Senior Year Final Reflection

Projects

Magazine Spread

This project was the first involving a professional in the design field. I interviewed an illustrator named Eric Hibbeler, who has worked alongside game studios and design companies. From that interview, I created a four-page magazine spread in his style. Overall, this project took about a month, but along the way, the graphic design server became corrupted and I lost almost all of my progress. Since then, I haven't tried to finish it again, but I might try again over the summer.

Personal Branding / Senior Show

This was an especially difficult project because it was very hard to decide what I wanted to have on my business card, which I had to buy myself. I wasn't easy. I came up with a logo, and layouts for the business card, resumé, and cover letter. This took about three weeks to complete, and I was able to give people my cards during senior show, which was an event where I could showcase my work to parents and some business professionals.

Branding a Service

Here, I had to think of a service, and create a logo and color scheme for it. I created the guitar repair company Medical Instruments. The amount of parts to this project made it pretty long. It consisted of the logo, poster ad, four web ads, billboard, magazine ad, and newspaper ad. It took about one and a half months. It was my first time I tried limiting myself on color usage. The only colors I used were red, black, and white. All of the promotional material is very simple, and I tried incorporating medical puns and big text to make people drawn to it.

My Time In Class

Most of my time in class is devoted to a project. I always try to make something look as good as it can. I sometimes come in after school as well to finish something that I wasn't able to in class. Outside of school, I like to watch videos from other graphic designers to learn more about what goes into certain things like logos or posters. Those have had some influence on how I work.

Areas of Strength

A lot of my strength comes from my knowledge of the software we use. I use Illustrator and Photoshop at home and that can really help in the class. And though I'm not a fantastic artist, I know enough to get me by the sketches portion of some projects. I've also gotten a lot better at thinking of more thumbnails than I was last year. The places I could improve are in group critiques. I'm not great at giving thoughtful input, or much input at all. I can improve by giving my first instinctual thought when I see someone else's project. Other than that, I've improved on almost everything from my past years in class.

Summary

This was my last semester as a high school student, and I'm definitely going to miss this class. I've been taught so much about the world of design, and It'll definitely help me out down the road.

Junior Year Semester Final

INTRODUCTION

As my junior year in the eComm program concludes, I can reflect on how much I've picked up over my time here. I can safely say this year has been a great improvement on my previous years. My knowledge of the Adobe programs has grown by method of application. I've used some new skills on a poster for the ONW orchestra, among others.
The Behance website has been useful in that it showed me how to better present myself in a professional setting, as well as take inspiration from other designers. On my online portfolio, I also showcase some commission work, which shows people how I can communicate well with clients. I've also learned how to organize and manage projects, putting those skills to use by keeping my server folder as organized as possible.

STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES

One of the things I've been working on is keeping my strengths above my weaknesses. For example, I have a bad habit of sticking to one idea I like without expanding or trying something different. I've been trying to push myself to avoid that issue by thinking of keywords relating to the project and sketching different ideas pertaining to those words. But one of my biggest strengths is keeping a consistent look throughout projects and coming up with ideas that satisfy the client. I try my best to work efficiently so that I can meet the right deadlines, and I'm still improving on that.

MY FUTURE IN GRAPHIC DESIGN

Graphic design is one of my favorite things to do. Aside from school assigned project, I enjoy working on things for people who want a nice logo for their online identity or a wallpaper for their computer. I've taken what I learned in this class and applied it to those projects. I hope to be able to make this my career, as one of my goals is to be an album artwork designer for music artists and bands.

CONCLUSION

When I first entered this classroom, I had high hopes that this would be better than my previous years. Those two years were a bit affected by an instructor who was, unfortunately, not very effective in her teaching. However, this time around, the class was a highlight of my day and I always looked forward to working on a project. The critiques I've gotten on my work have been a great improvement on how I worked. The time it's taken to work on a project has mostly decreased by keeping those past critiques in mind while I work instead of waiting for the peer review days. For my Elixir Strings rebranding project, it's taken around two months to finish. But for my most recent project, the NRDC brochure and advertisements, It's taken about half as much time.

Overall, this class has helped me very much in being a more professional graphic designer. I'm looking forward to what my senior year has to bring, and college after that.

SOME PROJECTS I'VE WORKED ON