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.
