CS1033 Multimedia and Communications
Assignment 2
Due: Friday, October 26, 2012 by 3:00 PM

You have been approached by the organization "My Sisters' Place", a safe haven for women facing homelessness, to create a poster to advertise their empowering program: Micro-Enterprise (M.E.). M.E. is a group of women who gather to create original jewelry and accessories. These products are then sold at My Sisters' Place and at local events. Your poster will be used when the group sets up displays at events to sell their products. This organization is open to any sort of ideas you can come up with for your poster.

Your poster MUST:

• be catchy and/or creative and/or inventive and/or beautiful and/or clever...figure out a way that you will get people to look at this poster!
• indicate the product: Original and Creative Jewelry
• indicate somehow that women at risk of homelessness are the artisians creating this jewelry.
• include the My Sisters' Place logo and the M.E. slogan: "Without you, there is no ME!"
• include the following contact information:
  • Facebook Page: www.facebook.com/mysistersplacelondon
  • Twitter: @mysistersplace
  • Website: www.mysistersplacelondon.ca
• give the times people can purchase M.E. jewelry:
  • Tuesdays to Thursdays 10am - 12pm and 1pm - 3pm at My Sisters' Place, 566 Dundas Street
• indicate that people can book a table to sell M.E. products at their events or corporate meetings. To book tables or for more information contact: Lynn Blumas, M.E. Program Coordinator, for details at 519-679-9570 ext. 25 l.blumas@wotch.on.ca

More details about M.E.:

• Through the M.E. program women:
  • receive a chance to make something beautiful
  • learn how to operate a business
  • gain companionship
  • gain a sense of purpose
  • get to give back to the community
• M.E. artisans have faced or are still facing challenges such as homelessness, abuse, addictions, mental illness, under-employment, trauma, isolation and poverty.
• You can read more about the M.E. initiative in their brochure and at their website.
• This is the poster they are currently using. that they would like replaced.
• Here are some images of their jewelry to inspire you and to use on the poster!
  • images
• Also, try visiting their website to find other images you might want to use (just right click on them and save them to your area).

Now to make this really interesting:

My Sisters' Place will be picking the top 3 posters that appeal to them. Your mark will NOT be made available to them, but they will be choosing based on the look and the content of the poster. The top three posters may actually be used in their campaign as part of their marketing campaign. TRY TO MAKE YOUR POSTER ONE OF THE CHOSEN POSTERS, it will look great on your resume!

NOTE: You may use ANY PICTURES you want FROM THE INTERNET, but if your poster is picked as the winning poster, we might have to replace the images you originally used if the organization cannot get the copyrights to it (but you will NOT LOSE MARKS on your assignment) . If you want to try to build a poster that won't violate copyright laws, use your own photography or images from on-line stockphoto websites such as www.istockphoto.com or www.bigstockphoto.com or www.shutterstock.com. or any other one you like that will give us the right to use the images as part of the campaign. Some sites say "Free" to use. If you use an image from ANY ONLINE STOCKPHOTO site where we can have the rights to that photo, and your poster is chosen, then we can go to the site and pay for the image. Don't worry about the watermark on these images, you won't lose marks for that if you include it in the poster. But if you feel that the watermark interferes with the look of your poster, then consider any of the options above.

Marking Scheme For Your Assignment:

In this assignment, we do not have specific requirements as far as how many shapes and effects you need to use. Based on what you have learned from your labs and your first assignment, put together a professional poster that uses different graphic elements/techniques (shapes, opacity, text variation, effects, etc.) to create a professional poster that meets the requirements listed above. Below is the list of criteria we will be using to mark this assignment.

Criteria:

• Photoshop File Name: uwouseraccount_poster.psd (for example: jsmit_poster.psd) NOTE: file name must be all lower case
• Final Poster Image Name: uwouseraccount_poster.jpg (for example: jsmit_poster.jpg) NOTE: file name must be all lower case
• Canvas size: at least 800 x 600 (or 600 X 800) pixels in size
  • If you want to go larger go ahead BUT you must be able to upload it to your publish.uwo.ca website. So if you make it too big, the file size of the .psd file may get very large and then you might not have enough space on Panther to upload it. So don't make it too big. You have a quota of about 20 Megs on panther, but some of that is being used by your assignment 1 stuff (which you may delete AFTER you have received your assignment 1 mark) and by your uwo email.
  • Your resolution must be 72 pixels per inch
• Color creativity: Whether the colors co-ordinate, flow nicely with the overall look
• Theme: (meet the requirements listed above)
  • Layout: (is it crowded or or is it nicely laid out with good use of white space)
  • Image appropriateness with theme
  • Is message evident based on requirements
• Artwork Detail:
  • You can start with any image as a background or choose to work with a solid color/ blend and add images as you need them.
  • You can use any images you find on the internet, either from the list above or from other sites but it is very important that you include a reference for each image you use (include this in the "Assignment Text" box of Owl)
  • Bleeding edges; artifacts leftover from an image you copied over and wasn't covered up properly.
  • Text: is the text easy to read, crisp, is the size of the text appropriate?
  • Artwork/element dimensions (are elements of proper dimensions relative to overall image/other elements in poster). Are elements presented in a professional way?
  • Quality of images: (crisp vs. pixilated vs. blurred/fuzzy, sizing relative to overall poster)
  • Balance - is poster well balanced with the elements used?
• Content:
  • Evidence of title, contact information: any other key information you feel are appropriate within this poster
  • Is message evident in the content?
  • NOTE: Try to provide enough information to make sure the public understands the issues but also remember this is a poster, so avoid being overly wordy. You must make good design decisions about what to include in your poster to make it both aesthetically pleasing to the eye and contain useful information that would attract someone to your poster.
• Technical:
  • Files (PSD/JPEG)   Must work properly and viewable from your publish area (this is when the size of your poster may become a factor)
  • All layers must be labeled with good layer names
  • References for ALL images used must be cited (provide web site address of each image. This is a Reference Section for any images you used.) (You will receive an automatic 0 if references are not included). Please take a look at our previous comments about copyrighted images.

WinSCP Instructions:

• You must upload to your ITS Publish (Panther) area via WinSCP or some other FTP program
  • Create a subdirectory (folder) within your public _html directory called assign2 (NOTE: the folder name must be all lowercase), and move the following files to the assign2 folder:
    • the final product (.jpg or .gif)
    • native Photoshop file (.psd)
    • any additional images that you used
  • DOUBLE CHECK, via Firefox or IE(Internet Explorer) that you can view the .jpg file and the .psd file in the http://publish.uwo.ca/~uwouseraccount/assign2 web site. This will make sure that the permissions are set correctly. Using WinSCP, make sure that the new folder called assign2 that you built in public_html, the folder should have permissions set to Read and Execute by Others (permission 755). The .jpg and .psd files should be set to Read by Others. (permission 644).

OWL Instructions:

• You must also submit the links to the jpg and psd files and the reference information via Owl
• In the "Assignment Text" box for assignment 2, you must put the following:
  • the first line of the "Assignment Text" box MUST be the web site containing your .jpg poster file (include the http://)
  • the second line MUST be the web site containing the .psd native file for your poster
  • a blank line
  • the web addresses (include the http://) for each of the images used in your poster OR if you took the picture yourself (for example on your digital camera), put the image name, the words "taken by" and your name beside it.
    
  • Example, if your name was John Smith and your Western user account was jsmit, then here is a possible "Assignment Text" box in Owl:
    

    http://publish.uwo.ca/~jsmit/assign2/jsmit_poster.jpg http://publish.uwo.ca/~jsmit/assign2/jsmit_poster.psd Middlesexcollegeclocktower.jpg taken by John Smith http://www.uwo.ca/outreach/new/images/collage2.jpg http://www.flickr.com/photos/uwo/7885/in/pool-western

• REMEMBER TO SAVE THE EMAIL FROM OWL THAT INDICATES YOU SUBMITTED YOUR ASSIGNMENT ON TIME. Without this email, we can NOT guarentee that we will still accept your assignment to be marked if you had difficulties during submission.

Late Policy

• Any assignments received after 3pm on Friday,Oct 26, but before 3pm on Sunday, Oct 28 will lose 15%.
• Any assignments received after 3pm on Sunday, Oct 28, but before 3pm on Monday, Oct 29 will lose 30%.
• Any assignments received after 3pm on Monday, Oct 29, but before 3pm on Tuesday, Oct 30 will lose 45%.
• No assignments submitted after 3pm on Tuesday, Oct 30, will be accepted and a grade of ZERO will be given
• NO extensions will be given for computer technical problems or Owl connectivity issues. If your machine is having problems, you MUST complete the assignment in one of the labs on campus.