Collaboration is a great way to generate ideas, but can cause problems when it comes time to implement those ideas. When the big ideas are done and details come into play, group work can slow things to a near halt.

This class exercise involved students working in groups to create logos based on three things - a product, a target audience, and some sort of descriptive term. The photos are labeled with terms each team was given. All of the conceptual and design work had to fit into a one hour time block.

A "must have", expensive cheese aimed at families.

Vitamin aimed at the "jet-set" crowd.

A controversial energy drink marketed to physicians.

This image began life as a color photo, now the image is mostly made of type.

The young witch was a great photo before the transformation, but became a completely new piece when converted to type.

Applying layer masks, creating basic brushes and working with tonal range can be mundane topics - but they don’t have to be.

Bismarck State College Graphic Design and Communications students incorporated all of the techniques into type portraits - photos created primarily with type in Photoshop.

The process is time and step intensive, but the students stuck with the process and many had created very interesting pieces.

Blueprint-effect was generated with an action created by the instructor and students. It can be repeated quickly and accurately with only a couple clicks.

Much of the fall semester imaging classes focus on working with a particular effect, trying to achieve a specific look.

Today the discussion was about Photoshop Actions, tiny scripts that allow automation of tasks from simple to fairly complex. Nearly any operation can be automated and stopping points can be inserted to allow human interaction. Graphic Design and Communications students started with simple actions and worked up to more complex pieces.

Many designers use actions to automate tasks like converting photos to black and white or creating thumbnails for photo galleries. Another suggestion is to automate complex processes to speed them up and reduce the chances of error.

Freshmen Graphic Design and Communications students were asked to create an original fall-inspired limited-color illustration in vector format. For several weeks the students have been learning about the finer points of working with Adobe Illustrator to transform traditional hand-drawn creations like these into a digital medium. As many students have found, drawing using vectors is a transition that takes time  – a factor that the deadline-driven graphic designer must learn to minimize while maintaining quality and concept.

A gradient map adds a different feel to a black and white image.

This time the map is a gradient map - allowing Photoshop to remap an image using colors of your choice.

The technique is simple, but sometimes overlooked. The method can harness the power and emotion of a black and white image, but utilize a color to help convey the message.

Graphic Design and Communications students learned the technique today, something that took minutes to learn, but has infinite applications. As we head into the next semester and photography takes the lead over daily Photoshop instruction, we’ll begin putting methods like this one to work.

John Lennon - displaced

Blood displaced all over this shirt - it pairs with a Halloween poster design.

Several incarnations of Photoshop ago there was a lot of excitement about displacement mapping. Using a black and white image to create a map over which an image could be “bent” to create a more realistic look. It was interesting, but seemed very complex. In that era, computers moved a little slower and sometimes a lack of patience won out over computing time.

Fast forward 10 years and the displace function of Photoshop, while not forgotten, has lost a little of its star power. It’s still a great tool to mimic a graphic overlaying a textured surface.

Graphic Design and Communications students tried displacement mapping with great results. Some images work better with a map than others, but the process helped students learn the steps involved and open their minds to the uses of the technique.