An art group I participate in has been working on creating “artist trading cards” which are small decorated cards that artists trade, like baseball cards.  Here’s a sample:

It struck me that there is an assignment there for helping students with image design.

As Anne Lamott reminds us, breaking things into short assignments allows them to be tackled more easily.

So I wondered about the idea of having students make ONE powerpoint slide (or image) as “art,”  creating a collage, mixing different textures and fonts, and adhering to principles of good visual design.  Breaking design down to that elemental a level would aid students in transferring it to a larger assignment.

The images could be “traded,” posted in the classroom, judged by outside judges(like the Four Slide Contest)  or analyzed for design effectiveness by the class.  Dan Meyer’s Four Slide contest would be an excellent source of images to talk with students about design choices, originality of voice, and effectiveness, by the way.

And by keeping the assignment small and incremental, it would let students really focus in on the design rather than the content, but also see how design contributes to the effective delivery of content, which is of course, what we really want them to “get.”

By the way, Dan, any hopes of another contest?