Art 216 Class Overview

I am sitting in class right now, writing my final entry. The class this year has been great. I have really build some relationships that will further enhance my graphic design capabilities. All of the students in our class know how to give helpful advice, and criticize my work for my own benefit. The class helped me gain a better understanding for Illustrator, and its capabilities. This year I have used the skills I have learned, from only one semester, to create a few t-shirt designs,a flyer, a CD cover, and also a professional brochure for my dads company. I hope to add the many projects we have done in class, as well as outside of class, to my future portfolio. I believe I will have a very impressive portfolio by the end of my time here. Professor Speyers does a great job with helping all of the students with figuring out many different situations on various projects. The small class environment is really great, because it allows for a friendly environment verses a huge environment. A huge class is hard to be personal and honest with each other. I look forward to what this class bring in the future as it prepares me for my future career.

Winning Designs

The final project for our art design contest required me to submit 3 designs to the website 99designs.com. My designs where all created with 1 semesters worth of designs experience and only knowledge of 1 program so far. I'm sure most of the other designers in the contests all have multiple years of experience, and it showed! Many of the other designers all had simple ideas that where very unique. I felt that my designs showed some good ideas, but incorporating a unique feel to a design made the results very difficult. Coming up with an idea that nobody else has is something that defines a designer from others. In the future i am going to look at other designers ideas, and try and come up with something different, rather than coming up with a similar design.

Double Checking

Is very important in design work, especially work with text, that you double check all the grammar and spelling. You should re-read the article of text several times, have somebody else read it, and then you should read it again. Recently I made a brochure for my dad. We had both read over several times, had my mother read over it, then had another person in the company read over it. We thought everything was spotless...until my dad had over a couple hundred copies printed. We found 3 minor spelling errors in the brochure. That is not what you want to find out AFTER the fact that you have paid a lot of money to print the designs. Next time maybe reading over it is not enough. Checking each word is vital. Luckily this project was for my dad, and not a picky client. Being professional is very important in the graphic design industry, as it makes you stand out from others. From now on I am going to try my best to have EVERY word spelled correctly on a final design!

99 Designs

Recently professor Speyers assigned us a project to do some free lance work with 99designs.com. This website is a great opportunity to get some extra money, and also build up your portfolio. Their are many great things about the website, but their are also some disadvantages. One of the cool things about it, is the fact that you can make some really good money if you are good at creating designs. It is also not very hard to juggle a couple of projects at one time, and keep track of them on the website. Another good thing about the website is being able to view designers' works who are much more experienced than yourself. I have seen multiple designs that put mine to shame, and I take note of their expertise. It is such a learning experience. One thing I found I didn't like about the website is the competition. Their are so many designs entered into each project. It makes it extremely hard to be chosen when the client has so many great options. Another issue with the website is when a client does not give enough feedback. Also, it may seem that you have wasted alot of time when your design is not chosen to win. So much effort, and no reward is often what will happen. All in all, it is a great learning opportunity to experience.

Free lance

Here is one of the designs I created for a client on the website 99designs.com...Professor Speyers assigned us a project to enter in some free lance design projects. We have to enter in three of them, and post our entry with the winning design on the same page. I was amazed at how many design opportunities where available. I was also amazed at the amount of money that was involved. I can even imagine a person doing design projects for this website for a job and actually making enough to live off of. The only problem would be consistently winning the projects, because from time to time it can be hard to connect with a cient's needs. I have already been eliminated from a project that I had thought I did quite well on. It just goes to show, that sometimes what the designer and the client think very differently.

Learning About Logos

I am a bit late on my last entry. I have failed to keep up to date with this blog as I have been very busy lately! As far as design class goes, we have learned a lot of information in the past few weeks about Logos. Professor Speyers gave us a presentation on Logos and how simplicity can be very influential. If you look at most logos, they do not have 3d artwork, or really cool graphics on them. They capture the theme of a company and represent it with simply figures and characteristics. The best example that Professor Speyers showed the class of simplicity but still sophisticated was the FedEx logo. I had never realized something about the logo until he pointed it out. Between the E and the X is an arrow, representing the express and how things are moving forwards. The simple arrow is a genius idea. Of course I could have drawn this logo very easily, but coming up with idea is very innovative. Being a graphic designer is much more than processing what a client wants all the time, its coming up with your own creative ideas. This field of work allows so much flexibility and allows you to express your ideas through multiple projects. Learning how simply a logo can be really allowed me to sit back and understand a logo requires much more thought that I had expected. Word mapping is a great technique Professor Speyers showed us to help brainstorm ideas. I look forward to projects that allow us to make logos.

Competition

Recently Professor Speyers assigned us a logo competition with the possibility to win a contest for 500 dollars. I think its great that we can have these opportunities to compete with other people and for us to gain experience in turning in designs to the contests. The only bad thing is the intimidation factor. Knowing that most people submitting designs for this competition already probably have years of experience in design can be intimidating. I might have creative ideas, but putting them onto the page may be harder to do than imaginable. Hopefully over time i will learn the many tools i need to and how to use them all to express my artistic ideas. I have a feeling that their will be many competitions and that many let-downs are possible simply due to the fact that their are so many different ideas for the same concept.