Going into Seattle Central Creative Academy as a design student, there were many things that I did not expect, and I had very limited knowledge about graphic design and the creative field in general. There’s still so much that I have yet to learn, but I had a very narrow view on what exactly I was getting myself into. Before when I think of a graphic designer, I mainly thought of branding, logo design, typography, the possibility of going into UI/UX and nothing more really. I had no interest in photography or videos at all and honestly never wanted to deal with that aspect of the creative field.
I know it’s still very early on in our program and we have only had one module—my first being After Effects—and that completely blew my mind. The idea of animation and motion graphics never crossed my mind because I thought that might require more specialized education but knowing that is another avenue that we can take, has made me more excited than ever discovering a newfound interest. Additionally, we worked with videos and photos, and it made me realize how interconnected it is with graphic design. Both businesses work hand in hand and learning the process of video/photography will be helpful in the future, even if not working directly in those industries too.
For our portfolio next year, I believe we feature three projects and present them at the end of the year. For one of my projects, I hope to focus on motion-graphics and animation. I think the idea of incorporating different mediums can be powerful and make a larger impact when designing. The ability to use animation in combination with graphics has so many possibilities and knowing that we can create such things has motivated me a lot more. Even when producing my first ever blog post of a “mash-up” I utilized stop-motion animation (although not the best work), combining many photos together compared to simply taking a video has two very different impacts on the viewer and can be utilized in many ways. I also learned how difficult it is to take a still shot without the proper equipment and how lighting really does matter. For our design history class, we have to create a 15-minute video on a specialized topic. If recording and video editing is already one hurdle to jump over, being behind the camera is a totally different wheelhouse and I applaud those who are comfortable in front of a camera (the number of times I had to practice my script was unreal).
Learning more about video and photography has opened my mind to different career paths in the future—if anything, it has made me more confused (I guess in a good way?) as to what I want to focus on because there is an endless number of avenues we can take. I by no means necessarily want to be behind (or in front) a camera, but I think I have come to appreciate the work behind every shot (eg. poorly shot green screen videos vs amazing ones where you don’t have to do as much work taking the green out) and how to integrate that into my work. I am excited to see what else this field has to offer and the boundless possibilities to explore. Let’s go learn some more!
Here’s a video of what I created for our After Effects class week 4-green screening! The green screen videos I used were very clean and it definitely made me job easy creating this footage. ☺