Semester Reflection

Accomplishments

Magazine Spread

The magazine spread was an interesting project where we had to interview a professional designer and design a magazine spread reflective of their style. The project took around a month to complete, however the class ran into a substantial problem when we lost nearly all our progress due to server issues. I learned that due to the possibility of a catastrophe like this, it's important to keep backups of our files. I'm happy with the design of it, however I feel as though it would've been significantly better if I had not run into issues along the way. In the future, I will keep backups of all my files.

Prom Poster

The design for our school's prom poster was a friendly competition for our class. The theme was "A Touch of Jazz". We designed posters and tickets for the theme. It took roughly three weeks from start to finish. A struggle I ran into was knowing when to stop adding the small details and focus on the picture as a whole. I found myself worrying about small elements more than I should've, and once I noticed that, I redirected my focus on to the picture as a whole. I'm very happy with the final outcome, my favorite aspect of the poster is the neon effect, I feel as though I've really mastered that effect; it looks fairly realistic.

Robotics Projects

As a part of my robotics team, I design many different products. This semester, I worked on a t-shirt, and multiple posters. I'm very happy with all of these. A problem I ran into however was forcing myself not to spend too much time on just one project. I would've loved to continue refining each poster, but I learned to make sure each individual poster got the time it deserves. Very happy with all of these projects.
Project 1
Project 2
Project 3
Project 4

Branding Project

Our final project had us all create fictional companies and the branding around them. My company was called "Hello Space!" where customers can buy tickets to space. I didn't run into many problems with this one besides the recurring struggle to decide exactly what percentage of my time each individual item should get. I'm getting much better with making those decisions, however. I'm very happy with the outcome of this project.

Time Management

I would like to say that I managed my time well in this class. I personally feel that although I did spend time talking to others, I've been better about still making progress and not getting completely off track as to result in no progress while I'm communicating with others. I did have to miss many days this quarter due to school-trips and also a number due to a wrist injury, though I always made up for what I missed by working on stuff after school. I allotted a significant time outside of class woking on items not assigned in this class, such as the posters for robotics.

Strengths

I'd say my biggest strength is still the technical aspect of designing. I know Illustrator like the back of my hand and am confident that I know the most efficient way to utilize a large majority of the tools in Illustrator. Other aspects of designing are still not as strong as my technical skills, but they are catching up. I find myself having continually more creative ideas as I learn to utilize sketching better and knowing how to find solid inspiration for projects.

Weaknesses

My biggest weakness would be communicating with my peers aside from the ones who are already close. Having a wider range of critiques makes for a better project, so this is something I need to work on.

Summary

The best thing about this semester for me was watching my creative process grow. Before, I had began to worry that my imagination had stagnated, though now I'm the most creative I've ever been. What I would change, and what I will do more of is sketching. Sketching is very important because you aren't constrained to a mouse and keyboard, where it's very hard to let your imagination apply itself to full capacity. Overall, I'm very proud of my growth this semester and look forward to the future.