Month: October 2022

Last year I had just started my Senior year of high school and I was looking for an internship because it was and still is a requirement to have an internship twice a week. Anyway, started asking around if anyone was friends with or knew any graphic designers that I could possible work with. I ended up asking my neighbor who lives across the street and she said no. To give a little more context I was looking to work with a graphic designer that year because I had started getting into graphic design my junior year and wanted to work with a professional to see if it was something I wanted to pursue in college.

After she said no she offered me the opportunity to illustrate a children’s book that she wrote back in her early college days. That’s when I had this urge to say yes even if I had never don’t character design before. In middle school I tried to get into that more cartoony/ manga style art but it never clicked for me so I pretty much started from zero knowledge of how I was even going to start.

My high school was very insistent on the Design Thinking method which is a 5 step system that helps with prototyping and managing bigger projects. So with that knowledge began doing some research and practiced character design just by copying what I saw online and be more comfortable with this style of drawing.

In the end, I Illustrated an entire children’s book from scratch using very little knowledge and experience at only 18 years. Unfortunately, it is not published but I have it saved and ready on my computer whenever my neighbor has the time to put it out into the world. This experience was amazing because I did work alongside a graphic designer who was a great help through the whole process and I am proud of myself for saying yes to an opportunity even if I didn’t know I could pull it off.

Below is the cover of the book in InDesign.

As an aspiring designer I definitely want to spend as much time being creative. If I had to put myself on the graph that Joe used I would place myself somewhere on the Lower Information Density. It is only the 4th week of school and I came here to figure out what my niche is gonna be so I can’t say wether I want to work for a specific audience or not because I just started. I like logo and icon design and I have illustrated a children book before but I can’t say for sure what I want to do after school. I want to be able to use Illustrator so I defiantly will want to have a job where I can used that software often. Now I know for a fact I do not want to do web design. I don’t want to see it, touch it, be near it, etc No offense to Erik 🙂

I did find it interesting when the women and Joe mentioned the benefits of working at a big company like Microsoft because of the benefits. In the moment I could see myself also working for a company like that but I can’t predict the future so I won’t put too much energy into the idea. I find it hard talking about the pros and cons because I don’t know what job I will have in the next couple years. Last year I did have an internship with a graphic designer and he said that a lot of people like him have their main job including other small sources of income that they get from making fonts/typography or icons that you can sell from on websites. I guess that is a pro and a con because if you dont work for a big company you might earn less and might have side hustles but for some that’s what they want.

I personally don’t really care at the moment. I just want to get through school, have a decant paying job after graduating and I will see where life takes me. Maybe this isn’t exactly east you are looking for as an answer but its my view on this topic.

Last Friday on October 7th, Paolo Tossolini, a man from Italy who owns a company called Tosolini Productions presented on AR/VR. He primarily works with clients who are new to this type of technology. He believes that research in technology is a competitive advantage. This means he tries new technology that comes out and he creates something out of it and puts it out on YouTube and or presents it to other companies to put it out there.

Tosolini brought up Prototyping and the benefits of documenting those steps. “You can use it for your portfolio” “Why is the portfolio important?” “Because that is what an employer looks at when they want to hire you” “they will ask what have you done, what are your skill sets and how do you demonstrate your skill sets?” These are quotes directly from Tosolini. The last thing he mentioned about prototyping is the fact that when you show a client your prototypes it builds a sense of trust since you get to show your understanding of the project.

The rest of the time he showed us a few of his projects/ videos from his YouTube channel and explained some of the process, the types of clients he works with and why he likes to work with AR/VR.

Above is a short 5-second video I created in Adobe After Effects. It’s very short and sweet but I think it resembles my experience so far at the program so far. Let me explain just in case you need some more clarification. So I chose After Effects because it is the class I have been taking for New Media.

Secondly, I chose the words “Mixed Emotions” because at the moment I have had some ups and downs. I have enjoyed getting to know my classmates, working on projects together, making new friends, and working on projects that interest me. However, I did have one day where I was overwhelmed and started panicking a little bit due to the amount of work and the fact that I was unsure about what I was supposed to do. An example of that would be the blog. Thankfully I had a second-year student give me some guidance which I greatly appreciated.

Thirdly, I chose the color green for the text because it is a relatively neutral color. Neither happy, sad, mad, etc.

The last two things I want to bring up about this short video are the chaos of the letters and the short audio I added. Obviously, I am not as skilled as I would like to be when it comes to animation but besides that, I like how playful the letters move across the screen because I think it demonstrates how fun but chaotic the amount of work I have been doing so far. As for the audio clip, I added it kind of goes along with the playfulness of the animation. It reminds me of an old-school game.

In conclusion, these past 3 weeks I feel pretty good with a hint of stress but everyone needs a little bit of stress. It makes life more interesting I guess you could say. I am looking forward to writing about my weeks in this blog because I will get to tract and see how much I learn and evolved as a person for the next 2 years.