Semester Reflection

The first half of Graphic Design has been filled with different projects and experiences. I have learned many new concepts and made many new things. 

Photoshop

collage

challenge

We started of the year by watching step by step tutorials over how to do an assortment of different tasks in PhotoShop. I learned many new techniques, skills, and tools, such as how to use the content aware fill tool, the spot healing brush, the clone healing brush, the clone patch tool, and the patch tool. After mastering these skills, we were challenged to make a collage and were told to be creative in making a picture with the a few given pictures. Although I did successfully complete these tasks, PhotoShop is not a favorite of mine because I find it very challenging and confusing. However, it is very useful to use for editing photos.

Raccoon 

Fortunately, after completing our PhotoShop unit, we were on to Adobe Illustrator. We were allotted several weeks to first create an adorable raccoon by following the instructions from a tutorial. The raccoon was not very difficult to make, but it did require many steps because of adding shadows and highlights. We then transferred out raccoon over to a postcard. We had to think of a topic that we wanted our post card to portray. Summer was just ending, so I decided to make mine Summer-themed. I created a lemonade stand, some trees, some butterflies, a big sun, and a friend for my raccoon. I learned many new techniques through this project which I utilized in future projects. In addition, this project really made me love Adobe Illustrator because I was able to really use my creativity to make a colorful, fun project. This project was also the first project was also professionally printed off to be a real post card which is very exciting. In addition, this was also our first project that we uploaded to Behance, a platform to discover and showcase work. I like Behance but not as much as I like Blogger. Find me on Behance here.

Self Vector

To continue on our Illustrator journey, we created a self portrait. We were not given any instructions to this except to use the pen tool. We first uploaded an image of ourself and then traced it using the pen tool. I started this project with no experience with the pen tool, and through a lot of mistakes, I ended with a really good grasp on it. I worked really hard and long on this project, and I am very happy with the results. I was aiming for a cartoon-ish representation of myself, yet I still including some shading and other minute details. Others made theirs look very realistic, but that wasnt what I wanted. 

Infographic

The Infographic project was by far my favorite project that we assigned with through first semester. We first learned about what makes a good infographic and found design inspiration. We then had to brain storm what topic we wanted to make ours about. I chose happiness. This project was the first project that required additional research, so we spent longer on this project than other projects. I had to spend a lot of time researching differnet facts and statistics about happinesss. We also had to cite our sources. For this project, I looked into color theory and fonts to portray happiness. I chose bright colors and a swirly font. I also had to look at my information and think of a way to portray this information. This project also forced me to design it symmetrically. Because my infographic contained so many little pieces, it was challenging to keep everything well puttogether, and it took a while to complete. I combined all of my previous skills that I has acquired from previous projects, and I also learned a lot about visual appeal. I am very happy with how it turned out. This was also the first project that we got peer evaluations on. My peers suggested that I change a few things, such as the background color. I changed this, and it made my infographic much better.

Research Paper and Powerpoint

For our very last project of first semester, we were told to choose a movement or person from a list to research. I chose Milton Glaser, an impactful Graphic Designer. Is dedicated a large portion of my time in class to researching my topic and wrote an essay about him. I had to put my essay in APA format which was new to me. Next, after completing my essay, I transferred all of my information over to a powerpoint. Our powerpoint was supposed to reflect our topic's artistic flare. I included many bright shapes and colors because those were apparent in Glaser's work. I think that my powerpoint could have been more official and clean. This project was a lot of work because I had to spend a lot of time researching and constructing an essay. 

This semester was very fun and educational.