Introduction to Visual Techniques

This course is where graphic design students learn to actually operate the tools of the trade — Illustrator for vector work, Photoshop for raster editing, and InDesign for layout — and more importantly, learn when each one is the right answer. You'll spend the semester producing four hands-on projects (vector graphics, raster graphics, a poster combining both, and a magazine layout as the term project), with most of the grade coming from the work itself rather than exams. It functions as the technical foundation for everything visual you'll do later in the program, so the goal isn't just clicking through tutorials but building the software fluency that upper-year studio courses will assume you already have.