Getting to know students is the most important thing when starting out the school year. Knowing their interests can be key to developing classroom culture and helping students when they are stuck on a design challenge and not sure where to go with it.

One way to draw out those ideas visually is through a design challenge that also helps decorate the front of student portfolios: The Personal Logo Challenge. In this challenge, students are asked to create their own logo based on who they are. 

To start out student are asked to make a list of four to five of their favorite things in their sketchbook and then draw a symbol or sketch that represents what they wrote.

We then look at a variety of logos. From fast-food to clothing companies and cars, we look at a wide variety of logos and examine how color, font, and overall composition can help offer the viewer ideas and insight about what the company sells or what core values the company is trying to portray. After looking at large company logos, we then turn to logos associated with specific people and compare the way they look. 

After that, students are asked to review their lists and symbols from earlier and find ways they might be able to combine ideas, use select font styles, or other visual cues to create potential sketches of their logo. 

Once they have three sketches of possible designs, they select one to apply to their portfolio. After sketching it out on their portfolio they are asked to use colored pencil and/or marker to complete their work. 

This opening project is a great way for me to get to know my students better and it also helps me teach concepts about composition as well as colored pencil and marker techniques. 

It is a new school year, and with new year anything comes resolutions and aspirational goals that may or may not be met. One goal I have for this school year is to freshen up this space and reorganize it. Since 2011, I have been blogging here. It has taken a few different forms over the years and we are able to try something new once again. Instead of the weekly posts that have been going on for the last few years, I am going to start posting by assignment. This will mean less posts, but it will also mean more complete thoughts and processes on what we are creating from the BCWMS Visual Art and Design classroom. 

For the first posts in this new endeavor, I am sharing something I tried for the first time during the first week of school: Photoshop! I was nervous going into it because many of my 7th graders have not used this program, let alone a MacBook before, so I knew it was going to be a challenge. I decided to do it anyway, because I have tried things like clay on the first day of school without missing a beat, so I thought this could be like that, right? Well, not exactly. 

It was interesting to see how students were able to try something new, fail, try again, struggle, ask for help from each other, and finally get where they needed to go in the end. I can think of a lot of things I will do differently when I get this chance again next semester - some of which I put into place mid-way through this creation. 

I am very fortunate to have a cart of MacBook Airs with Photoshop on them in my classroom. I assign students a number on the first day of school and that is how they know which computer to check out as well as where to store their Chromebooks when we are painting and their 3D work on a different rack in the room. Giving students a number is a great way to help keep things organized when you may be dealing with a set number of materials or devices to create. 

​Once they got onto the computers, they went to Schoology where I posted the video tutorial for this project as well as the base of their image: the can! Because I believe sharing is caring, here are those resources for you if you would like to use them in your classroom, too: 

Besides the fact that my last name is Campbell and I have a certain fondness towards Andy Warhol's work because of that, it was also important to me that students started the year thinking about what impact art can have in their lives and what it empowers them to do. In addition to using the Warhol imagery of the soup can, we also mimicked his pop-art style portraits by using the stamp filter in Photoshop. 

As you will hear in the video, I talk about class colors. It is another trick I have to help me keep organized. By having things numbered and color coded, it saves students and me time when something goes missing or needs to be put away. 

Reading the goals of my students helped me focus on what they see in the power of art. You can view more on our Artsonia class gallery. 

I hope this was a helpful post and that you will keep coming back to check out the other creations we share as we work through the year. 

Good luck to all of the hard-working, paint-slinging, photoshopping, clay squishing, material dispensing Visual Art and Design teachers out there! This year is going to be amazing because of your work and efforts in sharing your love of art and design with others! Thank you for your work and I look forward to sharing more of ours!