Remake you (or someone you know and love) into a cartoon character. Draw you on a piece of paper, on a tablet, take a photo and use software to convert it to comic book style, or use online programs to create a cartoon version of your character. Extra bonus points if you can come up with an origin story or add comic book elements to your final image.
Take a video game cover and remix it to change up the meaning or play with the general idea of the game. You can see more examples in this post which is in many ways the inspiration for this assignment.
Time to let out your inner Big Brother! Create a propaganda poster for ds106. Use your photo editing software of choice and write a message to inspire your fellow ds106ers. For example, I took a WW2 poster about increasing ammunition production, and turned it into a poster promoting tweeting.
Take a title of a well-known book and re-design the cover to suggest something entirely different. For example, the book cover for Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (an apocalyptic novel about a father and son facing the end of the world) is reframed as a feel-good book about effective parenting (see image). Original idea found through this design contest on Book Ninja in 2008.
Image credit: Ingrid Paulson’s reimagining of The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Pick your favorite quote OR make up your own phrase which describes a philosophy that you try to live by. It can be about love, friendship, family, education, culture, health, charity, etc. Design a minimalist poster depicting the concept. Extra challenge: Try to include a unique element that makes it YOU. Don’t forget to explain your thought process. :)
Make a campaign poster for Bagman’s 2012 campaign! You can base it on a famous political poster (Obama’s Hope poster, for example), movie posters, whatever. Minimalist or complex, just make it awesome.
Design the front and back of a postcard that might be sent from the location of a movie or a work of fiction. Both sides of the cards must be created as graphics.
The fornt should use graphic design elements that provide a sense of place or use the classic motifs of old postcards (“Greetings from ______”)_, both pictures and text. The back of the post card should contain a stamp and postmark that fits with the theme of the movie, as well as an addressee and a message that fits the plot as well.
The inspiration was a fanfiaction assignment created by a UMW student in Spring Semester 2011- see the excellent set of LOTR cards at http://cupofchai.umwblogs.org/2010/11/22/fanfiction/
Design (using any programs you want) the cover of your autobiography. What pictures would you include? What would you title it?
Make sure it really shows off who you are what you want your audience to see in you by the cover.
This idea was first suggested by Tom Woodward and has been a long standing popular ds106 assignment.
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. For icons a great resource is The Noun Project.
Turn ideas into pictures!
Visualize a blog post, TED Talk, Class lecture or even dense text from a book- through drawing. Use the pictures to symbolically represent & concretize abstract concepts, and to make connections between ideas. Try to use words sparingly and only to reinforce your imagery.
Doodle it in your notebook, use your tablet, or scribble it on the back of a napkin. Just be sure to digitize it and then blog about the process, including citing where your inspiration came from.
