sarahmcarterulhite205-01-blog

[sarahmcarterulhite205-01-blog]

Reflection

This class has without a doubt been a huge learning process for me. I have stepped out of my comfort zone more than ever and I have finally started to love it. As expected, I was nervous about trying new things and at times I had questioned if I would ever be able to simply design something that would make it out in the hallway. I was thrilled to see my book design made it into a frame, I felt so honored. After all of my critiques early in the semester, I wasn’t sure if I understood some of the constructive criticism. As the semester progressed, so did my clarity of the past and present critiques and advice given from my professors and my peers. I am so thankful for my opportunity to take this class, and I hope to continue in the path of graphic design so I can expand my knowledge as far as possible.

[sarahmcarterulhite205-01-blog]

Our final project, the process journal reflecting on the semester as a whole, was a great experience for me to experience designing a printable book. Working so strictly to a grid was more of a challenge than I had originally expected. Just like every project I’ve done this semester, I can honestly say that there was much more to the planning, refining, and completion of each project that initially met the eye. I added two screenshots of a few of my favorite pages. I was really happy to learn that Instead of using our low quality phone pictures to show our past projects, we could easily recreate a matte board on indesign and place a pdf of our project over it. 

[sarahmcarterulhite205-01-blog]

I originally had an entirely different idea for my book cover. At the halfway critique, I came to realize that it was not working as I had thought it was. I then went on to create a circuit sun. This was the most detailed thing I have ever drawn in illustrator. I placed the circuit sun over numerous skies and asked as many people as I could for their input. I had originally planned to use a sunset along with a horizon line, then I realized it would be easier for the circuit sun to be the focal point if I simplified my design as much as possible.

[sarahmcarterulhite205-01-blog]

Weeks 9 + 10

I chose the Catfish Café for my logo design project because I wanted to explore a fun and lighthearted concept. I originally had gone too illustrative in the catfish that I drew. It was challenging for me to hear that I should delete all of the lines in the fish, creating a silhouette effect. I was very pleased with the input received from fellow students and other artists. For this project, I went through more ideas and asked for more opinions than the previous projects. I feel that I have earned more than just design skills in this project, but also communication and the benefits of personal critiques with classmates. This project pushed me out of my comfort zone, and without a doubt it was tedious and at times frustrating, but I am happy with my overall process and outcome.

[sarahmcarterulhite205-01-blog]

Weeks 7 + 8

We were assigned to create two emblems by choosing two things and putting them together. The top emblem is a hash tag and a square and the bottom is a hand and hope, which I represented with an olive branch. This was my first time ever using Illustrator so it was a new and exciting challenge. The hash tag square was first a thumbnail sketch, but then drawn in illustrator using the ruler tools to create symmetry. The hope hand however, was drawn on tracing paper, scanned, and then traced and refined. I have attached my sketch that I used to get a better idea of how I started.

[sarahmcarterulhite205-01-blog]

“Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it” -Maya Angelou For the great ideas poster created during weeks 5+6, this was my quote of choice. My poster is inspired by ancient art from Iraq and more well known, Egypt. The poster is entirely mosac tiles with the appearance of the people working up from bottom to the top where success is. In ancient art, ��success” would have been a God and they would have been larger than all of the people, which is what I tried to convey by making the S touch the borders. This was an extreme learning experience and I’m very pleased with the result, given that we all were concerned I might have biten off more than I could chew.

[sarahmcarterulhite205-01-blog]

Weeks 3+4

Our second project was called Syntax and Semantics. This was a fun way to learn the meaning of these terms and relate to them interactively. Similar to the first project, I didn’t expect the numerous challenges that I faced going into this assignment. I’m glad that I started as soon as I did once I encountered the many hardships of printing and learning the hard way not to move files used in a document that you ever plan to edit later. I learned not to marry an idea until I know that it is the idea or else you end up doing what I did and overcomplicating the task. This was a very long but overall beneficial learning process for me. 

[sarahmcarterulhite205-01-blog]

Weeks 1 + 2 When I first heard that our first assignment was a paper airplane, I thought this was going to be a very quick and easy project. A whole week to think about a paper airplane? I assumed I needed a whole hour. Thankfully, although I underestimated the thought process at first, I started early enough to trial and error numerous types of planes and paper weights. It wasn’t until the final test that I realized I should have also considered how I was going to drop the plane which turned out being my biggest downfall. I learned that even things that seem as simple as a paper airplane is much more complex than first expected.