10th Grade — Design History Preview: One Movement, One Reinterpretation

⏰ Do Now — Start Here

Have you ever seen a modern poster or logo that looked like it came from a different decade? What made it feel that way?

🎯 Today's Big Question

What can looking at design history teach us before we spend a whole year studying it?

📈 By the End of Today, You Will Be Able To

Research one real design-history movement (chosen from a provided short list) in enough depth to summarize it accurately.
Identify 2-3 visual characteristics that define that movement.
Create an original piece that reinterprets the movement in a modern context.

🧰 What You'll Need

Research access (a short provided list of movements: Bauhaus, Swiss Style, Art Nouveau, Punk, or Psychedelia)
Sketchbook and/or software

📋 Your Plan for Today

Day 1: Research

Do Now (5 min, above).
Independent research (35 min): pick one movement and research its history and 2-3 defining visual characteristics.

Day 2: Sketch & Concept

Independent work (35 min): sketch concepts applying those characteristics to a modern subject.

Day 3: Build

Independent work (35 min): build the final reinterpretation piece.

🖥️ Today's Slide Deck

Short, on-the-board pacing slides — project these to follow along. (The full details are in the handout above, not here.)

📚 Key Words

Movement: A shared style or set of ideas followed by many designers/artists during a specific historical period.
Reinterpretation: Making something new that's clearly in conversation with an original source, not a copy of it.

✅ What Your Finished Work Should Include

Piece assessed for accurate use of the movement's real visual characteristics, applied with genuine intention.

Exit Ticket: What's one specific visual choice you made because of the movement you researched, not just by default?

📊 Before You Leave

Quick, anonymous class check-in -- takes less than a minute.

Class Check-In

📤 How You Submit This — For Credit

How you submit today's work depends on what kind of work it was. Physical/paper work (most of this semester so far): photograph it with a classroom camera, upload the photo from its SD card onto a computer, and save it into your portfolio -- that upload is your submission, and the physical piece itself is yours to keep, the same as in Grade 9 (your notebook is the one thing with a home base in the room, and even that's your call to bring home when you want it). Digital work (once you're producing files in Photoshop, second semester on): no camera needed -- instead, EXPORT the file. Export your finished project as a JPG, as a PNG, AND save a copy as a PSD (all three), then upload all three into your portfolio. Either way: the portfolio upload, with a description, is what actually counts as turning the assignment in for credit.

📁 Portfolio Update — Once a Week

Once a week, add your best finished or in-progress piece to your portfolio (the Google Drive folder you started in Grade 9, becoming your Google Sites portfolio in Lesson 10) with a 1-2 sentence caption: what it is, what tool/skill it used, and one thing you learned. Keep it current -- don't save it all for the portfolio-website lesson.

✍️ Example description for your Google Sites portfolio (fill in YOUR blanks -- don't just copy this):

For this piece, I made ______________ (name what you made) for “Design History Preview: One Movement, One Reinterpretation.” This project asked: “What can looking at design history teach us before we spend a whole year studying it?” I used Movement by ______________ (explain how you used it in THIS piece). The hardest part was ______________, and I solved it by ______________. I'm proud of ______________ because ______________.

🎓 ACP Exam Prep

This lesson connects to the Photoshop Adobe Certified Professional exam: Domain 1: Working in the Design Industry

🔗 Want to Learn More?

No extra links for this lesson.

🚀 The Extra Mile

Cross-Class Connection: This is straight Social Studies/World History research, read through a design lens.

Career Connection: Historical fluency shows up directly in Advertising & Marketing and Fine Art work.

Go further -- turn this into a portfolio piece:

Design a poster series (three pieces) all reinterpreting the same movement in different ways. Start here: pull three specific visual traits of the movement (a color palette, a shape language, a technique) from your research notes and assign one trait per poster, so each piece is a distinct reinterpretation.
Illustrate a side-by-side comparison poster: the original movement vs. your reinterpretation, with captions. Start here: find one real historical artwork from the movement to use as the actual "original" side, rather than a generic style description, so the comparison has a specific point of reference.