Graphic Design Reflection Final

1.)
Homecoming
For this project my class was put into pairs and created a homecoming poster, tickets, and infographic. One person worked on the poster and tickets while the other did the infographic. We worked on this for a few weeks. A challenge we faced during that time was lack of communication between us and the committee as well as meeting deadlines. The theme was questioned through out the entire project. It was originally given to us as a homey, cosy vibe on a dark and stormy night, but it was shaped by the committee to be a more spooky night theme. Even this was heard through friends of some people in the class and wasn't given to us directly. And while the end deadline was met the milestones were not. Along the way I learned a lot about infographics, what goes into them and how the should be layout. This being one of the first times i've really done an infographic I got a lot of feedback, like making it more graphic centers and adding a graph/survey which I did add. Overall I thought I could have done more to research infographics and I could have done more to meet milestones.

Rebrand
For this project we were to take a preexisting company with a bad logo and redesign it. This took roughly three weeks. A challenge faced was getting my logo and type to match and feel complementary. I learned more about product design and had a lot of fun coming up with and interesting shape to place on my bottle. Along the way I learned more about the research that goes into the design, mainly researching the company as well as what needs to go on the final product. I was given feedback on fine tuning the six designs and really getting them in a great spot, and I adjusted them accordingly, messing around with font and placement. Overall I am happy with the final product and had a fun time through out each part of the design process.

Outside Class Projects

This year, for experience and e-hours, I did quite a few outside projects. I created a logo and business card for Jennifer Brule, a real-estate agent who worked for Reese Nicholes. I created two t-shirt designs for seniors and Student Naturalist, the latter of which was used and manufactured. I also entered a quick design for the ONW Hall of Fame and some button design for the week of caring. For my church's children Sunday school I created 8 Christmas slides, one main, on blank, four lesson, and two memory verse, as well as an Advent calendar handout.

2.)
While at times i can get a little distracted in class I think overall I stayed on task and productive. I haven't really finished a project early or thought I did and sen time refining my designs as much as I could until the deadline. I also did quite a bit of outside class work for other clients as well as working on class assignments after school. I come in after school to work as well as during some Seminars and at home.

3/4.)

I think my strongest areas are my sketches, and feedback. I really feel like I can give good feedback and enjoy the critiques we do in class, both giving and receiving advise. I also enjoy doing initial sketches and they are pretty clean and understandable. I could maximize my strengths by getting and giving feedback outside of critiques and not just from my neighbor. I could also go beyond by doing more sketches than asked of me. I think my weakest area is communication.  I tend to stick to asking my friend for advise and need to get out of my comfort zone and get more feedback from others. I could improve this by going around to other people and asking for feedback and conversing more.

5.)
Overall I had a lot of fun with logo design and actually loved doing all the outside of class projects, and seeing them out on t-shirts or in Sunday school it feel really rewarding. I would do more to communicate with more people and spend more time researching and this will be my goal for next semester. I did learn a lot about infographics and enjoyed doing so.

Dark and Stormy Night, Homecoming 2016

             For Homecoming we had to create a poster, infographic and tickets that fit the theme of dark and stormy night. We were put into groups of two, one worked on the infographic, and the other the poster and tickets. I did the infographic, however we both started out by sketching 20 poster designs and presented them to each other. After choosing two posters to push on the computer I started to work on layout ideas for the infographic. I researched different designs and layouts to see what worked well, and then sketched out several ideas. After that I pushed my concept on to the computer in Illustrator. Though, after a few critics, our group and another group merged our infographics/posters, creating a more icon focused infographic. Then we both kind of unmerged and made two separate posters. I also did a lot of tweaking to it, adding strokes, and graphs. When we were finally done we sent our posters and tickets off to print. Once they came back we cut them out and mounted them on matte board.

            Along the way I learned a lot about infographics and a bit more about Illustrator. I learned basic layouts of infographics and that they are meant to be icon heavy and can carry more info than given, like survey graphs and strokes. I also learned that Illustrator added two new features, rounded edge marks, and a tool where you can create shapes, like circles, and rectangles, and delete shapes in shapes and I learned how to make a clipping mask, command7, which I used for the gold foil. For what I would do differently I would have started earlier on my infographic and researched a little more. But I do like how our group and another merged at one point, it really helped me get more perspective on the infographic.

            I would take what I’ve learned in Illustrator, tools and short-cuts, as well as infographic layouts and incorporate them into future projects. Overall I enjoyed this project, even though I got kind of done with closer to the end.