So, every other Friday I do these surprise assignments with my interns—I want to teach them to think and design on the fly, and learn new skills as they go. The assignments are based on skills I think they need to work on (be it technical or stylistic), and structure it in a fun way. Even though it’s totally based around them, it’s also fun for me to watch and see what they come up with in an environment with no real pressures, a safe space.
They learned how to make animated GIFs two weeks ago, and today we did chalkboard lettering:
I started by giving them a pre-existing design to copy, to familiarize themselves with the materials. Then, I started giving them situational assignments, like “design a menu” or “design a jam lid.”