Stephanie Vasquez

My top three hard skills are Bilingual, Ideation, and Design Principles. I am fluent in English and Spanish. I know being Bilingual has its advantages. I the design world you encounter people from all across the world. I know for a fact speaking Spanish is beneficial towards my career. I feel strong in Ideation for projects. I find I can create a clear mood board that leaves an exact clear impression towards the direction of a project. With Design Principles I feel confident in being able to convey an intended message with strategically using different elements of design.

Two Hard skills I would like to develop here at SCCA are Typography and Adobe creative suite. Typography is one of those must have hard skills for every designer. I am currently taking typography 1 with Jill and find it doesn’t come natural to me. I hope all the future projects help with the learning curve. The other skill I mentioned was the Adobe creative suite. And yes technically I know how to use Illustrator now thanks to Jason and now learning InDesign but I feel like I have a long way to go with many of the other software. Same as with Typography, I know that hard skill will develop and sharpen with time and practice.

My top three soft skills are Communication, Interpersonal skills, and Organization. I am strong in these skills because of my background in Childcare and Teaching. I had to clearly communicate to my students, parents, peers. I am strong in interpersonal skills because I am empathetic and actively listen to better communicate with the people around me. My Organization skills have been sharpened over time. As a teacher I had to organize my day not only for myself but for my students. Right now at SCCA I have been loving jotting down all of my to-do’s for the week. I find I execute my projects with efficiency!

Two Soft skills I would like to develop at SCCA are Teamwork and Creativity. I usually dread team projects but am aware being a good team player is very important in the real world. . I am hoping to sharpen that skill. Although I do consider myself to be creative I think creativity with intention takes a lot of practice. I have already surprised myself with the ideas that a came about since being here at SCCA and can’t wait to see more of the creative side develop more!

Hi, My name is Stephanie Vasquez. I am a first year Graphic Design student at Seattle Central Creative Academy. I am currently working on a magazine project using Figma for the design process and Dreamweaver for coding. I am also venturing out on some packaging label design projects using InDesign for text formatting and Illustrator for vector graphics. I am loving the problem solving, and all of the skills that I am learning. I am hoping to apply this summer at a professional setting and hopefully learn from other designers!

For my personal project, I am interested in creative packaging design. Anything from food packaging to beauty products. I am interested in this project because I have always found a deep interest in Packaging. I really want to learn the behind the scenes of that amazing face cream I use everyday. I really see a difference in my everyday tasks as far as packaging. From saving time as well as enjoying a satisfying and aesthetic packaging. It is a full on experience. With this personal project I would hope to allow myself to think outside the box (pun intended). I would like to design packaging for a skincare product.

What do you need to create a package design? Research! Lots of research. You will need to find out as much information about the materials that will be used. Are they sustainable? Or not? You need to research cost, demographic, ingredient lists, legalities, copyright, accessibility, etc. Once you research you need to plan out a timeline. Sourcing materials, getting prototypes designed. Trying to be as cost effective as possible and as sustainable as possible. Then you would need to design something not only pretty but a good label that will entice people and make them want it. You need to be careful about not leaving any important information on the label. You will need drive, creativity, and patience!

The cost of executing this project can range anywhere from $50-$3000 this is all depending on materials used and how sustainable they are. Sustainable packaging can be cost effective yet it is not very common in the skincare packaging world. Hence it would be slightly more costly than a regular plastic bottle. Another cost to keep in mind would be the software that will be used to design the packaging. This is a personal project that I am very excited about. I also can’t wait until our second year packaging class!

For this assignment, I wanted to feature the cereal brand Magic Spoon. This cereal brand has such a modern, colorful, and fun packaging. I really love their ‘Fruity’ flavor which is essentially a healthier Froot Loop. Since I am a regular consumer of this cereal I wanted to capture an image that captured a moment. This is usually my go to breakfast or snack. I thought why no make something so mundane seem exciting and delicious.

I usually eat this cereal before class so time is of the essence, I decided to add a clock as a prop in order to give off the impression that it was morning time. I propped the box down and purposefully scattered some cereal as if it spilled out of the box. I then captured the moment of the milk pouring inside the bowl. I used photoshop to edit the image. I wanted to really bring out the brilliance of the colors.

Over my time here at SCCA I have had to pivot multiple times! I will be talking about the most recent (and significant) one which happened last week. Picture this, it is your first project of the quarter for Jason’s class. You are very excited because you can finally use color and know how to use Illustrator. What can go wrong? Well let me tell you about it.

For this quarter’s Project 1 for Jason’s class, we were challenged to make and illustration using only characters in a seven letter word of a plant or animal. I chose a Water Lilly because they are majestic to look at. Part 1 was to choose a font that shared characteristics of the word. Well this was my first mistake, I chose a font that looked good yet I didn’t think about the fact that I would have to create a piece of art and the characters of the letter would be my only tool.

I initially had a vision in my mind about the illustration. I even tried to manifest it by journaling about it, I wrote “Claude Monet vibes”. I searched for the perfect image of a Water Lilly and started to create my brushes of the characters. When I began things were looking janky. I kept going because i thought it would eventually get better. One week later and 3 more days until the project was due I realized it had nothing cute about it. “What do I do?!”

I decided that I couldn’t start over with the short amount of time I had. I tried and tried to fix it but then came to the realization that I had to erase all my hard work and start over. As panic rose, little did I know that adrenaline and pressure was going to be beneficial and get my creative juices flowing. I decided I no longer wanted to mimic a photo or and artist (because that is harder than just creating) I then completed my project to the best of my ability. I actually really loved the result. I wish I would have had some more time to work on it but I learned how important trial and error is in this field.

When I am feeling stressed out I love going to that spot on the fifth floor with the big windows with a view of the Mountain. I usually tilt my head up, or look outside the window. I feel it would be nice to look up at the ceiling or out the window and be transported when taking a quick 5.

For my Experiential nature design project I incorporated texture and color In a way that felt otherworldly. My inspiration was Thierry Feuz a visual artist who focuses on Neo baroque approach and plays with the idea of flower and plants being composed of other living organisms like bacteria. I also love the texture of seashells and went ahead and played with the texture on the ceiling. This is my idea of what nature would look like in another world.

I used Illustrator to manipulate the images. I made clipping masks then lowered the opacity for the very colorful flowers to give it a translucent effect on the window panes.

In my initial exposure to the SCCA I learned that there was 2 programs, I was very unsure of which program I should join. I ended up going for the Graphic Design program due to it aligning better to my future goals. But I still have that interest in the Visual Media program. I decided I would make a friend in the VME program that could tell me all about their experience and I could become that person for them as well.

During my first week I realized it would be difficult to since Visual Media is usually in the studio and the programs are divided from Monday-Thursday. On the first Friday class I met my friend Brooklyn in my AR module. We talked about each other’s experience in our first week and realized we were both on the same boat about being interested in both programs. She quickly became my VME friend and over the course of the quarter we have both learned so much about each other’s programs. Just as I had wished for!

The first thing I learned is that VME is more than just taking photographs. I never knew how much work goes into taking one photograph. I am used to just using a camera on automatic and then going in and editing it with the simple tools that the general public knows. Brooklyn taught me that there are ways to capture a moment the way you want to with setting your camera and tweaking things such as exposure and saturation before even snapping the photo.

I learned that VME students are usually very helpful when it comes to getting a different perspective. When I ask my fellow design peers for advice on a project I get a very different response. Us design folk are usually jaded by our experience and what we have all collectively learned that we forget about other points of view. VME students are very helpful because they question aspects of your design that your Graphic design peers would understand perfectly because we all learned from the same professors. It helps with getting that outside perspective and learning how some things can be lost in translation to non graphic designers.

Recently I met another friend from VME. We have a group project for out Interactive Design module and we had to sketch out wireframes for an app. At the end of the activity we showed each other our wireframes and realized we had very similar sketches. This was interesting to me because I expected a very different outcome from their sketch. Overall I learned that both VME and GD students are learning how to communicate visually and at the end of the day we both have the same basic understanding of visual communication. My biggest takeaway had been knowing that in the real world both programs work together. I f you are designing for a product you will need a VME professional to shoot the product. You will both benefit from learning about each other’s process early on in order to create something in a much more efficient and harmonious way!

Deliver Results

In my previous role as a Pre School teacher I was in charge of not only teaching the children but also making sure of their safety. I was in charge of creating a weekly curriculum with 3 different activities of different subjects. I constantly had to deliver that quality of work to not only the children but to the school director in a weekly newsletter.

Earn Trust

Before my Pre School teacher role I had a peculiar position at a nanny agency. I was an “on-call nanny” I would take last minute shifts if any of the regular nannies were unable to make their shift. That meant I would care after children whom I had never met. The trust building aspect was crucial for this role. I learned how to approach families in a way that let them know that their children would be safe under my professional care. It was difficult but I did it!

Frugality

During my time as a teacher, I had a yearly budget for my classroom. I had to make sure that amount lasted through the year. Frugality was the only way to make that amount last. I had to order only necessary items for the activities. And also leave some amount saved in case of an emergency. I had to get creative with the basic materials we had. And that also meant sacrificing some potentially fun activities for the children. Overall it ended up being okay.

The one difficult leadership principal I chose is Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit. I am learning how to take constructive criticism without overthinking about my skills as much. This program is helping me learn about the importance of agreeing to disagree.

• What Point of interest (POI) did your team decide on?
• How did you create it (photoshop, Figma)?
• What assets did you use? (jpg/gif/audio/etc)

For our Point of Interest, my team decided on Seattle Lakes. We thought about the broad audience something like this would target. We covered Lake Washington, Lake Union, and Green Lake. Each team member chose a lake (in my case Green Lake). The goal was to add panels giving fun facts about the lake, Activities, History, and an image of the lake.

We created our panels in Photoshop. In order to maintain the cohesive look throughout different panels one of my team members made templates in Photoshop. We all used the same style by using the same number of panels, color palette, and fonts.

I created a GIF of a duck swimming off in procreate for my asset. I thought about something that Green Lake has and went off the Duck Island fun fact I added in one of my panels.

5 years ago I made a decision that changed everything. Back in 2017 I visited Seattle during spring break. I am from Texas and had never been to the PNW. I was very amazed at how different it was in every sense. After that trip I came back during the summer for the 4th of July to visit my friend. My friend was all alone and really wanted someone familiar to live close by. She asked me to move with her to Seattle. At the time I was 19 I was going to school back in El Paso and studying Business Administration. I wasn’t very passionate about my life back in Texas but didn’t feel ready to leave the nest. I thought about it for a couple of weeks then decided I would make the move! I went from Southwest to PNW.

The most difficult part about that decision was leaving everything I knew behind. I felt scared and unprepared but also excited about what was coming. fast forward 5 years and here I am. Over the years I have learned so much about myself. I learned how to be independent. I learned to be at peace with my own company and just enjoy hanging with myself. I have met lots of people along the way. Some stayed some went. I have have several different jobs in retail, service industry, childcare/preschool. All of those jobs have taught me different lessons which have led me to be here today. I think the hardest things to say yes to are the ones you should say YES. Thanks to that decision I am here in this program learning towards becoming a graphic designer. So far I have met some great friends who I see myself working towards creating something great in the future. I am excited to keep saying yes to things.