Giants in the Earth

In this project, students are given text from the novel Giants in the Earth by O. E. Rölvaag and asked to re-imagine the story in a combination of text and imagery that presents the story in a new context. Students read and design a section of the text in a collaborative book created by everyone in the course. I ask them to be deliberate in their visual choices and leave the brief open other than page sizes, and the one stipulation that there be no wagon wheels, dug-out houses, bison or other imagery of the frontier. The message in the story is one of struggle against the elements to succeed, and there are present day parallels that I ask them to draw and editorialize in the pages of the book.

Spring 2014 Edition

Expected project outcomes:

• Gain experience with design authorship and self-publishing, two themes that have had an impact on graphic design.
• Continue to explore relationships between text and image, providing a capstone to the 6 earlier projects in the course.
• Connecting their educational experiences with local history, Giants in the Earth was written about pioneers in the eastern South Dakota, western Minnesota region.

Fall 2013 Edition