• Computer Graphics – Internet

1st and 2nd Year

It is impossible today for a young graphic artist to envision entering the job market without first mastering the most widely used text and image computer programs. The theoretical part of this class trains the student to use these different tools for page layout and the creation or transformation of photographic or drawn images.
The practical part of the class assists the student in computer use for his ongoing projects. Throughout the year in the multimedia section, each student participates in the creation of a web site and also produces his own CD-ROM, which is “burned” at the end of the year and becomes part of his personal portfolio.

• Animated Graphics

1st and 2nd Year

This class is an initiation to animated graphic design : title pages, presentations, jingles… It covers audiovisual creations over the past fifty years and their different animation techniques, providing the student with an animated graphic design culture
The class also teaches students to use tools, in particular the After Effects software, to create animated images. Basic instruction with a digital DV camera allows students to film and accumulate their own video sources.

• Graphic Design

1st and 2nd Year

This class develops graphic design expertise: approaching and defining a concept and putting this knowledge into practice via specific projects (poster, book format, newspaper, signage).
Subjects also inspired by other classes (semiology, creativity) are completed in final graphic form. The class also includes the completion of bi-monthly or monthly projects. Each student shows his work before the class for a critique by the graphic design professor or other professors involved on the project.

• Illustration

1st and 2nd Year

Illustration classes use various themes so students progressively develop a personal style. Life drawing classes, “vers le signe” or experimental drawing classes bolster the student’s artistic and semantic maturity, while the emergence of his original style, attitude or world view, contributes to his personal growth.
To be an illustrator one must know how to accompany a text (informative, publicity or literary) without an obvious visual expression of the words. A good illustrator remains autonomous while questioning, illuminating and playing with the text he depicts.

• Typography–press–publishing

1st and 2nd year

Typography classes study the relationships between full and empty; breathing and tension; black, white and gray. An open magazine is a painting before it is a mass of information; and reading begins with pleasure only if the painting is alive. Next comes contact with the letters; each one carrying a poetic and tonal universe in the vast family of symbols.

Finally, typography is part of a system of rules which it is essential to integrate, if only as a base for contradiction or for a coherent evolution. In the 2nd year, the press-publishing class looks at classic typographical uses: books, magazines, reviews, newspapers, theater programs, etc.

• Visual Identity

2nd Year

Creation of a visual identity (for a company, label, museum, institution, musical group…) is perhaps graphic art’s essential function.
This visual reference (usable as a logo, trademark color, typographical identity or packaging) represents the personality, spirit and values of the company or institution to the general public in a tangible fashion, maintaining visual coherence in all instances of communication.

• Life Drawing

1st Year

Life drawing is the living, free, sensitive depiction of the body via the hand. Sketching immediately shows us our level of freedom regarding form. A good sketch is somewhat like a Zen poem; elegance doesn’t come from effort or logic. It comes when, in a balanced relationship of release and attention, we no longer expect it.
As opposed to the elaborate synthesis of drawing through observation, a good sketch comes from the heart and our instinct. Sketching is an introduction to calligraphy, page layout and illustration. The simplicity of its format makes it the perfect sensual counterpart to the computer’s cold sophistication.

• Photographic Arts– Digital Photography

1st Year

The graphic artist regularly photographs forms, objects, textures and faces, either to scan and incorporate them in his graphic design work, or by a direct connection between a digital camera and his computer. Do we consider him to be a photographer?
Probably not, as he usually lacks time or desire to produce his images in a traditional laboratory. Photoshop is his laboratory, and his objective is to capture material or symbols and sculpt them at his leisure, recomposing them with other symbols and typography
The class covers this particular photographic approach, with the second objective of looking at and analyzing a photographer’s work, since an artistic director must always possess a thorough photographic culture.

• Creativity

1st and 2nd Year

Lacking self confidence, a beginning student sometimes cuts off his emotions and freedom to play, thus blocking his creative thinking process.
The goal of this class is to help him open up. The principle consists of using concrete exercises to put into place a creative process while remaining conscious of the different steps which can structure it:
- take the time to become immersed in and question the subject
- find an interior inspirational response
- fix clear but modifiable objectives
- determine the project’s possibilities in terms of restrictions in time and material

• Experimental Drawing

1st Year

1. Through different exercises, (short time periods, unusual themes), the student produces forms, symbols or drawings without the intervention of his intellectual filter, his gesture must come before thinking.
2.Next he is taught to look at what he has produced without hasty esthetic judgments; to notice the direction indicated in these apparently random efforts; and grasp their artistic elements. He can then see the way his personal touch has been revealed, allowing him to embark on a personal graphic language…
3. The student will then file, organize, and conserve this work in a “raw” image bank to which he periodically returns for inspiration, in order to organize a more elaborate artistic language, or supplement another subject (logos, illustration, etc…)

•End of Year Project

1st and 2nd Year

During the entire second year of studies the student chooses a graphic project and develops it for all potential uses: graphic panels, research notebooks, communication media (posters, PLV, video, web sites, publishing, packaging…) This synthesis allows an evaluation of his ability to define and resolve a graphic project’s possibilities overall.
The project measures his capacity to form hypotheses, and his ability to develop several conceptual propositions while integrating technical material and time factors into his thought and realization process.

• Graphic Arts History

1st Year

From Cassandre to Neville Brody, by way of Savignac, Milton Glaser or Tomascewski, the evolution of graphic arts in the world is a fascinating subject, often parallel to or influencing art history and the century’s ideology.
This is evidently a cornerstone in our training, as the knowledge of what has been done or is being produced today in the world of visual creation helps form a young graphic artist’s stylistic positioning. Nothing comes from a void … a good graphic artist must have a significant graphic arts culture.

• Cultural Activities

1st and 2nd Year

Lisaa publishes a press review of different events of the week or month that students can choose to attend (exhibitions, art openings, festivals…). We also provide different media and information sources on graphic arts: magazines and specialized publications, recent books, on-line information (web sites,) or television programs focusing on graphic arts, cultural current events, exhibitions, etc.

• Semiology

1st Year

It helps the student understand different levels of a visual message:
This class trains the student to “read” an image (painting, print, poster, packaging, clothing, object, television show, page layout, logo…) by decoding the symbols which constitute it. More than ever, our world is becoming a “constellation of images,” and the class serves as an analysis of the social values that influence us.It helps the student understand different levels of a visual message:
: what is said or suggested, and what is communicated latently, either for fun or with a deliberate desire to manipulate. The class looks at numerous case studies and proposes exercises for the student to put what he has learned into practice.

•English

1st and 2nd year

In first year, the class is taught in English by a bilingual graphic artist – illustrator who gives students concrete graphic exercises. With this method, current professional vocabulary is practiced in different realization and presentation phases of graphic work: format, concept, sketching, line, framing, inserts, brushes, dimensions, objectives, research, completion…In second year, the emphasis is on vocabulary used in the larger context of a professional environment (agencies, team work and client relations.)

• Marketing

1st year

To communicate with a client and position oneself in relation to a specific sector and target, it is important to master fundamental marketing basics and understand the meaning behind steps taken to create products to satisfy consumers.
This class looks at a communication plan and the evolution of a product in different stages: positioning strategy, geographic implantation, key words used, history, logo, distribution, etc.

• Obligatory Internship

Students do an internship of at least 5 weeks in a professional situation and write a report (according to prescribed guidelines) describing and analyzing their time there. This professional experience is an opportunity for the student to evaluate his understanding of the functioning and environment of a company structure, measure his knowledge of the different steps of a visual communication project and sense his capacity to integrate into a work team. Also, in writing a report on the internship, he shows his professors his ability to synthesize and communicate about his experience.