Are you a teen (or tween) who lacks access to art or design in your school? OR are you looking for more feedback, more projects, or help creating your portfolio?
Are you a homeschooler looking for graphic design courses?
Are you considering college level graphic design, but reluctant because of the costs or barriers to entry?
What if you could study college level design at a fraction of the cost at your own pace in your own abode?
Tool is just a Tool
You may have digital tools in your hands. The computer, software and YouTube how-to videos are rampant. But what makes a designer is their thinking creative and innovation skills. And what can make a great designer is the blend between handcraft and digital.
Artificial Intelligence is already impacting the graphic design industry. People can pay $5 for a logo or have an automation program create something for them. But are they getting quality?
Design is more than pixels and digital output. It's the brain behind the solution, it's the problem-solving. That can't be outsourced. It's your proprietary property.
More than Magic Fairy Dust
Many people think you can sit at a computer and POOF a design appears. But it's really the long hours of work using the design process in the problem-solving aspect of communication.
It entails research, brainstorming and conceptualization, trial and error in narrowing down concepts and ideas to hone in on solutions.
It's not about pretty pictures or making something because you "like" it.
That's when design becomes art.
Courses that teach you about logos before fundamentals or an exclusive software program are doing you a disservice. You deserve a coach!
Why a Coach,
not Professor?
Do you have a coach in any other part of your life? Sports? Music?
Coach Val works to inspire, motivate, nurture, challenge, and relate to you on a human to human level. Her path in becoming a better teacher every day lead her to these strategies, innovative techniques and dynamic coursework moving far away from a 'professorial' modality.
Val walked away from 20+ years of teaching at the University level in 2018 as a tenured professor because she witnessed the disparities and dysfunction from the inside. It's not a pretty picture.
Colleges are also slow moving trains and haven't caught up to the student who learns how to make an APP at 12 or 13!
Some of you will have already learned the skills they won't teach you until your sophomore or junior year! Start here and now!
Design Coach Val
If you are learning D.I.Y., then you are missing out on projects relevant to the design industry AND constructive feedback that helps you improve. Is your current teacher also self-taught or put into the role of design teacher because they know a software program?
Val gets to know you as a person and a creative problem-solver.
She can help assess your creative box and provide solutions in terms of basic tools, exercises or larger projects that can help improve your repertoire, type sensitivity, or get you out of your rut of same old tricks.
If you are looking for a mentor who eats, breathes, and lives for design, then contact VAL today. With a passion for design, design education and years of working with people like you, she's ready to meet you and start your program.
TRAIN YOUR DESIGN SENSE & SENSIBILITY
WHAT MIGHT YOU LEARN?
Choose from one lesson, to one course, to a comprehensive plan - a process that includes:
* Design Principles and Elements, Design Basics, Design Process, Handcraft and beginner level standard software.
* Typography. type history, anatomy, personality, families & classification. Handcraft and digital, experimentation
* Graphic Design History– understand the relationship of design communication and culture throughout time to become a stronger communicator today. Discover innovators and innovations.
* Innovative problem-solving tools and progressively more complex problems to solve. Gradually more advanced digital tools combined with creating your own imagery.
* Meaning of words and visual messages, Word and Image, Connotation vs Denotation, Visual Rhetoric devices.
* How to promote yourself and others with brand strategy and storytelling, creating a portfolio and personal website.
* Thinking outside the box, experimentation, multi-platform solutions from static to motion.
* Projects that may have a sustainability, civic or citizen designer approach. Projects that ask you to think, read, and maybe research something new.
* A love of learning and discovery as a life philosophy even if you don't pursue design professionally.
REAL EXAMPLES OF REAL STUDENT WORK
FROM COACH VAL'S PROJECTS & MENTORSHIP PROCESS
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TYPES OF PROJECTS AND COMMITMENT LEVELS
01
basic
I'm a true novice, but I love to doodle, explore and create. I am brand new to graphic design. I am really interested in learning all the basics.
On a scale of 10, I would rank my computer skills between 0 and 4.
02
advanced
I would like to have a creative assessment project so that I can be coached and develop an individualized plan.
The plan would include one or two projects that I can work on with some engagement and critique thru the work.
03
souped up
I'm very interested in an assessment, mentorship, and an individualized plan of study that includes up to three courses that will help me rejuvenate, and focus on improving areas of weakness while also targeting my strengths in flexing my solution skill set.
04
max injection
I'm all in. I want to take as many classes as I can to have a full portfolio by the end of a 6 or 12 month period. I might be available to spend a short amount of time in person at Camp Wonder Wander in TN and am looking for a longer term coaching relationship instead of formal schooling.
NOURISH
YOUR
IMAGINATION
I want to learn by doing, by playful experimentation, by discovering new things about the world and myself in the process.
I'M READY FOR AN INTENSIVE AND EXCLUSIVE SUMMER CAMP EXPERIENCE IN A HOMESTEAD ENVIRONMENT TO LEARN ABOUT DESIGN, ART, PHOTOGRAPHY, POTTERY AND MY CONNECTION TO MOTHER NATURE.
Now enrolling for July 2023
