Replying to Digital Photo Help

So i'm in the second portion of my schools Digital Image Design classes. For our first project we have to design one of the following two. 1. Design a Ex Libris using the techniques of "Art Nouveau" and "Art Deco". 2. The second making a typographic Design.
For starters I have attempted a few sketches of a typographic design and all of which my teacher hated and told me I could not move on to the computer. So i eventually gave up and looked into the Ex Libris. I researched the two different forms that he gave us options to do and am uterlly confused about what I need to be doing. So if anyone has a Ex Libris for retards explanation that would be great. Or if anyone has a killer typographic design that they would like to describe to me and don't mind me using for the class that would be stellar. Thanks