Cereal Box Design

April Arevalo
- ITA Tech Instructor -

Elements of graphic design can be found everywhere. What better way to teach the students about all the elements of graphic design than by making themselves into what, I hope, gives them the copious energy they have every Saturday morning; a cereal box.

The purpose of this project was to advertise each student in a complete styling. The students didn't necessarily have to be a cereal product, but some students did get creative by adding many aspects of them as a real cereal brand.

The cereal box was split up with each session focusing on a different part, and mastering the same tools that could be applied to the entire cereal box.

Front of the Cereal box:
On this side, the students created digitized self-portraits of themselves. The main tool used for this was the pen tool, a very useful but challenging tool. The students learned very quickly that, while frustrating, this tool can create great, detailed artistry. Starting with a picture of themselves, the students essentially traced over the picture to recreate the image. Still, they would tell you that it is not as easy as it seems. The pen tool requires a keen eye, an understanding of anchor points of curvature of a line, and the use of layers.

After practicing this tool several times, the students were able to tame it and create digitized versions of themselves that looked great.This is a picture of a student, as a final digitized image.

Back of the Cereal box:

In this section, the students created a typographical map of their neighborhood and nearby areas. This section again focused on the pen tool but introduced new elements such as a "clipping mask" and "type to path" tool. The students really developed their pen tool skills in this section. In order to make a typographical map, the students would outline the shapes present in the image of their neighborhood. Then, they would use a new layer to write text of the area they were covering up, i.e. parks and street names. Then, selecting both layers, they would create a clipping mask that would cut the text to the shape they outlined and color it as the shape was colored. The students repeated this for each section of their map.

This is a map of a student's neighborhood entirely made up of text.

Sides and Panels of the Cereal box:

After giving the students a very structured front and back of their cereal box, they were given more freedom for the rest of the box. Keeping in mind that they were creating a cereal box, many of the students created "nutritional facts," based on what makes them who they are. They also started to think of images that could portray aspects of importance to them, such as religion, school spirit, and other things of interest.

These are the side panels for another student's cereal box. She chose to draw her journey at ITA on one side of her cereal box.

For the final result of the cereal box, the students were asked to think about color schemes throughout the box and overall presentation. They are portraying themselves and need to think about what makes something aesthetically pleasing. The majority of students still have some tweaking to do, in order to make their boxes as presentable as possible. In using a website known as "dropbox" the students are able to work on their projects at home and can send us a complete cereal box that they put time into and would be proud to show.

The students came a long way and have begun to understand what it takes to make a complete piece of work/art. This is a great structure for the projects to come in their ITA career.

COMING SOON:
Below are some photos of the actual cereal boxes! We displayed them at this year's 12th Annual Holiday Luncheon:

Prezi: Prezident of Prezentations

Marc Pedone
- ITA Tech Instructor -

The goal of this choice session was to give the students an opportunity to learn about some new presentation tools available.

We started with comparing Prezi to Microsoft PowerPoint by making a presentation of our favorite celebrities, first in PowerPoint and then challenging ourselves to make the same presentation in Prezi. By doing this, we were able to evaluate the pros and cons of each program.

After the students got a handle on Prezi, they were introduced to Prezi Meeting. This feature allows multiple people to collaborate on one presentation at one time from different computers connected to the internet. As a group, they planned out what they would present and how they would do it. On a white board, they planned the best way to present the city of Madison to someone else.

Madison, WI on Prezi

During the next session, students made two presentations. They first presented each other to the class for us to get to know each other a bit more and to familiarize ourselves once again with how to use the program.

The last challenge the students had was to present a place in the world to me. They would be separated in two different groups and use Prezi Meeting as a means to work on the collaborative project.

I feel like this session helped the students realize that there are always other options to almost every program. Sometimes those options are free and even better than the more popular choice. The students shouldn't feel afraid to find tools other than the ones ITA introduces to them. It also showed them how utilizing many tools (technology, speech, white boards, etc.) along with other people can help make very good use of time and resources. Often, students feel like they need to stick with one story, but really it's multiple stories, and collaborations that really inform us best!

Senioritis? Not With These ITA Seniors.

Almost half way through the class of 2011's last year at ITA, the seniors are showing no signs of lack of motivation, procrastination, drop in lab performance, or "coasting" through the afternoon. These symptoms more commonly known as senioritis fail to be observed at ITA with this year's excellent students. The students have already shared their proposals for their project at the Holiday Luncheon. For those of you who could not attend, here is a brief re-cap of what the seniors are doing.

Protein Tubar Video by Thor and Thuy Dan

Thor and Thuy Dan are working with Professor Dave Nelson from the department of biochemistry here on campus. They taped an instructional video of Professor Nelson using the Tubar Protein Modeling Kit for SMART teams at Madison West High School. SMART Teams stand for Students Modeling A Research Topic, an extra-curricular activity that introduces high school students to the field of biomolecular research. This video will be used for teachers in the program as a demo of how to use Tubar Kits.

Flash Animations by Eddie and Jeremy

Eddie and Jeremy are creating complex Flash Animations for Professor Sebastian Bednarek of the department of biochemistry. From the pictures on the side you can see their drawing progress thus far. Eddie is working on cell membrane trafficking (on the left) and Jeremy is working on clathrin mediated endocytosis (on the right).

Scientific Demos by Noah and Maya

Noah and Maya are taping scientific demos for the biochemistry course "Exploring the Biomolecular World" taught by Professors Dave Nelson and Michael Patrick. The two scientific demos that Noah and Maya will be filming is a short video on the hydrophobic effect and an experiemnt using Beta-Galactoside.

ITA Recap by Adrianne, Lakoye, and Jasmine

Adrianne, Lakoye, and Jasmine will be using iMovie to create short video presentations about past ITA projects. These projects will be displayed for recruitment and funding meetings to demonstrate the great work done at ITA.

Video Tape of the Crystallography Research Facility

Students will be working with one of the post graduate students working with Professor Katrina Forest. Professor Forest uses x-ray crystallography in her research to study the interactions between humans and microbes. our students' task will be to record a 45 minute video of the entire process.

Interviews of Campus Professors

Students will be venturing to different research laboratories on campus to interview professors about their work. The video's goal will be to inform undergraduate students about the various research on campus to help aid them in choosing which lab to join. The first professor the students will be interviewing is Douglas Weibel from the Department of Biochemistry.

Tutorial on Jmol by Leija and Ivan

Ivan and Leija will be using CamStudio to help record a tutorial of how to use Jmol, a protein modeling software program. They will be recording an expert in Jmol give an instructional lesson of how to use the program and then distribute this video to various science professors on campus.

Holiday Greeting Cards by Ashanti and Julie

Ashanti and Julie are using Adobe Photoshop to create custom-made greeting cards for the UW-Madison Children's Hospital. They will be printing out their designs and hand delivering them in the upcoming months.

ITA Digital Yearbook by Eileen and Kiran

Eileen and Kiran will be creating the second ITA digital yearbook. The yearbook will include fun facts about each ITA student and highlight the events from this past year. Currently, the two are in the process of taking the ITA student yearbook pictures and designing a new layout in Adobe InDesign.

Congratulations Seniors!!! Keep up the great work!