Month: February 2023

harrison cole

Inspired by the snow in Seattle on Wednesday, I chose to make my ar/vr animation approach the topic from a playful and less serious perspective. When the viewer uses the eyejack creator app to look at my photograph of snow, the words “Snow Day 2023” appear then are wiped away by snow-like imagery to reveal a smiley face.

Because I have previous experience creating gifs in Photoshop, I didn’t have any trouble with the project beyond 30 minutes of troubleshooting printer errors in the printlab. I enjoyed the project and thought it was a good opportunity to combine high tech with less serious, more playful visuals.

During the two years after I finished my undergrad degree as a fine art student, I set out to continue my practice as a visual artist and largely failed to meet my own creative expectations for myself. My goal was to produce a series of paintings/drawings, and over the course of the two years between undergrad and school at Seattle Central I only finished three paintings. Looking back on those two years, I have come up with three things that I could have done differently to push creative projects from the idea stage to execution stage. I learned to create a structured, written prompt explaining what my project is about and what I want to accomplish, growing connections with peers, and thinking critically about how to put the project out into the world. 

Working from a self-created prompt

After working from assignments and rigid project proposals during much of my undergraduate career, I decided to spend much of my time improvising on the canvas instead of coming in with preconceived ideas about subject matter for my work. Although painting is a medium which benefits from happy accidents, I wish I had spent more time earlier giving myself direction in order to use the limited free time I had more effectively. 

Growing connections with peers

I also wish I had reached out to peers more to critique my work and push me in new directions. I’ve heard advice in this program that networking and reaching out to peers or other people in the industry should be just as much of a priority as the coursework itself. In the future, I want to be mindful of the social nature of art and design work and work on being a good peer and supporter of others, because doing so helps me stay invested and curious. 

Putting Projects Out into the World

When I was working on visual art after graduation, I didn’t have a plan for how the art would exist in the world. I feel that if I applied to more residencies and exhibition opportunities I would have gained more momentum with my project. As a graphic design student, I will be thinking about how to put work on the internet and use the work to apply to professional opportunities. 

Top 3 hard skills:
-File management/organization
-Corporate writing: email, content writing, copywriting
-Creating Flexible systems

Top 3 soft skills:
-project/time management
-collaboration/adaptability
-decisiveness

Skill Summary:
I feel that the hard skills I mentioned, such as file management, corporate writing, and creating flexible systems, show that I am easy to work with as a designer. Short tasks such as naming files and layers efficiently, commenting out sections of code, and creating general systems at the beginning of projects allow others to work from my designs. Because these things are easy to forget in a fast-paced environment, my attention to these skills will make me a more efficient and helpful team member. 
The soft skills I mentioned include time management, collaboration/adaptability, and decisiveness. Although one might conventionally think of adaptability and decisiveness as contrasting skills, I think they go together. I am good at being decisive and communicative about design decisions in order to work towards deadlines and plan projects efficiently, but I am also great at adapting when things don’t go according to plan.

Hard Skills I Hope to Develop at SCCA:
-Project Management Software
-Product Design Research

Soft Skills
-Public speaking
-Constructive critique

Developing Skills Summary:
During my time as SCCA, I hope to get better at using project management software and to learn more about product design/ux research. Because I often plan projects in a physical notebook, some of my planning can’t be shared with others immediately. I also feel that stronger research skills will allow me to grow more if I decide to pursue product design as a career. 
I also want to get better at soft skills such as public speaking with confidence and providing and receiving constructive critique. I feel that being able to give constructive critique and talk effectively in front of an audience will allow me to gain a better understanding of whether my designs are effective and how I could grow my skills in the future.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/19gz3eMIX4of443F-276dpGIX5Yy19Gee/view?usp=sharing