Grade 7s Illustrate Issues with Digital Art

February 26, 2021

Academics

GNS

The Grade 7 IB Visual Arts class recently dabbled in graphic design, where they learned about colour theory and colour psychology, layouts, contrast, and hierarchy of elements as well as fonts and their effects.

Their project was to create digital posters about a social or environmental issue using all the tools they had explored. The overarching theme was “A world I want to see,” so they were asked to choose an issue they were interested in trying to improve or raise awareness about.

Throughout the process students brainstormed and created thumbnail sketches to try out different ideas and layouts on paper first. Then they learned how to use Canva to create the final digital versions of their posters.

Olivia Gratton chose to create a digital poster about beach pollution, so she designed a beach scene with the different materials that are polluting the beach.

“I live right next to the beach, and I see pollution a lot when I go there, so I wanted to tell people it’s an issue and a pretty big one because it affects marine wildlife and the ecosystem,” she said. ”I hope when people see my graphic they will want to make a difference, and pick up their trash if they go to the beach. Or if they see others they would want to clean it up so it doesn’t go into the ocean.”

Kate Marriette created a digital poster that dealt with gender stereotypes. Using two silhouettes, she put stereotypical words (positive and negative) into each, and chose to have the background pink and blue. In the middle, the colours merge to create purple.

“It was so much, I’m really passionate about this topic, and it was awesome to put it into a poster,” she said. “Typically, when I think of art I don’t think of digital stuff, and of course, it’s a huge part of art so I really enjoyed using Canva and put all my skills into it.”

Climate change was also a common topic for students making digital posters. Sasha Baterina wanted to make her poster on that topic because it is so important. She chose to create a graphic of the Earth with ways to combat climate change illustrated around it.

“I think climate change is something everyone will focus on so we can save the environment,” she said. “I hope when people see the poster, they see all the positive things around the Earth as a reminder of the things you can do to help.”

Great job to all of the Grade 7 classes on designing these digital posters!