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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Introduction to Imagemaking by California Institute of the Arts

4.5
stars
2,820 ratings

About the Course

This course for serious makers, and for students new to imagemaking. Imagemaking is a fluid and exciting area of graphic design that comes out of practice and process: experimenting fearlessly, showing and sharing ideas, and giving and receiving knowledgeable and constructive input. For the sake of this online platform, we have applied some structure to our investigations, but for the most part imagemaking is loose and unstructured. If we must adopt a rule in this course it is only this: you will not become a graphic designer by watching videos alone. Or, don't just make stuff just in your head. So here, the focus here is on making, and you are expected to devote serious time and intellectual energy to that activity in this course. Specifically, you will: - experiment with a range of materials and techniques to make images for graphic design - expand your visual vocabulary both in terms of making and talking about work, in order to discuss your work and work of others - learn how to make, manipulate and arrange images to create compositions, eventually culminating in the design and production of an-image-based book. The first half of the course is an opportunity to experiment and explore imagemaking in order to expand your visual vocabulary. You will create pieces that are expressive, meditative, or 'design-y' to instigate, evoke, experiment, record, explain, or try out a media. In the second two weeks, we’ll invite the images to deliberately and intentionally carry meaning and communication through relational moves like juxtaposition, composition, and context. We’ll look at developing and expanding the range of approaches for putting things together by composing page spreads with your images. Since nothing exists without context, we look at how to intentionally drive the image’s connotations, meanings, and associations generated through elements of composition and “visual contrasts.” Ultimately, we will take the images that you create and make a book from them. The results of your assignments (and experiments) may generate something completely unknowable now or in the future—and that's the goal....

Top reviews

LC

Oct 8, 2017

I'm so happy i did this course. Gail, you're amazing and you made my imagination go wild with just your words. I can see you love your craft and that's very inspiring. Enjoyed this course all the way!

TA

May 22, 2023

In fact i am very much glad for this because before taking this course, i know nothing about Indesign but i can now use it and more, Thank you for this financial aid opportunities, Blessings coursera

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576 - 600 of 633 Reviews for Introduction to Imagemaking

By Ella H

May 1, 2020

3.5 - Did not enjoy this course as much as the others in this group, found a lot of the exercises quite repetitive and due to lockdown I did not have access to enough materials to experiment successfully.

By Aimee L

Jun 6, 2020

This course didn't really seem to go into any more detail than the overview in the fundamentals to graphic design course. There was very little guidance and instructions were a little confusing at times

By Emily B

Apr 7, 2023

Some of these projects were good because they offered ways to stretch my knowledge of different software, but I do not feel as though I learned very much from the provided content.

By Megan W

Jun 6, 2021

Most of the instructions were very vague and difficult to understand. I think it would be very helpful to examples of the assignments instead of having to blindly

By Cameron G

Dec 2, 2021

The lectures were just incredibly drab and boring. Im sure Gail is a nice lady but she couldnt be any less compelling of a speaker if she tried

By Malu V

May 26, 2020

This course wasn't as well structured as the previous ones in the specialization. The assignments had problematic instructions

By Dmitrii P

Feb 23, 2017

Pretty weak teaching - "maybe you can place objects in this order, or maybe in this order". No any clear logics.

By Artur V B

Feb 8, 2021

It's an interesting course, but a little bit open. Some activities will take too long if you're perfectionist.

By Raquel Z W

Nov 12, 2017

The content of this module is good, however I think It's very complicated to depend on student's reviews only.

By YO L

Aug 18, 2022

The least informative course from the CalArts Specialization, I was disappointed with this one.

By SWASTIK

Aug 9, 2020

please try putting in more videos with methods rather than case studies and reading texts.

By Hector E

Jul 13, 2016

Fun course but everything was already covered on the Fundamentals Of Graphic Design Course.

By Daria H

Jun 20, 2016

This course is good, although it repeats a lot from the Fundamentals of Graphic Design.

By Jackie F

Dec 11, 2017

General and basic overview of image-making techniques and strategies.

By 朱思超

Aug 14, 2017

kinda too basic for me....but it would be a good course for beginners

By Sayed K N

Dec 18, 2018

good course but need a lil more resource. thank you

By Georgia K

May 5, 2016

Very poor instructions and not enough theory.

By Vivian F

Jan 12, 2018

课程的内容不太具体,在这个专项课程里算是有点薄弱的一节

By Gary D G

Jun 7, 2020

To many videos and reading

By Ignacio R G

Mar 22, 2018

It is a very basic course.

By Sofía I D

May 11, 2020

The new information provided is really very little, almost everything was already said in the first course. The task instructions are unclear and never indicate that what you do will be used in the future. This is very important, it is not the same to do an exercise to practice than to do it for the final project (when you have the first task they do not tell you that you must use those same components throughout the course). Also, being so abstract and confusing when correcting, many people did not understand what the brief was and they correct it wrong. Finally, it took a long time to return my grades, in the other courses it took only a few hours, here I have been waiting for my grades for three days.

Finally, it took me a long time to return my grades, in the other courses it took only a few hours, here I have been waiting for my grades for three days.

Finally, it took me a long time to return my grades, in the other courses it took only a few hours, here I have been waiting for my grades for three days.

Finally, it took me a long time to return my grades, in the other courses it took only a few hours, here I have been waiting for my grades for three days.

By Vlada S

Jul 27, 2020

Unfortunately, I didn't enjoy this course at all and waited for it to end.

Compering to the first two courses of Graphic Design Specialization that were well explained, clear and informative, this course was not clear. A large part of this course was just written and contained very few videos that clearly explain the subject. Most of the assignments are not clear and many times I had to go online to search for basic information that was supposed to be part of this course. I felt like I didn't learn much, and I think it would be nice if there were more videos to explain subjects better than those quickly written summaries. I believe that for people with some understanding and previous knowledge in graphic design would it can be ok, but for a person who just started to learn each term is new and more detailed explanations are required.

By Hanako M S

Apr 5, 2021

While I understand this is a valuable course to take towards the graphic design specialization, the peer-reviewing process for such artistic/creative/subjective assignments can be quite problematic. While I did my best to give substantial feedback, I received many underwhelming reviews. I think there needs to be more concrete feedback opportunities from an instructor. I felt my motivation to continue with this course decrease week by week due to the way the assignments were so taxing, and yet I receive no constructive criticism on them. Also, the technicalities of requiring an issuu link for the last week's assignment submission must be addressed more in the course curriculum.

By Minuette W

Jan 16, 2023

Unfortunately I thoroughly disliked this course. The concepts in it were taught better in the first course of the Graphic Design specialization, Fundamentals of Graphic Design, and the rest was about how to make a book, not how to create images. It´s good if all you want is the basics of layout and inspiration to make your own art projects, but its very very basic and too vague and to be honest pretentious for intermediate to advanced artists.

In short, you may find this course helpful if you don´t have much or any art or graphic design experience, but otherwise it is too vague to be of much help.

By Anjani

Dec 22, 2022

This was my least favourite course in this specialization. The theory was explained in a very unclear manner, the instructor starts a sentence then finishes with something entirely different. No clear explanations of terms. And the peer reviews are practically non-existent. People either give a few words of "review" or nothing at all. Can't believe I actually paid to get reviews saying "good" and "n/a". And in the forum the staff keeps saying they will work on this, looking back they have been saying this for over a year without any change. You're better off spending your money elsewhere.