Yo, Tú, Nosotros—A Spanish Handout

My husband, Jason, recently got hired as a high school Spanish teacher, at the high school I graduated from. We are happy about this opportunity (though music is the field he’d rather be in). Since I love designing things, I offered to design posters or whatever he might want or need for his classroom. 

The other day, while looking through some old files for some cards I want to photograph for another blog post, I came across a file of Spanish notes and handouts from high school (I have a tendency to save a lot of things on the off chance that they might one day be useful to me again). I showed some of them to Jason. He commented that he would have liked to use one of them for his class, if only it didn’t have doodles on it. I immediately volunteered to create a new one. I well remember this handout, and I found it helpful as I learned Spanish.

I found another copy of the handout without doodling to photograph.

I decided to start with the image section from the top center, which I figured would be the most difficult and the most fun. I searched through lots of stock vector images of people and hands. I found one I could download with a lot of different people on it, all pointing up. I downloaded it, and after playing with Illustrator for a little, I figured out how to rotate the hand to make it look like the person was pointing at themselves. Hurray! Bit by bit, as I do things, I am learning how to use Illustrator (tutorials help too). 

Once I had the people pointing to themselves, I started creating the chart. I picked various people and put them in the appropriate spots. Then came the hard part, deciding what to do about the hands pointing out. I'd found some stock photos of hands pointing out, but none were in a style similar to the people. I tried playing around with one of the hands from the people to try and make it look like it was pointing out...that didn't turn out too well. I eventually downloaded a vector image and removed some of the shading and highlights.

While I put all of this together, I mulled over what to do about the hand with two fingers pointing out. I couldn't find any stock images with a hand that had two fingers pointing out, and I couldn't think of any way to modify what I had downloaded to create it, at least not with my limited skills. Luckily, inspiration finally struck. Flip the hand and have two hands, each with one finger pointing out—perfect!

I downloaded a bow tie, removed unwanted layers (spots and lines), and placed the bow tie in the usted/ustedes spots. Using lines and circles, I created the gender symbols for the vosotros spot. I even created the arrow with the help of this Adobe tutorial. I moved things around a little to make them right where I wanted them.

I finished right before dinner and called Jason over to see my progress. I told him I’d finished the people part and would work on the words later. To which he replied something like, “I don’t want the word parts. I want them to have those in their head.” I know I appreciated having that “cheat sheet” as a reference, but I do understand wanting the kids to know it. So, I shrugged my shoulders, finalized the file, and declared it done.

And here is the final product. I like it. How about you?