Graphic design is not an element that I ever considered incorporating into my kindergarten classroom. I struggle with many of these assignments, especially, to find how they might be applicable to my little learners. This students are just starting their formal education journey, and are still learning the very basics of reading and writing, how can I try to provide them with graphic design lessons. I decided to do some of my own research, as the resources that were provided this week were yes, interesting, and I did learn new information (especially in regards to typography within the classroom), but how could I best teach graphic design to my sweet five and six year olds.
After doing some searching, I came across a blog post by Dean Vipond, "Explaining Graphic Design to 4-year-olds." Dean suggested that you " boiling down what you do, to its most basic elements." This makes perfect sense, and would be a great way to introduce this complex topic of graphic design. Dean continued to say in his opinion graphic design, "...is about making something easy to use, or easy to understand." Dean suggested to give many concrete real life examples, like when you are building a house you need to design how many bedrooms it will have, just like when you design a project you need to figure out what the words will look like (how big they are, or what color they are). I agree, that I would need to start with the most basic key fact- readability. Specifically, I would focus to make sure as an author your font, size, and color is readable. These basic elements would be a great starting point, and building blocks for future graphic design lessons.
I could immediatly implement these ideas into my classroom, when I design mini lessons introducing PicCollage Conference projects. My students will create a Pic Collage show casing some of their favorite things about school/their accomplishments thus far in kindergarten to share with mom and dad during student led, spring parent/teacher conferences. The basic design principles that I want to incorporate for my students is to ensure their font is easy to read, and an appropriate size/color. The Creative Bloq Staff, explained in the article, Typography Rules and Terms every designer must know, a few words such as "size, leading, tracking, and kerning, measuring and scale" as key elements in graphic design, however, I'd focus just on size. Making sure that the font of the students Pic Collage is big enough to read, easily, and doesn't blend in with the background. For example, do not select a red font, if you are choosing a red background (it'll be impossible to see).
I also always stress with projects to use a font in which the students can read. We haven't learned how to write in cursive yet, so therefor they shouldn't select a flowy, cursive font. It's important to utilize fonts in which my students can read. This is a principle that I keep in mind, as I am designing worksheets/activities for them to use. I want my fonts to be easy to read, and an example of how to form/write letters properly. My students are constantly absorbing new information, and I want the fonts they see around our classrooms/within activities to be appropriate handwriting examples.
