Scott McCloud on Comics

Class activity: This talk would be a great way to introduce a narrative project. Scott McCloud addresses the essential elements of narrative work and presents them through the medium of comics. Part one: have students research one comic and use the critical analysis process to identify some of the main elements of narrative and how they are applied. Part two: students apply the information they gained from part one in the creative process by producing their own narrative.

A List of Artists to Know

Charles Burns
Leonid Gore
Edward Sorel
Winslow Homer
Ivan Chermayeff
Frances Jetter
Edel Rodriguez
Chester Brown
Ludwig Bemelmans
Nick Bantock
Seth
Kinuko Craft
Maurice Vellekoop
Hokusai
Women Painters of Mithila
Tomio Nitto
Peter Collington
Julie Doucet
Paul Zelinsky
Saul Steinberg
Kay Nielsen
Rose Cecil O'Neill
Orson Lowell
Akira Yokoyama
Olga and Andrej Dugin
Nicolas Debon
Gennady Spirin
Peter Kuper

Class Activity: A good way to develop interest is to allow students to explore various artists and their work and to decide which one appeals to them. From this they can research their chosen artist and submit a short written report with a brief class presentation. This would work as an individual or as a paired activity.

David Bryne: How Architecture Helped Music Evolve

"David Bryne: How Architecture Helped Music Evolve"

Class activity: I would like to use this video as a way in to a unit on architecture. Students could choose any work of architecture and discover how it's design helped shape (or was shaped by) a cultural phenomenon.

Paul Rand: Design

"A work of art is realized when form and content are indistinguishable"
Paul Rand.

Sugata Mitra: The child-driven education

"Sugata Mitra: The child-driven education."

Two great quotes that he mentions, from Arthur C. Clarke: "a teacher that can be replaced by a machine should be," and "when you have interest, then you have education."

Visual Rhetoric Toolbox

Here are 11 ways of using visual rhetoric:

1. Substitution: an element of the image is replaced by something else
2. Repetition: an element appears more than once
3. Addition: a new element is brought into the image
4. Subtraction: an element is removed from the image
5. Distortion: an element is altered, perhaps exaggerated
6. Scale: a kind of distortion, elements are increased or decreased in relation to something
7. Juxtaposition: an unlikely combination or improbable setting
8. Personification: applying human qualities to an inanimate object or an abstract idea
9. Reduction: applying non-human attributes to a human
10. Metaphor: a comparison that implies a likeness in things that are not literally alike
11. Catalogue: lists or represents the components of an object or an idea
(from Ted Zourntos's Conceptual Process Class, Sheridan College, B.A.A.)

Here is the Purdue OWL link for visual literacy:
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/729/01/

The work of the best graffiti artists is a good place to find excellent use of visual rhetoric such as Toronto based artist Dan Bergeron(fauxreel): http://fauxreel.ca/,

or UK artist Banksy: http://www.banksy.co.uk/.

A good place to find weekly international examples is the Wooster Collective: http://www.woostercollective.com/.

Milton Glaser, Art is Work

Milton Glaser quoting Horace: "Art at its best informs and delights."