I think my top three hard skills would be branding and identity, Illustration and drawing from outside sources, and the Adobe Suite. I think for branding and identity, these are the kind of projects I’m drawn to most and enjoy doing. I did them in my free time and had a couple examples in my portfolio that I submitted. These are the kind of internships I’m working towards, so while I think it’s a current strength, obviously much room for improvement. I think illustration is another strength, I’ve always been pretty good at drawing (with a reference) and I’ve made it a part of a number of projects in the past and view it as kind of a secret weapon. While I really love clean vector graphics, having the ability to draw in my back pocket is really nice to have and bring out when the project calls for that touch. Lastly, while I would say most of my familiarity with the Adobe Suite is Illustrator, I think I have a knack for the suite in general and picking it up and understanding things quickly. That goes for InDesign now and I’m hoping Photoshop which I’ve had less experience with. I think these skills will grow but I feel competent in my ability to learn and use the suite.
My top three soft skills would probably just be that I’m hard working, creativie, and I would say emotional intelligence. I think I put a tremendous effort into the things I care about. Right now, that’s school, I wouldn’t say there’s assignment so far I haven’t given my best effort conceptually or practically and that’s something that translates to sports, schoolwork, real work, anything I want to excel at. Another would be creativity, I think that just comes with maybe being in this program, I’d hope most people could count this as a strength but I think being able to come up with different, cool and exciting ways to arrive at solutions in the design world is a major boon. Separating your work in terms of thought and quality is something I try to do, don’t succeed always but always trying. Lastly I would say emotional intelligence is a strength. It might be douchey to say but I feel like I’ve always been pretty good academically but maybe since my first run through college and some maturing on my part I’ve developed more of an understanding of others and people I’m working with. How to collaborate, when to bend on something, when not to. I think that’s probably the most important skill you can have because it can branch in a bunch of different ways. If you have that skill you can fight for your ideas.
Some hard skills I’d like to improve upon would be UX/UI Design and probably just competency with the equipment we have at our disposal. I’m genuinely surprised at how much I’ve enjoyed Erik’s class. I can’t overstate how hard I thought that class was gonna be for me, but it really was just a lot of effort early on and now it just kind of feels like it’s making a ton of sense. That being said, Eriks said a number of times that the landscape in this field is changing quickly under our feet so I’d just like to get better at the UX side of things, with Figma and just understanding users. I don’t know if thats ultimately what I want to do as a career but who knows. I also think just working more with the equipment, printers, cameras etc couldn’t hurt. Making myself more well-rounded and knowledgable about the equipment in our field.
Some soft skills I could work on are teamwork and adaptability. I think I work well in a team, I think the thing I need to work on specifically is not taking on too much work. I think sometimes if I’m with someone who’s really deferential or less-experienced, I’m more likely to kind of go solo with things or take on much more responsibility with the work which makes things harder for me and doesn’t help them get better, so just doing better splits of work and trying to trust my partners is something to work on. Lastly, I think sometimes adaptability can be an issue, pivoting can be hard when you really like an idea and rejections and editing is going to happen a lot in this business so I think this will come with class and more experience but right now it’s something I’m looking to improve upon.