For my final design assignment this week, I’ve chosen to make a Computer Book for Kids. The one I ended up making would have really helped me out when I was younger, and now I’m kind of mad that it didn’t exist before. When I was a kid, I used to get in internet fights all the time. I would get in fights even though I knew the other person would make me cry. I was on a never ending quest to always be the smartest person… on neopets. I would get into a fight with anyone whose opinion just seemed stupid to me; I’d fight them if they misspelled a word or if their grammar was poor. I remember having an argument with someone over whether or not Santa was real, and I was the one arguing that he was. So, it’s no wonder that I got picked on quite a bit whenever I would open my mouth.

In eighth grade, I had a falling out with a group of friends online. Two of them harassed me over MSN for a few months before getting bored, but it was awful for me. I didn’t have anyone to go to – my mom didn’t understand “internet fights” and she wouldn’t get how much someone can hurt your feelings over the internet until she joined Facebook a while later. I only wish that there had been some kind of book… an easy to read, fun for all ages rundown about online cruelty…

So I’ll be the one to go back in time and put this scary lookin’ dude on the shelves at Borders. I’m about to save myself a whole lot of grief. Check ya later.

As usual, I made this using my preferred software Paint.net. This one was a little bit simpler, but as a kids book I think it’s probably best to keep it simple. The gallery below shows my process.

Design Assignment #3

Around the Christmas season we all like to bake cookies, buy presents for one another, watch Christmas movies and listen to Christmas music. But what about Christmas books (other than The Night Before Christmas)? My childhood involved my family reading Dr. Suess’s classic, How the Grinch Stole Christmas. This is why I decided to do this assignment.

This project involved choosing a children’s book and giving it a computerized title. My rendition of Dr. Suess’s original title is, How the Grinch Stole GIFs. It took me awhile to come up with this title and I had a few options. However, I went with this idea because I enjoyed its ‘punny’ nature.

This assignment would have been more difficult if I hadn’t done the ‘Are We There Yet?’ assignment before. The ‘Are We There Yet?’ assignment allowed me to familiarize myself with GIMP, which I used to create my design. The hardest task to complete was trying to make the word ‘GIFs’ more transparent, so that it could blend in with the rest of the title. Instructions for how to execute this title are below.

Step 1: Upload your image to GIMP. Go to the far left side of the screen and select the ‘free select tool’. Encircle the word, “Chrsitmas” with this tool.

Step 2: Next, select the color dropper icon on the far left hand side of the screen and click on the red background.

Step 3: After selecting the red color, click on the fill bucket icon on the far left hand side of the program.

Step 4: Before you fill the ‘Christmas’ bubble with the bucket make sure that the fill type is set to, FG color fill. This can balso be found on the far left side. Once you have this setting, click on the ‘Christmas’ bubble.

Step 5: Next, save the image by going to file and clicking on the export option. This is for the image to save as a .png or .jpg.

Step 6: Our next task is to acquire the same font used in the Dr. Suess title. To do this go to this website. After you are there, type the word, GIFs in the textbox.

Step 7: After you type your word change the font color to white. When you click the generate button, be conscious that you will not be able to see the text, so highlight it, right click on it, and hit ‘save image as’.

Step 8: For your next step you are going to go back to GIMP, file, and select ‘open as layers’.  Import the image you saved in the previous step here.

Step 9: Once imported, select the move icon, and move your newly imported image where the previous one was.

Step 10: Save the image by going to file, and selecting ‘export as’

Link to assignment is tagged above in ‘Design Assignment #3’

What is your favorite children’s book? My favorite children’s book is Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. I don’t really know why I like it so much – its about alphabet letters climbing a tree – but it’s definitely on the top of my list.

But what if our favorite children’s books were revamped to accommodate modern technology? That is what this design assignment asked. I choose to redo the cover of Frog and Toad Are Friends by Arnold Lobel.

The original cover:

The new cover:

How it was made:

I started this revamped cover by copy and pasting the original cover into PowerPoint.

Then, I created a box to cover the original title by going to Insert>Shape>Rectangles. Click and drag to make the rectangle the size you would like. I changed the color to match by using the Format menu seen below.

Next I inserted a text box by going to Insert>Text box

and typing in the new title and the author’s name. You can change the colors and font by using the font menu at the top of the screen.

We have all probably had that one time where that weird ad pops up on our computer, followed by what seems like a million more. This is what is known as a virus. I can say I have had a pretty nasty virus on one of my computers before and lost just about everything on my computer. They are just one of those things that you aren’t expecting to happen unless you are an avid watcher of illegally downloaded movies or listen to illegally downloaded music, then at that point you’re kind of just asking for one.
For this Design Assignment, the idea was to re-create a children’s book using computer terminology. I was going through a list of children books and came across The Secret Garden, which was one of my favorites in 5th grade. I tried to think of something that is “secret” in the computer world and I immediately thought of a virus because they usually pop up out of nowhere.
To create this children book, I simply found a cover of The Secret Garden and found a virus symbol. I used BeFunky.com to overlay the virus word onto the cover.

#ds106 #DesignAssignments #DesignAssignments642

 is the childrens book that I started this process with. I chose this book because of the type of assignment it was. The assignment was to create a childrens book with a computer topic. Well worms are related to computers as far as viruses go, so why not! The image that I created is what follows

I started this process on Microsoft word. I had to separate the book so that I could add my new title. I have highlighted the sections I separated in the following photo. 

From there I added a picture of a tiny computer. Next I edited the photo more in GIMP. This time I did not use a video because I have picked up a few techniques while playing around with the program. First I selected the draw selection tool. Then I copied certain sections to remove the pencil. I did this to the best of my ability, although I feel like if I had found a better technique, it would look a little cleaner.

This assignment was to create a kids computer book from a well known kids book. I chose Are you my mother? by Dr Seuss.

A new children’s book.

was by far the best assignment because I enjoy reading children books and want to know all about computers.

Background

I had a conversation with a friend the other day about the world of computing from our eyes and how it differs from what the current high school generation is going through.  One of the thing we noted was that the universal “Save” icon is the image off a floppy disk.  We recognized that we all KNEW the meaning of this image because we used 3.5″ floppy disks, once upon a time.  However, I haven’t seen a floppy disk since the 2000′s (yes, the 2000′s) when USB flash disks started.  Thinking about how imagery relays meeting, we also noted desktops, the image used to represent My Computer, no longer exists in that form with laptops and tablets becoming more commonplace in the 2010s.  

Assignment

This conversation made me think about what a children’s computing book would look like and so I chose the assignment, “Computer Books for Kids.”  I chose to design a cover that used simple imagery that references the process of saving and opening thoughts to the world.  I used the world as a core image because I felt it represented a fundamental object of curiosity as we learn early in our primary education where we fit relative to others around the world.  I colored the word “World” with alternating green and blue letters to connect the reader to the green and blue image of the globe. I used Comic Sans as the text because, well, the format of the book is a comic and would likely use a comic format simple, possibly faceless, figures exploring the world and cataloging images captured in thought bubbles.  The main mechanism would be to press the Save button (floppy disk icon) to save the image into the character’s head.  

Process

To create this cover, I searched for images from the web and pasted them in to PowerPoint.  I used the arrow objects and text box objects in PowerPoint.  I made sure that the web images I used had transparent backgrounds so that I could more easily overlap images (otherwise, the white background on one image would block out an adjacent image).  Once I arranged the images and text appropriately, I used the SnagIt screenshot program on my computer to save the image.  I save the file as a .jpg file