Digital Maestro Magazine
Table of Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Cover image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Organizing Illustrations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Dragon’s story . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Thought Balloon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Change shapes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Google Slides . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Book covers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Social media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Digital Maestro Magazine
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Digital Maestro Magazine
Introduction The lessons in this issue originated with a request. Teachers needed a way for students to access an application like ComicLife. Students in our district have one to one access to Chromebooks. ComicLife is not available for Chromebooks. They wanted an alternative. I had already used Google Drawings for graphic organizers. I had also used some tools in Slides to create interactive stories. I combined both ideas and lessons for use with Google Drawings. I choose Google Drawings over the other Google applications for a few reasons. Google Docs is not designed to be used for desktop publishing. There are several good tools but they can be difficult to use in a word processing environment. Google Slides works very well with graphics and interactive stories. I wrote an issue that uses Google Slides for interactive stories. I didn’t choose Google Slides because it is Page 4
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very presentation centric. I wanted a tool that could be used for a variety of projects. The illustrations we create in these lessons will be assembled in Google Slides. They can also be assembled in a Google Doc. Projects like book covers, posters, and social media are images by themselves. We have the option to export our finished product and share it. Better yet, we can share the finished product without exporting to a static image. Google Drawings is part of Google Suite. It is found in the app launcher with the other apps. The tools in Drawing are easy to use. The products possible are amazing. In this issue, we will explore Google Drawings for
Digital Maestro Magazine language arts. There are a variety of ways to use the application with reading, writing, and vocabulary. We will create a few basic illustrations in a short story. The lessons will show how the basic tools work. I will also include some graphic design ideas and concepts. This all ties into STREAM. Lots of emphasis on Technology, Reading, wRiting, and Art.
Illustration ideas I have a short list projects for use in language arts. I’m sure you have many more. 1. Illustrate a short story 2. Illustrate a book they have read 3. Illustrate a book of poems 4. Illustrate a comic book 5. Design a movie poster 6. Design a greeting card 7. Design a holiday card 8. Design a PSA poster 9. Design a flyer 10. Design a social media message
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Digital Maestro Magazine
Cover image Our first project is one most elementary school teachers can use as part of any lesson. The lesson can be adapted for middle and high school students. I will be using the words drawing and illustration a lot. The drawing will often refer to the application product from Google Drawings. The illustration will refer to the content we create in Google Drawings. Create a new drawing. The application is in the Apps launcher. You might need to find it under the More option. The artboard has a checkered pattern. This pattern is used in graphics to let us know that the background is transparent. The background is transparent to allow us to create illustrations with transparent backgrounds. Some of the images we will use will have transparent backgrounds.
This is my title. Feel free to you one of your own.
Let’s begin with the title of our illustrated story. The text is placed onto the artboard with text boxes. Click the Insert option in the menu. Select the option to insert a Text box.
First things first. We should name our drawing. Click the Untitled drawing field. This field is above the menu. Title the drawing “Dragon’s Love Tale”. Don’t include the quotation marks. We need to select where to place the text box. The mouse pointer will change to a plus sign. Move the mouse pointer over the artboard if you don’t see it.
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Digital Maestro Magazine Click once anywhere on the artboard.
Font library Before selecting a font, it would be nice to find a font that is decorative. Google hosts a library of font services. This font repository is available for anyone to use. The font repository is available at https://fonts.google.com.
A rectangular text box will be placed to the right of where we click. The box is ready to accept our text. Type the title of our story. It’s the same as the name of our drawing.
The text box uses the default font, Ariel. Let’s change the font, font size, and text alignment.
We don’t need to go to this repository to use one of the fonts on our cover. Access to the repository is available through most Google Suite applications. Click the font selector. The font selector is in the button bar.
Select the More fonts option.
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Digital Maestro Magazine A font’s selector box will open. There are hundreds of fonts to browse.
There is an easy way to browse for a font we want. Click the Show all fonts selector. Fonts are grouped into categories. Most of these categories are used for writing letters and stories. We want something more decorative for our title. Click the Display category.
Click once on a font family. Fonts are called families. Fonts often have more than one form. There are fonts that are thick, medium, thin, and italic. These are all part of the font family. A font that has several members in its family is the Nunito font. This font has Extra Light, Light, Normal, Semi Bold, Bold, and so on. Why so many fonts? Long publications like magazines need a variety of font styles that look similar. The Black font in the Nunito family might be used for large titles. The normal form is used for paragraph text. The light form might be used for captions or illustrations. Semi Bold might be used for subtitles. Font is actually a term used to define the file. The lettering or style of the font is referred to as the Typeface. Most people usually use the term font. Designers use the term typeface.
Fonts in the display category are more decorative. Decorative fonts are not designed to be used on long text like paragraphs. Adding fonts to use in our projects is easy.
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Digital Maestro Magazine Thank you for reading these sample pages.
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