In this task, students are required to deconstruct the cover of a food packaging box into basic pieces of colour and texture before transforming the elements into a completely new design. This is an ideal remote learning task, suitable for a range of ages and abilities (although originally designed for Level 3 Art Foundation). The download is a 3 page PDF that is easily emailed or shared on Teams. A list of instructions and guidelines are provided to challenge your group to consider the formal elements and explore a range of compositional options before securing their design. A “follow up” list of questions is provided, so that your learners can reflect on their design, make links with other artists, and suggest further developments in their sketchbook or journal. This activity could be a standalone task or linked to wider projects and ideas. I have included some great examples of work from my own students and also a list of artists for further research. I hope this resource is helpful for you! Best wishes Hannah :-)

It’s not possible to visit museums and galleries in person at the moment, but this task offers your students a chance to gather some valuable research by taking a virtual tour of London’s “Museum of Brands”. A link to the online exhibition is provided in the PDF. Upon “virtually” arriving at the exhibition, your students should complete A Scavenger Hunt, which has a number of questions such as: How would you describe the colours in the exhibition? Eg. neutral, bright, retro, flesh Does the exhibition remind you of anything else – what? Later, students are asked to reflect on their findings and create a proposal for an artwork in response to what they have seen. An example is provided. The exhibition contains lots of branding, packaging and retro advertisements from days gone by. This task would be ideal for a Graphics class, and was originally created for an Art Foundation group who were working on a week-long Typography project. It’s nice to see what students come up with when they try to apply their findings at the exhibition to their wider projects and ideas, but this task also works well as a standalone task to shake things up a bt :-) TIP You could stretch this task out by getting your students to actually make the work after creating their proposal. Since the exhibition contains lots of packaging and branding, they could make use of food packaging and other throwaway materials that they might have easy access to in their home environment.

In this downloadable 2-page PDF, I have provided clear and detailed step by step instructions of how to use the Pathfinder tool in Adobe Illustrator. This tool allows the user to combine simple shapes to create more complex, bespoke shapes on screen. These instructions work well when combined with a demo from an instructor of how to use the tool, but I have also left students to follow these instructions independently so it could be used as a cover session. The second page contains a range of silhouettes that students should attempt to recreate during the second part of your session. These instructions were originally developed for a Level 3 Art and Design group.