Graphic Design Certficate Program
Computer Skills
To begin the program, students are required to have working knowledge of a page layout program (Quark Xpress or Adobe InDesign), a pixel-based image program (Adobe Photoshop), and a vector-based image program (Adobe Illustrator). See below for specific listing of skills that comprise "working knowledge".
General FAQ
- Are computer skills/computer software taught as part of the program?
- Students are required to obtain the necessary baseline level of skills in Adobe InDesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator for entry to the program, and are excepted to develop advanced skills in these applications through applied work on design projects/and or their own individual study. Recently several dynamic-media based courses were added to the program; tutorial in various web software are included within the scope of these courses.
- Why aren’t computer skills taught within the Graphic Design Certificate Program?
- We have only twelve courses to prepare you to enter the graphic design profession. You will be competing for jobs against graduates with bachelor’s — even master’s — degrees in design, so we need to focus the time we have on strong conceptual thinking, typography, and design skills. While we know that graphic design students must be able to work comfortably in software applications, our curriculum does not allow us to offer courses dedicated to teaching software alone. Because of this, we require that all incoming students arrive with a minimum level of software knowledge which we deem necessary for success in courses including Typography, Graphic Design 1, Intermediate Typography, and Graphic Design 2. The teaching of dynamic media software in the program is integrated into interface and interactive design courses that students begin to encounter mid-way through the program, at which point they are expected to have strong skills in Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator that they can build upon.
- What if I don’t have the prerequisite computer skills required?
- Recommended preparation for the technical requirements of the GDC program is the 3-credit course Intro to Computer Design using Adobe Create Suite. Additionally there are a wide range of other options for gaining competency in the necessary software; MassArt offers 1.5 credit and non-credit workshops through Continuing Ed (check the catalogue and/or website), and local adult education programs, colleges, and community colleges also offer software courses. There are websites such as www.Lynda.com that offer on-line training courses, and a variety of books for teaching yourself as well. The option(s) you choose for gaining competency should depend on your preferred learning method and comfort level with computers and software.
- What computer skills are required for individual courses?
- See "Course Sequence" to see specific computer requirements for specific courses.
- Do I need computer skills to take Drawing for Communication, Communication & Form, and/or Foundations of Graphic Design?
- Computer skills are not necessary for "Drawing for Communication." "Communication & Form" and "Foundations of Graphic Design" require basic skills in Adobe Illustrator.
Working Knowledge
- Page layout skills (Adobe InDesign or Quark XPress):
- Setting up a multi-page document using master pages to create/change margins and column guides
- Changing text attributes such as choosing fonts, font size, font color, linking text boxes, moving text boxes, text runaround
- Using style sheets to keep type and paragraph formatting consistent within a document
- Paragraph alignments such as left align, right align, center align, justify
- Making a "soft return" to manually break a line without starting a new paragraph
- Some familiarity with tabs, indents, bullets, space before/space after paragraphs, leading, tracking/kerning is helpful (recommended reading that covers this, The Mac (PC) is not a Typewriter by Robin Williams, published by Peachpit Press. This book is required reading for the Typography course; read it now and get ahead!)
- Save page as EPS
- Printing a smaller size (such as 5" x 7") document on 8-1/2" x 11" paper with crop (registration) marks for trimming
- Placing images in a layout; cropping and resizing images in a layout
- Creating new colors; applying colors to backgrounds, frames, type, greyscale, and b/w images.
- Adobe Illustrator skills:
- Bezier tool for making shapes
- Adding colors to the color palette; applying colors
- Basic typesetting and converting type to outlines
- Placing a scanned image and tracing it using layer mode
- Combining shapes to make larger shapes by using add, subtract, intersect, exclude
- Blend tool
- Adobe Photoshop skills:
- Converting color image to greyscale
- Selection using the path tool to make a clipping path
- Cropping
- Scanning in a line drawing and saving as a one-bit tiff
- Levels or curves to adjust image exposure
- Using threshold to convert a greyscale image to b/w one-bit tiff
- Clone tool for cleaning up/editing images
- Unsharp mask
- Canvas size and image size
- Gaussian blur
- Basic understanding off what layers are and why/how to use them
- Miscellaneous Computer skills:
- How to make a PDF in Quark Xpress or InDesign, and Illustrator
- Basic understanding of terms high-resolution vs. low resolution; file formats such as JPEG, TIFF, and EPS
- Basic understanding of font software and font management recommended (suggested book: How to Boss your Fonts Around by Robin Williams, Peachpit Press)
