Graphic Design, Chrome-o-fried! Guest Post by Brian McLane

by Brian McLane

Twitter: @brian_mclane
Website: techmantraining.com

Secondary Educator - 32 years, Ed-Tech Junkie, MA Teaching & Learning with Technology, “Head in the Cloud; Caught in the Web”

Chromebooks for Graphic Design?

I teach a high school desktop publishing class which includes graphic design, page layout, image editing, and more. We can use Chromebooks for almost everything we do. And we use completely free cloud software to do it. No Adobe Creative Suite, no Microsoft Office, no expensive, high-learning-curve software. Should I be teaching industry-standard software? Why? I teach the concepts; the tools don't really matter. My students can learn the basics in the numerous free Google Apps and Web-based applications that are available for graphic design. Let's take a look!

Image Editing

One of the first things my students need to learn is image editing. Google Apps offers more image editors than we will ever need! Our go-to app is Pixlr. We use the Pixlr Editor, but easier versions with fewer features (Pixlr Express and Pixlr-O-Matic) are also available right on the home page. Another excellent Chrome extension is Pixlr Touch Up, which allows you to quickly open an image from your computer or Google Drive and do basic editing. Pixlr Editor, on the other hand, is a Photoshop-esque application. Pixlr serves us well for basic image editing such as cropping, resizing, converting files (especially in creating png files from other formats), retouching, and adding text and effects. Other image editors available for Chrome are PicMonkey, BeFunky, Photo Editor, Sumo Paint, pZap, iPiccy, to name a few.

Print and Digital Publishing Software

Lucidpress.com

Without a doubt, LucidPress (LucidPress for Google Drive) - Layout and Design is the best web-based desktop publishing application I have found. And believe me, since the closure of the online Aviary Creative Suite, I have searched to the end of cyberspace. We had been using LucidChart for Education for creating print media, and it was adequate. Lucid Software then released LucidPress in October, 2013. Techcrunch featured LucidPress in a posting on October 2, 2013.

LucidPress includes over 70 templates for creating both print and digital newsletters, brochures, flyers, pamphlets, photo and video books, invitations, and more. I don't allow my students to use templates; they must start with a blank page and create their own design, but the templates are there if needed. LucidPress integrates with Google Drive and is available for Google Chrome in the Chrome Web Store. I especially like the collaboration feature, which allows me to create a "team" (class) of all my students. Their projects are automatically shared with me, and on my computer I can watch them work in real time! They can also work together on shared documents.

LucidPress has a clean, easy-to-use interface. See a screenshot of the LucidPress Editor. Give LucidPress a try. You will find that it is a terrific free alternative to Microsoft Publisher or Adobe inDesign.

Chromebooks are not just Google Drive-Driven

All of the sites I've discussed can, of course, be accessed on any laptop or desktop machine with internet access. So why am I focusing on Chromebooks? Many people are probably under the impression that Chromebooks are useless outside of their integration with Google Drive. After all, you can't even install programs on a Chromebook. That's actually the beauty of Chromebooks! You don't have to install software! All the software is in the cloud; a Chromebook doesn't rely on Google Drive alone. So if you have a Chromebook (or Chromebooks in your school/organization), you can do much more with it than you may realize.

In part two of Chromebooks for Graphic Design, I will take a look at Weebly for Web design and give a quick shout-out to some other useful Google Apps and Web-based software for graphic design, so check back soon!

Lucidpress screenshot:

Lucidpress: Deep-Fried Layout Design with Templates on Top

Guest Blogger Charly has been a camp counselor, K-12 math tutor, and collegiate print and digital journalist. She’s currently enjoying writing and snowboarding in Utah.

Have you ever wished there were an easy-to-learn design tool which would let you and your students fry up print and digital documents in the cloud? What if it were completely free and ran from your browser? Lucidpress leverages a powerful yet user-friendly interface to bring image and text editing capabilities to your fingertips. Both beginning and advanced teachers and students can jump into Lucidpress and learn the tools the first time they use it. The best part is that unlike other programs, Lucidpress allows for real-time collaboration: between teachers, between groups of students, and between teachers and their students.

Lucidpress is a web-based design tool that is ideal for making posters, flyers, and digital yearbooks and newsletters. You can create professional-looking documents—both print and digital—without juggling multiple programs.

Posters

Here is an example of how to make a poster in Lucidpress:

Doesn't it look great? Here are the details on how you can access this poster template:

1. Go to your Lucidpress documents
2. Click Create > New Document > For Print > Posters.
3. Select the poster template you want to work with.
4. Double-click to open the template in the Lucidpress editor.

Flyers

Here is an flyer template created in Lucidpress:

Looks mouthwatering! Once you are in the editor with this template (follow the previous steps, then choose Flyers), here’s how to make changes:

1. Double-click text areas to customize your text.
2. Double-click images to replace with your own images from Google Drive, Google Search, Facebook, Flickr, or Dropbox.
3. Double-click shapes to change their color and shape, or to delete them.
4. In the right-hand dock, you have more fine-tuning options, such as page size, word wrap, and special effects for images. This is a great opportunity to get more advanced students collaborating with beginners!

Digital Yearbooks

For more ambitious users, here is a page from a digital yearbook:

Digital interactivity brings the interactivity of video to your yearbooks, magazines, and newsletters. This is an exciting tool for budding journalists and yearbook staff to capture moments from the school year and share it with the school.

To insert YouTube video content into a digital yearbook, follow these steps:

1. From My Documents, select Create > New Document > For Digital > Yearbooks.
2. From the left-hand Content bar, drag the video icon onto the canvas.
3. Paste the YouTube URL when prompted.
4. Your video content is ready to be shared!

Check out the Lucidpress video below to see the collaboration possibilities for your students and colleagues.

This is just a taste of the creations you can whip up in Lucidpress. You’ll discover templates for training resources, photo books, newsletters, and reports. Lucidpress works equally well for print or digital documents. WIth a high degree of customizability, students—and teachers!—will have fun choosing the best typefaces, images, and colors for school projects. They’ll learn how to work with a team and incorporate feedback from others. Plus, it’s easy to incorporate Google Drive content and share with others.

You can sign up for a free account right now. Because of our continued commitment to education, we’re happy to offer Lucidpress completely free of charge to students and teachers. If you have a Lucidchart account, you can even use the same login credentials.

----------------------------

Thanks to Brad Hanks in Education Outreach for putting me in touch with Charly who provided this article about Lucidpress, and thanks to Lucidpress and Lucidchart for providing AMAZING tools FREE to educators. We appreciate you!

Install Lucidpress into Google Drive via this link.