Semester 2 Final

Semester Two Final

Greeting Card Project

The first project I will be talking about was the greeting card project we did. In this project we created greeting cards for people in our lives and used made them personal or humorous. I decided to do a greeting card based around beets and puns related to beets. The card is supposed to be inspirational and the outside reads "Don't beet yourself up," while the inside reads "you are unbeetable." This project actually did not take too long to be completely done with, maybe a couple of days hard work. It did take me a bit to get around to turning it in. The most challenging part of the project was just using the pen tool to actually make my designs look nice. The designs came out a lot different digitally than they did on paper. If I am being completely honest I really like my hand-drawn version of the card better than my digital one. I learned a lot about the pen tool during this project and I am very grateful for the critiques on the use of color and the pen tool during this project from my friends and teacher. I am pretty happy with the overall result although at first I was not too thrilled with it and I am happy to do more projects like this.

Typography

The next project I will be talking about is the Typography project which I actually entered into the e-Magine event and won third place in the typography category. In this project we had to choose 4 quotes and fonts to create posters from. I chose all my quotes from the poet Rupi Kaur. This project was definitely one of my favorites from this semester. I really tried to choose a theme and keep the consistency throughout all of my art boards. In this project I learned new skills about different tools like warp and other filters as well as the different brush styles available which I never really thought to use within my projects before although I was aware of. I chose a brush style and used it to create a connection between all of my designs. I am really happy with the way all my designs turned out and I am thankful for the critiques I received from my teacher and the judges who judged my project in the e-Magine event, They gave me many useful suggestions on the tone, theme, style, and white space usage of my project. 

Logo Design

My third project was the final project we completed this semester which was the logo design project. In this project we created five logo designs which were meant to represent us and our "brand" of sorts. This project took about a week or a week and a half of class time to complete. I created five unique logos and transferred them into adobe illustrator. I then created five different versions of my five logos using three unique color schemes generated from any online website. In this project I learned a lot more and gained more practice using the pen tools on illustrator as well as learning about color and design. This was also one of my favorite projects we had done throughout the entire year. I am grateful for the critiques and suggestions given about the designs and colors I used in my object and I was happy to change a few things which i the end I also agree made my project look much better. This project definitely was one of my best in my opinion.

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I will say there were a lot of times during this semester that I didn't stay totally focused during the whole class period. This was especially true on block days. Despite this I still tried my best and when I noticed I wasn't focused for a long period of time I tried to get my self back on track to complete whatever task was needed to be done. I tried to ask as my any questions as possible and always asked for suggestions form my teacher and friends before declaring I was finished with a project. I often did attempt to learn outside of school and during class to enhance my abilities on the various types of softwares we use to create our projects. 

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Strengths and Weaknesses

My strengths in e-comm definitely fall under the design aspect. I am terribly bad at animation and any involved with that. Digitally I am still learning about the programs but I am generally good at concerting ideas and creating rough sketches/plans on paper. Sometimes it can be quite difficult for me to transfer my ideas and turn them into reality on the computer. I am still an amateur at many of the softwares and at times it can be frustrating and creates a lack of motivation for me when I am not able to make something look like it does when I am imagining it or when I am drawing it on paper. This frustration was created during many of projects because I am somewhat of a perfectionist at times and it can make me give up easily. This is something I am really trying to work on mentally and to improve my drawing and digital art skills by practicing and learning about the different softwares we use in class for out projects.

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Conclusion

I would say that my favorite parts about sophomore graphic design was the teachers and how dedicated and and they were. My teachers, Mrs. Beaudoin, was always willing to help whoever and was always very kind and passionate about her art and teaching. I am very grateful to have had her for sophomore graphic design and I hope I can have more classes with her as my teacher in my upperclass e-Comm experience. My goals for next year would definitely be to learn more about the programs and to maybe become an expert at a few. I am really wanting to create some good things next year and I can't wait to see what will be in store. Thank You!