What a Year in Graphic Design!

Learned

I have learned so mush in this class.  I’ve grown in my technology skills, friendships, and as a person.  When I walked into this class in August last year, I had only had a quarter working in Illustrator and Photoshop. I had never worked in InDesign. I’m amazed at myself that I can look at something and have an idea of where to start when making the poster, for example. In August, I could only dream at making some thing. I never attempted them. I found other things to attempt making. In Graphic Design, I find it so interesting! There is always something new to learn. One thing, I know I’ve learned is how to make patterns. I’m so good at it. In the beginning of the year, we took two months to make a pattern. With these packages, I had to add a pattern. I had an idea on what I wanted to do and finished it within 5 minutes. I think that shows how my knowledge of these programs has developed. In this class, I found it really helpful to just sit and explore what the programs have to offer. I really learned that way. 

Importance

It’s weird; I’ve made some great friends in this class. Even though I work by myself most of the time, I can count on my classmates to support me. If I a question, I trust there answer.  We have experience the same problems and worked though them to get there. Through out the year, I haven’t gotten really good a trouble shooting my problems. I’ve gotten really good at knowing what to look up to get a tutorial on Google.  That is important because I can always use Google to improve in my job in the future. Being able to look something up on Google and get the answer you want is an important skill.

Weakness/ Strengths and Improvement

I have always felt that the directions in this class have been a little “wonky.” In the beginning of the class, I had a problem with trying to make a project that you wanted. Over the year, I’ve improved and learned that if I really want to get something/ know something I have to ask. My communication skills have gone from a weakness to strength. My project management has also improved. My project management doesn’t only help in this class but also my core classes. One of the first projects, the ceiling tile took around two mouths to complete.  By the end of the end, we were doing projects in two weeks. That’s defiantly an improvement.

Where I’m going in the Future

Next year, I’m staying in the e-Comm program. I’m going into Convergence journalism. Right now we work with Final Cut Pro, although I’m a hearing rumor that we are switching to Adobe Premier. All the work I’ve done in the Adobe programs will help me with shortcut keys and working my way around the program. One of my hobbies is photography. I understand the basics of Photoshop enough to where it will help me edit photos.

Changes

Some of the changes I would make would take away from the life skills I’ve earned. Therefore, I don’t think I would change that much. So of the tutorial projects I’ve done had no meaning in the end. I’ve never used them in a project. When we started our personal project, I wanted to do a vector graphic. I tried one but it didn’t turn out like I would have liked. I ended up switching it to a Snapchat Geofilter. I don’t regret it. It was a way to expand my knowledge over typography. Typography was one thing I really wanted to improve on this year. We’ve done some work with it. I would have liked more but with our magazine cover I got a chance to explore different fonts.

Conclusion

This year has been rough. I really want things to look a certain way. When I couldn’t do it, it was hard. I was able to learn and just roll with the direction my projects took me. In this class, even though at the beginning of the year I didn’t think I would say this, I have learned thing that I will take with me into future classes and on to my job.  Ranging from developing relationships with people you don’t like to all the knowledge I’ve gained in the computer programs, this year has been successful.