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Tell a story with only 4 icons. Can you guess the movie? #ds106 #DesignAssignments #DesignAssignments358

A post shared by Jessica (@jessicads106) on Oct 2, 2018 at 6:15pm PDT

My third assignment this week, worth 3 stars, is this one, which was recommended for the design category. The assignment is described best as quoted from the assignment page:

The assignment is to reduce a movie, story, or event into its basic elements, then take those visuals and reduce them further to simple icons, four of them. Write your blog post up but do not give away the answer, let people guess! The challenge is to find the icons that suggest the story, but do not make it so easy.

This assignment was the most fun of all I’ve done so far this week. After thinking of a movie I enjoyed that was popular enough to be guessed by most people, the challenge of this assignment was to think of only four possible icons to use to describe the events of the whole movie. Often, I wished it were 5 or 6 icons, but I managed to reduce it down to 4, after deciding between several different options. When I was choosing these, I wanted to capture important scenes and defining moments of the movie, but at the same time I didn’t want to chose obvious ones, since I wanted it to take at least more than a quick glance for someone to guess the movie! I really enjoyed this assignment, because it shows the power of simplistic storytelling and simplistic design, that only four pictures can represent a story that can be recognized by someone else! It was appropriate for this simple design to use only black and white icons and blank space in my design. This guessing game is something that really captures the power of digital storytelling.

To complete this assignment, I downloaded all of my icons from the noun project, which was a really fun website to explore. You can easily create an account there and download lots of awesome icons, and I think I’d definitely use this site in future projects. To put them together, I used Microsoft Publisher, and with that, it was easy to import the icon pictures and display them on the page as I wanted. I chose to stagger the icons so they could be read from left to right on a square template (since squares are best for Instagram). Then, I easily uploaded that picture to Instagram and embedded it here!

So, can you guess which movie I’m representing here? Was it easy to guess or did it take you a moment? Leave a comment below!

For my third Design Assignment, I did the One Story/ Four Icons Assignment (3 stars). I thought this would be a fun assignment because I love the idea of reducing stories to their basic pieces. I tend to be a wordy person, so I always find activities that push me to be more short and sweet helpful.

To create this, I first thought of my story and then got thinking about what items from it I could represent with simple figures. Then, I went to thenounproject.com to find icons. They had way more options than I would have ever expected! I then created a Canva account so that I could put the images together. I use Canva for work, but I use the Campus Rec account. I thought it would be a good idea for me to have my own account… I then picked a blank Art/ Design Logo template and just uploaded the pictures to Canva and dragged them onto the blank square. I initially wanted to put them in a line, but I could not do that without them being tiny on the white square. I then downloaded the image from Canva. Canva is a really great tool for marketing and editing. We love using it at Campus Rec!

Can you tell what story I am sharing through these images?!?

Any guesses?

This is an easy one! I want to give you a hint…but I’m not going to. Figure it out.

This was the first assignment I will have completed in the design section for week 6! It was definitely challenging to put together the picture (I’ve never done anything like this before) but it was probably most challenging for me to decide what I wanted to do my picture on. I decided on a movie that was a fan favorite of mine as a kid. The next step for me was deciding how I would do the design. I knew that I should make it as simple as possible, being a beginner, and remembering stuff from the readings this week I wanted it to make sense and contribute to the meaning of the picture. I used Noun Project Search, for all of my pictures. In the respective order I searched for the following: star, flashlight, saber, hand. I then downloaded each of the pictures, and inserted them into Powerpoint, scaling them each as appropriate. I think that I did a good job on this and I think that it was a logical picture given what my movie was that I wanted it to be about. Hope you enjoyed!

 

Just Zaying…

4 Pictures. One book. Can you guess?

So I read H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds for my book, and loved it! I chose to do the “One Story, Four Icons” assignment and thought it was really great! It also gave me an excuse to use Canva which I’ll never complain about. Can Canva sponsor me? All I do is talk about it.

Anyways, the plot of this book is pretty simple. A UFO lands, and eventually hatches. The alien inside starts destroying everything with its “heat ray” and striking terror with the battle cry of “ulla.” Humanity seems powerless, and the Martians seize control.

So taking that basic plot idea, I decided to hop onto Canva and I chose 4 black and white clip art photos that describe the story. I think they’re pretty self-explanatory, but I’ll break them down for you anyways.

A UFO and alien, because well duh. That gun is supposed to be the heat ray. And the man is supposed to be scared and running. Make sense?

This was a really fun and easy design activity, and I’m just happy I was reunited with design (As you will see in the selection of assignments this week. Hope you enjoyed!

 

 

For one of my assignments this week, I opted to complete the suggested assignment: One Story/Four Icons. These are my four icons…can you guess the movie? Scroll for hints…

 

 

 

Hint #1: Three friends (2 guys and a girl) ditch school for the day

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Hint #2: One friend convinces the other that they should use his Dad’s red Ferrari 250 GT

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Hint #3: This movie has iconic musical number during a parade in downtown Chicago

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Hint #4: The town becomes so enthralled in a lie told by one of the friends that they paint “Save ___” on the water tower! You gotta know by now!

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Answer: Ferris Bueller’s Day Off!

It’s one of my favorite movies drenched in teeny angst. I found these images online and combined them on a word doc and took a screen shot of them so I didn’t have to use GIMP because my patience with the program is at its end. I also used 5 and its very helpful to think about why I had to use 5 and not 4 when guessing what movie it is. They describe different people just as an extra hint.

 

The last and final design assignment I completed this week was worth 3 and 1/2 stars and was called One Story / Four Icons. I love bored games, trivia, and guessing games so this assignment called my name! First I had to decide on a movie that I could boil down to just 4 main images/icons. Once I decided on the movie, I google searched for those icons! Then I complied them into a collage, and bang! A great guessing game! Can you guess what movie I chose?

The answer is….here!

Can you guess? At the beginning, they have an encounter that involves a tasty burger, and later a personal addiction leads to the downfall of another. Then som unsavory events occur in the basement of a gun shop, and it all cumulates in a wallet being returned to its rightful owner. The timeline of these events may be out of sync, but you should know that already.

 

With icons from here.