Lesson video

Hello, everyone.

My name is Mrs. Wallace, and I'm an artist and a teacher.

And I'm really pleased I will be working together with you on this wonderful graphic design unit.

In these five lessons, you will be learning about artists from the past and the present, how important graphic design is in our everyday lives.

You'll be developing some skills you already have, and having the opportunity to use those and show what you can do, as well as learning some new skills.

And I really cannot wait to see your artwork.

It's really important as artists, which we all are, to be brave and open to try out new challenges and to not be too hard on ourselves.

Remember as well that mistakes are the most important parts of learning.

They give us the opportunity to reflect on what we can do, what we want to change, to be critical, develop resilience, wonderful skills for life, not just for art.

So, I think this would be a good time to get creative together.

So for this lesson, you will need your sketchbook, a pencil.

Please make sure it's sharp enough to draw with.

You might want to have a pencil sharpener and maybe a rubber handy.

You need coloured pencils.

And if you've got felt-tip pens, you can use those as well.

Also, you'll need a few sheets of A4 paper.

So in today's lesson, we're going to find the answer to the question: What is graphic design? We're going to investigate typography.

That sounds quite mysterious, but don't worry.

By the end of these lessons, you'll be a real expert on using the technical language of graphic design.

You'll be experimenting with making words talk.

I think you'll enjoy that task.

And then overall, you're going to develop some design skills.

So let's look at some keywords that will help us to understand graphic design.

These four words explain what graphic design is.

They're quite tricky.

But as we go through our lessons, we'll keep repeating them, and it will help us to understand them more.

A form is the word that's used to describe what things look like.

I'm going to show you my diary 'cause this might help you here.

So if you can see, without looking at the detail, there is some writing in the middle here.

You can see that the form for my diary, the design, are stripes, a circle, this is just a piece of elastic, that's not really important, but here in the middle, we have some writing.

So that is the form.

It's what something looks like.

We would describe the writing in the middle of my diary here as the typography.

That's the lettering, the words, letters, sentences, numbers that you use within a piece of graphic design.

They're really important, and sometimes it's the only element of the design.

The content is the parts of the design that are used to match the aim to the audience.

So in a piece of advertising, the graphic design I would think about the purpose, the aim, is to sell an object and then think, "Well, who do we want the object to sell to? How can I make this appeal to that group of people?" And that's what we mean by content.

And the concept is the idea for the design.

So here's a sketchbook activity to get you warmed up.

And this is a typography challenge.

Remember, typography is the lettering, the words, the letters, the sentences.

This time, I want you to think about your name.

How many different ways can you write your name? Is there a style of writing that you've seen before that you really like? Could you write your name in bubble writing? Could you mix up capitals and lowercase, make your writing big, make your writing small? See how many different ways you can write your name.

Pause the video while you do this.

I wonder how many different ways did you find to write your name.

Hmm, if I count to three, can you call out for me 'cause I'd love to know.

One, two, three.

Wow! That's amazing.

Well done.

Everything that's not made by nature has been designed by someone.

I wonder if you recognise the photograph here is the sign for the Underground.

You can see the form for this design, the red circle with the blue line, and the typography is very clear, and it's familiar to lots of us.

Graphic designers design labels, packaging, books, video games, posters, signs, comics, oh, the list is endless, so many things that are part of our everyday lives.

Graphic design sends a message.

It can make something more appealing to us as the target audience.

It can give us a warning like this photograph here.

The red is commonly used as a colour of warning.

And you can see the way that the hand has been made much bigger than the rest of the person.

And the look on the person's face as well is telling us, "Don't enter, this is dangerous." So pictures like this, layout, the way the things are organised, the form, words, the typography, can be used to share this message with a target audience.

We can find examples of graphic design in our homes and the world around us.

I have a graphic design mission for you now.

I'd like you to be an investigator.

You'll need to look around your home and see if you can find five different examples of graphic design that take your interest.

So look around your home, and you may be able to find books, bottles and packets, clothing with logos, games.

There are lots of possibilities.

I'm going to do the same thing.

So, pause your video, and we'll meet back here very soon.

Welcome back.

What examples of graphic design did you collect in your home? I want to show you the five things I found.

And I wonder if you found anything similar.

First of all, I found this bottle of shampoo.

Can you see there's lots of different types of typography on that bottle.

I found this T-shirt, which has the word fuzz on.

Can you see the way that it's been written on two different levels? And, actually, the writing is fuzzy itself.

I found one of my daughter's books.

Can you see the way the writing is organised? You see the form with the characters from the book on the front.

And I found some jam.

Can you see the way that the heart is used to show the strawberries that are inside the jam, the way that the leaves are used on the lid of the jam as well? And I found an art game.

Not surprisingly, I've got lots of these.

And you can see the way that the typography is set out and that the colours from the writing is used in some of the illustrations, the pictures, on the box too.

Did you find anything similar? I found this comic when I was looking around in my home.

And I noticed that there are lots of different types of typography on this comic.

The title of the comic, one of the stories, some of the main features within the comic have all got different types of typography, different sizes, different colours, different layout.

So different types of typography communicate different messages.

There are lots of different types of writing here.

And I'm sure you found that on the objects that you found around your home.

So let's think about what we've learned so far.

Graphic design is an art form, but is it only found in art galleries? Is that true or false? It's false.

As you've seen, graphic design is used in all areas of our lives.

We can find examples in our own homes.

Now, look carefully back at your sketchbook activity, the first activity that you've done today.

Look at the choices that you made about the lettering that you used to write your name.

So, you need to pause the video for this task.

Look back carefully at the lettering that you used and think which examples are you proud of? What does your writing communicate about you? Like the example here, have you used cartoons? Have you shaded in areas? Have you used large writing, small writing, wobbly writing? Have a look and see if you can describe the types of lettering that you've used.

See you soon.

Now you've explored graphic design and looked at different types of typography.

Let's see if we can develop that now and add some colour and meaning.

So, your activity now to work on in your sketchbooks is to see if you could make words talk.

We're still focusing on using your name.

This time, I'd like you to draw your name showing the emotions happy, angry, and sad and try to communicate the feelings using lines, colours and patterns.

Can you think of a colour that is used to describe sadness? Can you think of a colour that is used for warning or to show anger? We may have already talked about it today when we were looking at a sign.

What about happiness? Is there a colour that makes you feel happy? So which lines, colours and patterns will you use to communicate the feeling you want to express? Pause the video while you work on this task.

So here's an example of happy, angry, and sad using colour and line.

And the shape of the writing is different, can you see, in each of the pictures.

Have a look at your work.

How do you feel about it? Have a look at the different activities that you've worked on today in your sketchbook so far, and compare them.

See how much you've made progress in just one lesson.

Now, Paul Rand is an art director and graphic designer, and he said that "Typography is an art.

Good typography is ART." I wonder what you think he meant by that.

You've said you worked very hard today on developing typography.

And I'm sure if you show me your typography, I would consider it to be very good art.

Can you show it to me now? That's wonderful.

Well done.

I'm really proud of you.

Now we're going to take the opportunity to play with words and drawings.

We're going to think about impact.

We've talked about content, concept, form, typography.

And this gives you an opportunity to try out those.

So, we're going to think about how you can make your words spring to life.

If you look at the examples here, you can see where colour has been used, there's different shapes of words, words within pictures, words that are showing the meaning of the pictures, and also the way that pictures have been used in the place of letters.

Have a careful look at that.

It may help you when you come to do your own task next.

So this time, if you'd like, you can work in your sketchbook or an A4 paper.

You might use the paper to trace some letters that you found on your mission to discover typography and graphic design around your home earlier.

Try to use a wide range of typography in this task.

Try to use different sizes.

You can write any words that you like, or draw any words that you like.

You can use pictures in the place of letters.

You can put words inside of pictures just like the examples that you've just seen.

You can work on different scales.

That means you can make your writing large or small or in between.

Your words could start large and then get gradually smaller.

You can investigate using different colours with your writing as well.

If you've used pencil crayons so far and you've got pens, you could use pens.

You might want to just use a pencil and try shading in different tones.

When you finish your work, have a look and think to yourself which of your typography designs have the most impact, and why? What is it that your typography is trying to say? Just beyond the word that you're writing, what are you doing to add to that word to make impact? Pause your video while you complete the task.

I am so impressed with how well you worked today.

It's been an absolute pleasure to teach you on this first lesson of our graphic design journey.

In the next lesson we're going to learn about a very important movement in graphic design called Bauhaus.

We will experiment with colour, shape and layout.

In preparation for this lesson, it would be really helpful if you could do some research and find out as much as you can about Bauhaus.

That extra bit of knowledge will really make next lesson really successful for you.

I look forward to seeing you then.

Now, you know that I'm very proud of the work that you've done today.

And you have a great opportunity to share your work more widely, which is a fantastic opportunity as a developing artist.

The way to do this is to ask your parent or carer to share your work on Twitter.

They can do this by tagging @OakNational and using the #LearnwithOak.

Please do not do this yourselves.

You need to ask your parent or carer.

I really look forward to seeing your work.

I'll see you next time.