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.