. Implement feedback received during critique sessions to refine and finalize design solutions for production.
12. Demonstrate illustration skills using various illustration styles: create a self-portrait, an illustration using perspective, or an illustration demonstrating interpretation and conceptualization.
13. Integrate photography into design projects by selecting and incorporating appropriate images that enhance the visual storytelling and align with project objectives and branding.
14. Demonstrate copy editing skills by proofreading for grammar and spelling errors, including use of proofreading marks.
15. Demonstrate the use of peripheral devices, such as scanners, external hard drives, printers, tablets, and cameras.
16. Demonstrate techniques used to monitor production quality.
17. Evaluate project success, seeking customer and team member feedback, and plan for future improvements.

Skills:

1. Identify and manipulate elements of the software interface including options bar, menus, panels, toolbar, and artboards.
2. Apply appropriate document settings for printed and onscreen images, e.g., width/height, orientation, artboards, resolution, color mode, bit depth, and background.
3. Select and configure application preferences utilizing units and rulers, guides, and grids.
4. Demonstrate opening or importing images from a file, camera, scanner, or using Adobe Camera Raw interface.
5. Apply basic auto-correction methods and tools to repair and reconstruct images, e.g., healing tools, clone tools, content-aware tools, and liquify.
6. Use non-printing design tools in the interface to aid in design or workflow to navigate a document, e.g., panning, zooming, and rotating canvas.
7. Demonstrate placing assets in a document, e.g., embedding, linking, and relinking.
8. Demonstrate manipulating and scanning images and materials into appropriate file formats and resolutions.
9. Determine and set the active foreground and background color, e.g., color picker, swatches, eyedropper tool, and hexadecimal value.
10. Demonstrate use of, and organize, gradients, e.g., gradient panel, editing color and transparency stops, and radial and elliptical gradients.
11. Demonstrate creation of, and organize, swatches, e.g., grouping, creating, importing, and exporting.
12. Create, use, edit, and organize brushes, styles, and patterns.
13. Demonstrate use of layers to manage design elements and complex projects, e.g., adding, deleting, merging, flattening, hiding/showing, locking/unlocking, duplicating, renaming layers, and creating layer groups.
14. Use opacity and blending modes to modify layer visibility.
15. Create, apply, and manipulate masks, layer masks, and clipping masks.
16. Identify the difference between destructive or non-destructive editing.
17. Demonstrate essential image editing techniques, such as cropping, expanding, resizing, and resampling.
18. Demonstrate making, managing, and manipulating selections using a variety of tools.
19. Modify, refine, and save selections using various methods, e.g., keyboard modifiers, feather, expand, contract, inverse, select and mask workspace, refine hair, add to, and subtract from selection, deselect, save, and load as channels.
20. Demonstrate the use of illustration software tools, palettes, options, clipping masks, and compound paths to manipulate and edit images.
21. Apply photographic changes to images using tools and adjustments, e.g., burn tool, dodge tool, smudge tool, blur tool, sharpen tool, desaturate options, and photo filters.
22. Demonstrate color correction and grading skills to enhance the overall color balance, color mode, bit depth, gamut, and CMYK vs. RGB vs. grayscale.
23. Apply color correction to re-purpose an existing photo/illustration that was used in a CMYK printed project previously, to remove moire’ pattern.
24. Demonstrate rotating, flipping, modifying individual layers, objects selections, groups, and graphical elements, e.g., transforming, warping, distorting, and skewing.
25. Evaluate or adjust the appearance of objects, selections, or layers using various tools., e.g., adjustments, adjustment layers, histogram, opacity, and Eyedropper tool.
26. Design and manipulate a vector image using a variety of tools, e.g., drawing tools, painting tools, pencil tool, brush tool, vector shapes, shape tools, and vector selection tools.
27. Create and manipulate raster images using photo-editing software and tools, e.g., crop, perspective pencil, clone stamp, history brush, eraser, background eraser, magic eraser, gradient, and paint bucket.
28. Demonstrate techniques for converting raster images to vector art and executing the application of masks, channels, and a clipping path.
29. Explain rasterizing type and the effect it creates.
30. Use filters, Smart filters vs. filters, to modify images destructively or non-destructively.
31. Demonstrate page layout skills including adding a title, a header, body text, block quote, a footer, a caption, generating a table of contents, an index, page size, page orientation, facing pages, spread, bleed, trim, slug, master page, alternate page layout, columns, gutters, margins, breaks, glyphs, and frames.
32. Create frames to lay out visual elements, e.g., graphic frame, text frame, or unassigned frame.
33. Demonstrate manipulating graphics in frames including placing graphics into documents or into existing frames and using frames to affect visibility of the content.
34. Design tables to display data, including adding or importing tabular data; rows, columns, and cells; and graphic vs. text cells.
35. Demonstrate editing tables and cells utilizing various tools including fill, strokes/borders, merging/splitting cells, distributing cells, converting text and table data, table, and cell options.
36. Demonstrate adding interactive elements and behaviors to a project, e.g., navigation, hyperlinks, cross references, buttons, bookmarks, events, page transitions, and animation.
37. Demonstrate knowledge of how to embed rich-media objects, e.g., video files and Media panel.

Skills:

1. Demonstrate use of design principles, such as layout, typography, color theory, and usability to create a user-friendly website.
2. Develop a sitemap outlining the structure and organization of a website.
3. Explain various elements of responsive design, creating websites that adapt and display properly across different devices and screen sizes, including desktops, laptops, tablets, and smartphones.
4. Explain web typography, how type behaves in digital environments, web fonts, and readability across various devices and screen sizes.
5. Explain the fundamentals of HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets).
6. Design a prototype to assess and examine website functionality, user interface (UI) and user experience (UX), and overall style and content.
7. Develop final website, consistent with other marketing materials, applying feedback from approved prototype and design specifications.
8. Apply basic SEO (Search Engine Optimization) principles to improve website visibility, including meta tags, keywords, and on-page SEO best practices.
9. Examine Content Management Systems (CMS) like WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal, including their pros and cons for different types of websites.
10. Incorporate web accessibility guidelines to ensure websites are accessible to users with disabilities.
11. Assess websites to ensure cross-browser compatibility, addressing basic browser-specific issues.

Skills:

1. Explain key terminology related to animation, such as frame rate, image resolution, file formats, and basic concepts of visual storytelling.
2. Examine the twelve basic principles of animation, including squash and stretch, anticipation, and timing, and how they enhance the storytelling aspect of animations.
3. Plan and develop a storyboard to outline narrative structure and character development for animations.
4. Demonstrate animation techniques using industry-standard software, focusing on keyframe animation and basic tweening methods to create smooth transitions.
5. Create characters and backgrounds through drawing and illustration, emphasizing the importance of visual elements in animations.
6. Incorporate motion graphics and special effects to enhance the visual appeal and storytelling of animations, focusing on techniques appropriate for graphic design applications.
7. Optimize animations for different formats, including web and mobile, ensuring efficient playback and reasonable file sizes.
8. Integrate animations with other media elements, such as audio and interactive components, to create cohesive multimedia experiences.
9. Troubleshoot common technical issues that arise during the animation process, developing problem-solving skills relevant to creative challenges.
10. Reflect on the feedback received during critique sessions to refine and improve animation projects, understanding the importance of constructive criticism in the creative process.

Skills:

1. Develop a storyboard for a video project, including creating visual narratives, shot composition, and sequencing of scenes.
2. Create script for a video project using concise and engaging storytelling techniques, including voiceovers, dialogues, and on-screen text.
3. Develop a comprehensive production project plan including timelines, asset organization, team collaboration, and revision management.
4. Demonstrate mastery of video recording equipment including cameras, microphones, and lighting techniques.
5. Demonstrate filming techniques including camera angles, framing, composition, and movement to effectively capture scenes and convey meaning visually.
6. Explain the role of sound in video production and demonstrate recording clear audio, adding background music, incorporating sound effects, and mixing audio tracks.
7. Utilize industry-standard software to integrate motion graphics and animations into videos and create engaging visual effects.
8. Demonstrate manipulating color balance, exposure, contrast, saturation, and apply creative grading techniques to achieve desired visual effects, enhance mood, tone, and visual consistency.
9. Select and use appropriate video formats and export settings, including codecs, resolutions, and frame rates, based on their features for video quality and compatibility across various platforms and devices.
10. Explain how to export videos for different delivery platforms, such as social media, websites, or broadcast.
11. Demonstrate production and editing of video footage, along with an audio component, tailored for web publication.
12. Demonstrate how to optimize and save final edited footage in appropriate formats using industry naming conventions.
13. Apply copyright laws and ethical considerations related to using copyrighted materials (music, images, footage) in videos and identify licensed or royalty-free assets.

Skills:

1. Compare various digital printing technologies commonly used in the industry, including inkjet, digital, laser, offset, web offset, flexography, wide format, dye-sublimation, and screen printing; explain how each technology works, including the principles of ink or toner application, image formation, and substrate compatibility.
2. Perform preflight operations, optimizing files for the intended printing method, whether it is offset, digital, or large-format printing.
3. Examine the benefits and perform package operations, the process of organizing and transferring design files, fonts, images, and other assets associated with a project into one folder or package.
4. Demonstrate final inspection of document for errors and alignment to project specifications, including setting color space, resolution, pixel dimensions, and metadata.
5. Export or save digital images to various file formats, understanding compatibility, saving as a copy, and saving locally vs. in the Cloud.
6. Select appropriate formats and save images for the intended purpose, e.g., vector/raster, file format, bit depth, color space, resolution, and pixel dimensions.
7. Analyze the specific purpose, advantages, and limitations of these common file types: .jpeg, .tiff, .eps, .psd, .pdf, EPUB, and HTML.
8. Explain the benefits of PDF documents and their settings.
9. Demonstrate exporting project elements, e.g., exporting layers, exporting selections, exporting to files, and exporting to libraries.
10. Evaluate the significance of file sizes and their impact on output quality and efficiency.
11. Explain the principles of variable data printing (VDP) and how to implement personalized content or variable information in printed materials.
12. Demonstrate imposing a project for proper layout, ensuring that the printed materials will be in the correct sequence and alignment when they are completed and assembled.
13. Describe and follow gripper margin requirements as needed to accommodate intended output device.

Skills:

1. Demonstrate an understanding of printing operations on an offset press including prepress preparation, press setup, printing process, quality control, troubleshooting, maintenance and cleaning, and safety protocols.
2. Compare offset press printing and web offset printing and identify the optimal choice for specific projects based on factors, such as print volume, substrate type, job requirements, and budget considerations.
3. Demonstrate understanding and application of post-printing finishing techniques such as trimming, folding, perforating, gluing, stitching, binding, laminating, and wide-format specific techniques like mounting and grommeting.
4. Explain the applications of wide-format printing in the industry and compare various types of wide-format printers (inkjet, solvent, UV, dye-sublimation) with respect to ink types, print quality, substrate compatibility, and durability of output.
5. Explain resolution requirements for wide format printing, such as dots per inch (DPI), image interpolation, and raster image processing (RIP) software used to optimize image quality for large-format prints.
6. Demonstrate plotter operation, including loading vinyl rolls, setting cutting parameters, and sending designs for cutting, as well as the process of weeding and transferring vinyl decals onto substrates.
7. Explain the importance of using vector graphics for scalability and precision in sign making.
8. Explain the purpose and function of screen-printing equipment and materials, e.g., screens, emulsion, squeegees, inks, and demonstrate techniques such as flatbed, rotary, and garment printing.
9. Examine ink types used in screen printing, including water-based, solvent-based, and plastisol inks, and demonstrate mixing custom ink colors, creating Pantone matches, and achieving consistent color reproduction on different substrates.
10. Explain the differences between manual and automatic screen-printing presses, as well as multi-color printing and special effects like halftones, gradients, and metallic inks.
11. Explain the importance of proper registration, ink coverage, and print quality control in screen printing.
12. Explain the incorporation of a flash unit and demonstrate curing/drying techniques using an infrared thermometer to ensure proper ink adhesion and durability.
13. Troubleshoot common issues encountered in screen printing, such as ink bleeding, registration errors, and screen clogging.
14. Demonstrate embroidery techniques according to industry standards and manufacturers’ specifications.
15. Demonstrate dye-sublimation printing techniques, including the preparation and application of designs onto various substrates.