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Professional Practice

This is my final class in the Media Design program. I’m a bit overwhelmed, but excited about the progress that I’ve made during this course. During this post, I will reflect on the concepts and ideas that were the most important to me and how I will incorporate them throughout my designer career.

My first assignment was to write an essay on the importance of moral and ethical practices in media design. Researching case studies, provided me with information that changed my perception of the responsibilities of a designer. There was so much to learn, but I want to list three concepts that I took away from this and following lessons regarding ethical practices.

1. The designer has a responsibility to the public. After reading Design Business and Ethics by AIGA, Richard Grefe noted, “A professional designer shall communicate the truth in all situations and at all times; his or her work shall not make false claims nor knowingly misinform.” (AIGA, pg. 34). Misleading the public intentionally or intentionally results in losing consumer trust. A designer must rely his or her moral compass and make design decisions based on if what they are creating will prove to be deceitful or harmful to the public.

2. Protecting my work when using RFP. An RFP, Request for Proposal, is a way for a designer to bid on a project. Just like a designer’s work can be infringed on, so can his or her ideas. Protecting a proposal can be as simple as having the client sign a NDA and/or by copyrighting the proposal. This will protect all of the designer’s ideas and concepts.

3. Always be mindful of licensing agreements. This is particularly useful to me in regards to font and photo usage. I’ve learned that just because I purchase a license to use created works, does not mean that I own that work. I’ve just been given permission to use that work according the guidelines of my agreement with the creator. I’ve been guilty of sharing free fonts without reading licensing information. Now I understand the legal and professional ramifications for doing that, I no longer will without written permission.

The second half of this course focused on my experience at Full Sail as a whole in the Media Design program. I was able to use sketches and a word map to outline the things that I felt and did during my enrollment for the past twelve classes. This helped me to express myself as well as see my progression throughout the program.

This is a sketch of my visual experiences throughout my twelve classes.

This is a word map that describes my feelings, thoughts, and what I was doing for all three semesters.

My experience map was based on the Russian Industrial style. It mimics my emotions and progress represented by the lines and mountainous silhouette. My experience was a great one and I’m grateful for everything I’ve gained in the process. 

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Presentation of Design Solution

Mastery Journal Reflection

As I reflect on this course, Presentation of Design Solution, i realized that there is so much about design that I still have to learn. This class has provided me with a ton of new concepts and design strategies to explore. I think, so far, this has been the toughest class for me because I had to think beyond myself and understand that my designs aren’t about me. They are about meeting the design criteria and excelling at the industry standard.

Three concepts that I can take away from this class:

Storytelling through Presentations - Using presentations to tell a visual story allows the designs to be memorable and engaging. This form of presenting convinces the audience of the presentations purpose and creates an effective way to tell the story.

Understanding Audience Core Styles - There are two core styles in this concept; learning and decision styles. Understanding how the audience perceives and processes information helps me to understand better who I’m designing for. This helps the audience to connect to the design and helps me to better communicate based on their needs.

The CAST Model - The Cast model essential means Content, Audience, Story, and Tell. This is an organized structure that aides in creating a clear and uncluttered visual story. It helps to eliminate unnecessary elements that makes the design process efficient.

There are so many other concepts from this class that I would like to  highlight. We were tasked to create a portfolio site using the class concepts: Connecting, Synthesizing, Transforming; Solving Problems; Innovative Thinking; Acquiring Competencies. The site can be found here.

 My Presentation Portfolio site allowed me to present designs based on the four core class concepts. This presented me with ways to present my designs without focusing on myself, but on the work and the competing industry.

Behance Site - This class has allowed me to reiterate design solutions to refine final design projects. Some of my projects can be found here.

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Measuring Design Effectiveness

I never knew how important surveys and questionnaires were until I had to create and send one out. During this month’s course, I continued to progress my Smart Start project even further. I had to formulate questions to send out to the brand’s intended target audience to measure how effective the project was. 

Some of the respondents that answered were not part of the target audience, but some of them were designers. I took their comments into consideration, but I only analyzed the results of the target audience. I had 26 people take my survey and I was pleased to see that, for the most part, they all loved the Smart Start campaign overall.

Taking this class has helped me to evaluate my own success in a professional capacity. It takes more than just design to make a brand excel. It takes research and revisions and research and surveys and more revisions to complete the task. Involving the client and consumer in the process is a great way to ave an all-inclusive project. That way, communication is the number one asset to any project.

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Multi-Platform Delivery

During this month, I learned about drawing inspiration from all and unexpected places.This inspiration has played an integral part in my creative process for this course. Because of this, I completed my transmedia campaign. This includes print ads, Facebook posts, a commercial and a website. I’ve taken feedback and suggestions from my professor and peers to arrive at my final designs.

Those designs can be found here:

https://www.behance.net/FRCreatives

I’ve learned a lot and I have a better understanding of designing across multiple platforms for the same brand. I think that this will be beneficial to me in my future design career as it gives me a better footing in media design.

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Inspiration

This week, we read more about inspiration from how it’s drawn from different sources. One of the things that interested me the most was Hillman’s talk about Pablo Picasso. Picasso was very influential during his time. His artwork sprang forth during Cubism and he was considered an artistic genius. What I didn’t know was that Picasso had his own influences.

Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907).

Andre Derain’s The Dance (1906).

Henri Matisse’s The Joy of Life (1905).

Picasso, Matisse and Derain were friends. They visited each others studios and studied each others work. Derain had a large collection of African statues and paintings. Soon after, Matisse followed suit. However, Picasso denied being directly being influenced by such “ugly work,” (Kanga, 2011) even after he started his own collection of it.

What I learned from this week is that, it doesn’t matter how creative you are, inspiration is everywhere. Even creative greats like Picasso had inspirations that catapulted him into being one of the greatest artists of all time.

References-

Curtis, H. (2002). MTIV: process, inspiration and practice for the new media designer. Indianapolis, IN: New Riders.

Kangas, M. (2011). How African Art Influenced Modern Art. Retrieved April 07, 2017, from http://www.artguidenw.com/African.htm

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Design Integration

We’ve come to the conclusion of month eight in the Media Design Program. As I reflect on this class, I’ve learned the value of understanding and justifying my design decisions. This class has helped my projects progress further and helped me to conceptualize with a deeper understanding of why I make the choices that I do. I’m pursuing an idea I’ve never heard of before, transmedia storytelling, and I’ve found it quite intriguing. The idea of being able to tell a story across multiple platforms is no new thing, but the methods are endless. I really enjoyed this class and I got to meet a new group of people, all very talented and eager to learn.

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The commercial I worked on for weeks 3 and 4 is the beginning of my transmedia campaign. It begins here then takes the audience to the company’s Facebook page. There, the audience is urged to participate in sharing their stories of their children and experiences with the brand.

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For weeks 3 and 4, after speaking to my professor, I decided to work on a transmedia campaign for this project. It includes creating a commercial spot, Facebook page, print ad and website.

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Dynamic Moodboard

I decided to revisit this dynamic moodboard and make subtle, but relevant changes to it. I felt the timing was off a bit on the original and the music choice, although fun and exciting, was not what I was looking for in my brand campaign.

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Weeks 3 and 4 was spent developing a brand guide for my mock company. After I completed the standards and guidelines, I had to upload it to Issue.com.

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After I finished my animated logo, I placed it in my final dynamic mood board. But because my monkey’s head looked as if he was being decapitated, I had to change the way my logo animated.

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This is my original animated logo for Smart Start.

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After critiques and suggestions from my fellow classmates, I decided to go with the above design for my logo. After the vector creation of our designs, we had to place them in real-life applications.

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Week 1 of Design Strategies and Motivation, we pick up where we left off from our last class - developing a brand for our mock company. We started by developing 30 sketches for a potential logo for our company.

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ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURES

Reflection Post

We’ve come to the end of month six at Full Sail University with Organizational Structures. This class helped me to identify and create multiple design solutions for a single project through thorough research and core concepts from the current and previous courses. 

Looking back, not only on this course but throughout the program, I realize that I have become a stronger designer. Each class becomes a little more demanding while forcing me to use what I’ve learned during my degree. I think one of the most helpful things (which isn’t a core concept) is the ability to post my work through processes. Uploading my progress and allowing my classmates to critique and evaluate my work, has enabled me to take a step back and go beyond what I thought I could do.

Below are a list of concepts that I have learned throughout this class. It was basic knowledge to me before, but I had the opportunity to learn more and go beyond the basics by applying it to the project I had this month. I hope to carry these, as well as the rest of the concepts I’ve learned, throughout my career as a media designer.

Summary of Concepts

1. Theme vs. Style

One of the first concepts we learned about was the difference between theme and style. I guess a way that helped me to understand was this - if theme is the ‘what’, then style is the ‘how’. They are two different concepts that can work synonymously together to make an aesthetically pleasing design.

For our static mood board, we had to choose either the same or different themes for three boards. A theme, in it’s simplest form, is a unified idea. The company I had was a big box baby store. The three themes I chose for my company were Zoo, Party and Blocks. I had my themes, now I had to figure out a style to communicate my idea. For the Zoo animals, I chose whimsical style, nature colors like browns and greens; Party - organic and abstract with indie fonts; Big blocks and letters - pastel colors and bold font choices. I want to do more of an environmental typography style for this choice. 

2. Static and Dynamic Mood Boards

A mood board is a way for designers and clients to collaborate on ideas and designs for a project. It’s a collage of images, typography, colors and ideas that helps to pave a path toward a design structure. It helps to keep you focused on those elements that will best communicate the design concept.

This month, we had to create a static and dynamic mood board. A static mood board is a mood board where all of the elements are stationary. It’s a collage that relays the message in a clear way and it could be in as little as one page. A dynamic mood board is a unique way of presenting a static mood board. We accomplished this by working in After Effects. We had to determine a creative way of communicating our elements (color, typography and images) using video, music and sound effects.

3. Rhythm

Rhythm is considered a basic principle in design; it’s synonymous with repetition. It can create movement and patterns. Rhythm creates consistency and allows people to better understand and become familiar with the concepts being portrayed. This can also help to create structure in a composition.

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Weeks 3 and 4 consisted of me creating a dynamic mood board using the static  design from the previous weeks. That helped me to focus on my concept and keep me from trying to cram a ton of elements into my design.This was created using After Effects. 

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In week two, I had to refine my mood boards and present it with a professional and clear manner. The themes I chose were Zoo, Vintage Party (or invitation) and Block Theme. The one I chose to pursue was the Zoo theme.