Zine Making: Accessible Expression

Popularly know as a DIY way to self publish writing and art. Zines are created by people interested in political issuespunk culture, or even cult TV shows, and movies. Zines are a way to share thoughts to your community and beyond. We used the medium to create miniature E-Books. People were inspired to create books of poetry, cookbooks, and photo experimentations.

The first class focused on photoshop (handout here), showing students how to edit stock photos to create something completely new. On the second class we introduced the website BeFunky. A free photo editing site where people were able to play with, and edit their photos quickly and easily. The ones below were made by Susan who said “[she] had always wanted to make greeting cards”.

Check out some other cool zines at the bottom of this post!

AnimalsYourTreeorMineFinch AnimalsFeelingJumpy

Other community work:

AmiSlide1 Slide2hot teas       WolfPP2

 

 

Mass Media and Gender at Trafalgar School for Girls

Digital Literacy Project facilitators Robin Kelly and Victoria Nam worked with students at Trafalgar School for Girls. They offered a gender theory and photoshop workshop at Trafalgar School for Girls which focussed on Mass Media and Gender.

The course was multimedia in every way possible.


 

 

 

 

All the support material for the class was available on a blog set up specifically and only for this group.

The group learnt various theoretical frameworks for unpacking gender constructs found in the world of advertising.

They also read and critiqued blogs about gender and advertising written by other young women and contributed their observations to the class blog by commenting on each other’s analysis.

After digesting many theoretical ideas and being exposed to new ways of looking at examples of advertising, each student chose a specific advertisement and used Photoshop to alter and transform the images. With the support of the facilitators, each student created an ‘open letter’ to the world of advertising. These ‘open letters’ formed imagery which critiqued the mainstream view of gender in mass media. Students wrote an artist statement explaining her work and describing the techniques used. Each statement was also posted on the blog.

The students then chose a specific advertisement and used Photoshop to alter and transform the images, with the support of the facilitators, each student created an ‘open letter’ to the world of advertising. These ‘open letters’ formed imagery which critiqued the mainstream view of gender in mass media.

 

At the end of the session, we printed all the pieces in poster format and each student presented her piece to the class.

Robin elaborates:

“The best part of this workshop is the big critique at the end, when we put all the posters up and talk about them. This is when we really see the students pull together everything they’ve learned and explain how they’ve used design to create their own message with their poster. This year I was blown away by the students receptiveness and their level of analysis. Even the students who weren’t so sure at first ended up producing some pretty interesting posters!”

An example of their work:

Student work

Bienvenue à NDG – Fall 2011

Bienvenue à NDG of the NDG Community Council came to the Atwater Library and Computer Centre this fall. We supported their job skills program by offering them a workshop on graphic design, social media strategy and conversational marketing.

Bienvenue à NDG is a job skills program which uses event planning as a way of bringing the participants together to work on a shared project.

Digital Literacy Project facilitator Sophie developed much their program based on the both the computer skills necessary to effectively  market an event and through evaluating the skill level of the participants.

We worked on graphic design, information design, basic computer skills and some social media. Colin and Celine from  a local web marketing shop stresslimit even came to present the basics of facebook and twitter.

On the last day, we made video which tells a bit more about how the DLP workshop went for the participants, as well as how our  workshops supported the Bienvenue à NDG program.

 


For more information about Bienvenue à NDG or the NDG Community Council, check out the links below: