Last Final Reflection Ever

Finishing up my time in graphic design is bittersweet.  I am so excited for next year, but I'm sad to be done with this amazing program that has taught me so many skills, both in graphic design and in life, and has also been like a home away from home.

Here is a link to my Behance that has all the projects I will be talking about!

Projects

Magazine Layout

This project was such a fun challenge!  Looking back on it, there are so many things that I would change if I were to start over on an all new spread, but that is because I gained so many more technical skills in working with layout and editorial design in InDesign.  A big speed bump for many of my classmates was when a lot of their work was lost from the server and they had to restart, but luckily I had been working off of my own laptop, and my files were saved.  As I said, I learned so much about editorial design, including photo resolution, trapped copy, widows, and readability.  One thing I really I enjoyed about this project was incorporating another graphic designer's, Taylor Morris, artwork into a project of my own. It was super fun working with her colorful, bright pieces and creating a spread that reflects her personality and design style.

Personal Branding

Our personal branding project was our major project of our second semester senior year, as it revolved around taking all elements of our set and our design style and putting that into a brand.  It was tough to look introspectively into who I am as a person and designer, and what kind of look I want to present that.  Sometime, I would like to improve upon my personal brand by updating and simplifying my resume, so that I can use it for jobs both inside and outside of the graphic design industry.  It is nice to know that I now have a personal brand that I can use for so many things!

Figure Eight Branding

As our last project in all of high school, I found it a little difficult to put 100% of my effort into the activity branding project, but overall I like what came out of it.  The assignment was to create an original brand + collateral for a fictional company that provides and activity or service.  I chose to create a company that provides figure skating lessons for people of all ages.  A lot of the challenges I faced were coming up with new, creative ideas to use in my advertising material, and to try to find the time to work on it inside and outside of class amidst my hectic second semester senior year schedule.  

Time Management

My time management has improved a lot since last year, but slacked a little bit due to senioritis.  I still put a lot of time into graphic design inside and outside of class, as I have an internship with the city of Olathe that I go to almost every day after school.  There, I do graphic design work for their social media, as well as a small branding project that I completed for a local school club.

Strengths and Weaknesses

My strengths as a designer are my dedication and attention to detail.  Once I start a project, I am very committed and invested in making it the best it can be.  I could definitely improve on my time management and organization just in general life, but it would also help me with graphic design.

Conclusion

This last semester was a fairly good one!  It was very sad to not end my e-Comm career with my teacher.  Even though we all missed Ms. Burdolski, we were still able to have fun with each other and enjoy our last semester, including putting on a successful senior show.  I am very sad to leave this program and this Pantone room, but I am so grateful for all the lessons and friends it has given me.  Next year, I hope to use the skills and passion I have learned in this room to pursue graphic design in some capacity.  

Senior Year Semester Reflection

The first semester of my senior year has been hectic on so many levels!  I am busier than I've ever been, yet I have found time to explore new passions and skills in graphic design, both inside and outside of class.  Here you will find my website with all of my updated work.

Projects

Homecoming Package

To start the year off, I teamed up with Drew and Chelsea to create a poster, infographic, and surrounding materials to represent this year's homecoming theme of Above and Beyond.  The most challenging things about this project was how many possible interpretations of it there were, and trying to figure out which one would be best for the client.  Along the way, it was challenging to push ourselves to create something original and different than the other groups in our class, and I found myself redoing the layout and feel of the infographic many times to create something that was creative and would stand out.  I learned to always keep pushing my ideas further, because that is the best way to create something that is creative and eye-catching.  One thing I really enjoyed about this project was being able to collaborate with my classmates, because I found that some of my best ideas were thought of when I was critiquing someone else's work, or they were critiquing mine.  Together, we changed the typography, graphical elements, and layout of the poster and infographic a numerous amount of times, but in the end it payed off to see the finished products up around the school, and to see the dance they represented in person.

Greeting Card

Our next project of the year was a greeting card composed solely of hand typography.  This was a real challenge for me, as handwriting and drawing are definitely not my strong points.  Even though it was hard for me, as a perfectionist, to get my hand type to be perfect, I really gained along the way an interest in doing typography and graphic elements by hand.  I mainly did this project by tracing type and adding a few minor tweaks, but in the future I hope to push myself further to handwrite something even more original.  I found myself much more in my element when we shifted over to the computer, where I added textures to make my hand type come alive.  I was also able to smooth out and perfect my handwriting to make it look more clean and crisp.  Overall, I'm pleased with how this project turned out, and I hope to improve my hand type skills and continue to use them in my future projects!

Olathe Internship

This semester, I've had the amazing opportunity to intern for the City of Olathe's Communications department.  While there, I've mostly been tasked with designing graphics to post on their social media to advertise holidays and events.  It's been a really interesting experience for me to get a taste of what it is like to do graphic design in the professional world, especially in an office environment as opposed to an ad agency.  It is also cool to be able to see my work displayed on various social media networks!

Program Planning Guide Cover

This semester I, along with two of my other classmates, picked up the opportunity to design the cover of the program planning guide for the Olathe school district.  This proved to be a bigger challenge than we first thought, as it was difficult to push ourselves away from what has been done in the past.  When all of us sent our first drafts to the client, we were told to scrap them and come up with completely new ideas that didn't remotely resemble past ones or each other's.  During this time, I experimented with a lot of shapes and layouts before finding one that worked logistically and was aesthetically pleasing.

Simply Sweet Branding

For this project, we were asked to push our creativity by creating and branding a fictional company using a random number, mineral, animal, and two letters.  Mine were 24, calcite, capybara, and ss, and using these elements I came up with Simply Sweet, a social limeade shop based in California and Florida.  This project had many phases.  The first one, after research, was logo design, where I came up with 6 totally different concepts using 100% black ink.  From there, I chose the one I felt best fit my company, and added color to it.  Then, I created the stationary:  a business card, letterhead, and envelope that could realistically be used by the company to brand them and help them sell their product.  For the final phase, I made mockups of what the store's interior and exterior would look like, as well as the uniform the employee's would wear, the cups the limeade would come in, and an app that their customers would be able to use.

Magazine Layout

Our assignment for this project is to find someone in the graphic design industry, interview them about their career and lifestyle, and then make two magazine spreads showcasing their style and work as a graphic designer.  To start this project I reached out to Taylor K. Morris, who was my mentor junior year, about interviewing her for the project.  I met with her in person to conduct the interview, where I learned about her job as a graphic designer at Cerner, her past job at a small ad agency, and her photography business that she runs on the side.  Currently I am in the process of researching, sketching, and mocking up possible spreads before I translate them on to the computer.  I look forward to continuing this project further next semester!

Time Management

I feel like time management is something I've improved a lot on this year, both inside of graphic design and outside of it.  It has really helped me to be so busy, as it forces me to structure my time better than I have in the past, but I've also learned how to cut down when things get to be too much to avoid shutting down completely.  I feel like I have gone a lot more in depth with projects this year as opposed to last year, so when I finish something relatively fast I continue to go back and rework it until I come up with the best option.  This has helped me both produce better work and stay productive in class!  I have also spent a lot of time working on projects outside of class: I came in during lunch almost everyday to work on Homecoming with my group, and I worked at home to take on outside projects in addition to class work.

Strengths and Weaknesses

I feel like my areas of strength are my work ethic and attention to detail.  I am very good at creating clean work, and taking the time to fully commit to a project once I start it.  My weaknesses are probably my hand writing and drawing skills, as well as pushing myself to my creative potential as much as I could.  

Conclusion 

Overall, I feel like this semester has gone really well for me.  I've pushed myself creatively and taken on new opportunities inside and outside of the classroom.   Next semester, I hope to develop my skills and projects even further to finish out my senior year.

Final Reflection

It is hard to believe that my junior year in graphic design is already over.  Looking back over the past year, I can see that I have grown so much as a designer and "employee".  I have learned a lot about the creative process and how dedicating all of myself to a project will always produce the best results.  Here is what I have learned this year about technology, collaboration, communication, project management, and leadership:

Technology

This past year, I have had the opportunity to work not only in Illustrator, but also in Photoshop and Indesign.  Before my menu redesign project, I had never felt comfortable working in Indesign and always thought of it as a chore I was forced to do.  After spending months designing, formatting, and editing my menu in it, however, I feel much more comfortable in it and can now enjoy the precise columns, grids, and character/paragraph styles that the program allows me to build.  Being familiar with Indesign allowed me to design an appealing brochure and newsletter for BBYO, my chosen nonprofit organization, and will help me in the future with other projects requiring column and grid design.

This year was also the first time I have ever done mock ups of my work in Photoshop.  I learned that they are fairly easy to do, but sometimes require a lot of searching and editing in order to display my work in the best way possible.  It is a fun way to make my work look more professional and realistic.

Collaboration

Looking around the room at the varying styles of the students in my class, I realize how lucky I am to be able to design in an environment where we can share our opinions in order to strengthen each other's style and work.  I have learned through critiques, both formal and informal, that it is important to consider everyone's feedback, even if I may not agree with them or understand their suggestion at first.  At times it's been beneficial to try something completely different from what I was originally thinking, because that's how the best ideas are formed.  I have not had the opportunity to work on a project with someone else from my class yet, but looking at what I have accomplished simply from listening to their opinions and adopting them I can not wait to see where a collaborative project would lead me.

Communication

I've learned this year that when working in an environment where you are responsible for something, the most important thing you can do is communicate.  It is incredibly important to show up to class as much as possible to have the opportunity to modify and get feedback on work, but I am not always able to be at school 100% of the time, and I think that is okay.  However, I've learned that when I have to miss school I need to always communicate when and why I am gone, and moe importantly communicate when I get back what I have missed and the best way to make it up.  Sometimes, this means I need to come in after school to work on a project, or even just have a talk with my teacher about why I am out of school and how to make the most of my class time when I am here. Next year, I am looking forward to only missing class when necessary and putting in the time and effort to bridge the gaps of my absences with extra effort, communication, and time management.

Project Management

The most important lesson I've learned in junior graphic design is that project management is not just about meeting deadlines, it's about working to always feel on top of my work enough to make as many modifications and additions to my projects as I am able to.  For instance, at the beginning of the semester I began to lag behind in this class. I had to miss a lot of class, and I was not always focused when I was here. Having ample time to work on my menu redesign for the restaurant RA caused me to be unmotivated to finish it, which I now know is a really bad mindset to have while working creatively.  Next time I have a project like that, I will use my time more effectively to work, and then use the extra time given to go back and make it better.  I could see my improvement in this area later in the semester with my brochure project, when I stayed on top of work enough that I even had time to complete projects for clients, including the posters I made for the Cyber Patriots club at my school.  I'm excited to apply my new time management skills to my responsibilities outside of graphic design and to this class next year.

Leadership

I feel the importance of leadership in this class every time I have the opportunity to help someone else in my class shape an idea of theirs, or provide a critique for them that they take and makes their project better.  Next year, I'm excited to further explore what leadership looks like in this classroom when I have more experience as a designer and am able to help the incoming juniors with all the projects and opportunities that this class brings.

Strengths & Weaknesses

My greatest strengths in this class are my attention to detail and my work ethic.  Although I sometimes fall behind in my time management, I think it is evident in my current portfolio that I have been putting in the time and effort to make my projects the best they can be.  Next year, I'm excited to apply my skills to new projects and overcome the difficulties I've had this year.

Summary/Conclusion

I have grown so much as a designer this year, and I am really looking forward to using my knowledge in the future, whether this be in college, a job, or just something I'm able to do in my free time.  No matter what, the skills I've learned in this class go far beyond the scope of graphic design. If I could, I would change the way I viewed myself as a graphic designer earlier in the year.  I didn't have much confidence in my skills, and because of that I began to compare myself to others and lost a lot of motivation to do my work.  I think that I have really grown out of that this year and proven to myself that I capable of success in graphic design if I put in the time, effort, and passion.  I am so proud of everything I have accomplished this year in graphic design, and I'm looking forward to apply and enhance the confidence and skill set I've gained in this class during my senior year and into my future.

Semester Reflection

Final Reflection

My first semester of Graphic Design as a junior was filled lots of creative projects and learning on a technical and collaborative level.  Here is my Bechance where you can find all of the finished projects I discuss!

Name Typography

Our first project of the year was all about exploring how to make typography look and feel like a mood, a season, or a thing.  The first step was to brainstorm a list of words or traits that describe our interests or personality.  Then, we sketched three different concepts for each word that went outside the box in making our name feel like an aspect of our personality.  After spending about a week on the sketches, a lot of the time going into research and work put in outside of class, we pushed our ideas onto the computer via Illustrator.  This was the first time I learned how hard it can be to recreate a hand drawing on the computer.  I learned a lot of technical skills while doing this, like using the Wacom and creating to outlines to manipulate type.  I learned a lot of important things about the fine print of graphic design, such as to always match a stroke to blend with a type and that sometimes you have to go big to make a design work.  Probably the hardest skill I learned while doing this project was how to cut and mount.  I made many mistakes the first time, but hopefully it will teach me to make sure to put my projects on straight on the matte board.  Overall, it was a good first project to get  to know myself as a graphic designer and acquire skills that I'll use the rest of high school.

Rebranding Project

This 8 week long project really showed me what graphic design is all about.  Our task was to find a company that had poor branding, recreate their logo, and design a label to put on a bottle.  I chose to rebrand a branch of Nestea called Real Leaf green tea.  One of the biggest challenges I faced was the fact that this product is discontinued and was only manufactured in another country.  Even though I found pictures of the bottles, it was really hard to redefine the product when I couldn't find any information on it to begin with.  At the same time, this also allowed me to be more creative in what I did with their brand as I wasn't starting with much.  There were many different stages to this project that went into the final product. We first started by sketching logos, which took a long time as it required research into the brand, logos of similar products, and into any buzzwords of the brand or product.   Then we chose our favorite 6 sketches and pushed them to the computer.  After the critique of these black & white only logos, which provided me with lots of good feedback auto hierarchy and contrast, what proved to be one of the biggest challenges begun.  We had to choose one of our six concepts to continue with and add color to it.  The concept I originally chose ended up being very difficult to add color to, and it let me to pursue a more practical option.  I ended up using a lot of creativity to make my second concept work, as I added more elements to it to give it more depth and help it pop when more subtle colors were added to it.  Once the color version of the logo was finalized, it was time to create the label that would eventually go on our bottles.  For my bottles, I used small Starbucks glass bottles, because I liked the shape and size of them.  I originally had a standard rectangular label that went all the way around my bottle, but feedback was given to me that led me to change it into a creative cutout shape that highlighted the unique shape of my logo.  This project ended up being my favorite one so far, as it taught me about creative problem solving and I really enjoyed the logo design process. I am also really satisfied with how my final product turned out!

Menu Redesign

We've only just started on this project, but it has already really pushed me outside of my comfort zone.  We were assigned to choose a restaurant and design a new menu and a table tent for them using their existing logo and color scheme.  I chose Ra Sushi Bar, and I am currently working on designing the layout of their menu.  We first had to research creative styles and layouts of menu and sketch different ideas we had and then choose 2 concepts to push to the computer.  The hardest part of this project has been working in Indesign, as we didn't get much practice in it in past years of graphic design.  My goals for the rest of this project are to gain a lot more technical skills in Indesign and use my creativity to create two unique and innovative menu concepts!

Outside Projects

This semester, I took on the project of designing a shirt to sell to the Junior Class in order to raise money for Prom.  It taught me a lot about working for a client and that sometimes you have to remake designs multiple times in order for a project to be successful.  I am also starting on a logo design for a business!

Time Management

This is definitely an area of weakness for me that I am constantly working on to improve.  I come in before and after school to work on projects when I may have missed class or just need a few extra hours to catch up.  Overall, I feel like I am doing well on staying productive during class time and not talking to other people when I should be working.  I could definitely still use improvement on my time management outside of class so that I am not having to work on things for other classes during graphic design.  When it comes to free time in this class, though, I'll often use it to clean up my behance and perfect my artboards so that everything is neat and aesthetically pleasing.  I will also work on my sketches and other projects outside of class to be sure that I meet all my deadlines.  

Strengths & Weaknesses

My strengths in graphic design are my creativity and my patience.  I can think of out of the box ideas and put in the time to perfect them and make sure to add in all of the little details.  I still need to improve on my technical skills and time management, but these are things that I work on every day in this class.  Technical skills come from experience, and I am getting help from my classmates to make sure I acquire all the skills necessary to succeed in this class. 

Summary

My favorite part of this semester was exploring my creativity and learning a lot about all graphic design has to offer.  Next semester, I will learn from my mistakes of not mounting my projects correctly, not knowing enough skills in Illustrator or Indesign, and poor time management and I will make it my best semester yet.  My goal is to feel fully comfortable on the software we use and have good enough time management that I have time in class to work on more outside projects.  Overall, I had a lot of fun this semester and I can't wait for the rest of my time in graphic design.

Name Typography

For this project we had the task of using typography to display 12 attributes of ourselves.  First we brainstormed as many words we could think of about our hobbies, interests, and personalities.  Then, we thought about things that made us think and feel those words.  Our last step before going to the computer was to sketch three different concepts for each word.  The challenge was to display the word using typography with only minimal graphics. 

I learned a lot about Adobe Illustrator in the process of transferring my ideas onto the computer. I also experimented with using the Wacom, which allows you to draw directly into Illustrator.  I also learned a lot about collaboration and that it is super important to ask people from around the room to come look at your work as you go. This is necessary in order to get a fresh eye on something you might have been working on for a while and get another person's opinion.  I also learned how to cut and mount, which is definitely something that takes a lot of practice to do right.  If I could do the project over, I would definitely get more people's opinions while I was working.  I would also try to stay simple and use less graphics, as I felt like my work got really busy in some places.  In my next project I will take the technical skills I learned in both Illustrator and cutting and mounting with me, but I will also take advantage of the resources around me and ask them for help.  Overall, I had fun on my first project of the year and hope to stretch my creativity and develop new skills for the rest of the year!

Responsive Photo Composition Site

Here is my Photo Composition Site!  Using HTML and CSS, I made it respond to the size of the screen it's being displayed on so it is optimized for whatever device you use to view it. While making this site, I ran into some problems when having to resize the images in photoshop, making sure the responsive code affected all the pages, and making sure the header image resizes.  This is my final site!

Responsive Design

Here is a site that uses responsive web design!  It automatically adjusts to the optimal viewing point based on the size of the browser.  It is important because people use the internet on such a wide variety of devices, and this is a much easier way to make sure everyone sees the best version of your website.  A media query is a tag that makes a chunk of code only apply under certain conditions, and breakpoints are the spots at which the conditions change.

This is the largest size of the website.  The high quality image fills the whole screen, and the badge in the middle is pretty large.  It looks great on a high resolution screen!

This is the next breakpoint that is probably optimized for tablets.  The picture continues to fill the whole screen, but the badge gets slightly smaller.

This is the mobile size for the website.  They split the screen between the image and the information to make it easier to view and limit the need for scrolling on a mobile device.