dperez's blog

I think that in my two years of studying different aspects of graphic design that my work has greatly improved since the beginning. As you can tell from my earlier projects I wasn’t still trying to understand the workspace of design and how to incorporate my own personal touch. I think that for the most part I am good at developing a vision that I have. I think that although I can usually get to where I need to be at the end of the project I need to focus more on the planning aspect. I tend to just jump into work. Although, that has worked I think that I need to become more invested in planning so that my ideas are fully flushed, and I don’t have such a hard time later down the line. I think that my symbol project, the decision map, and my weather report are good examples of my design skill.

My symbol project was based off of the word National Park. I wanted to use aspects of nature in my work, so I figured that this word would give me lots of options. This project was the first project that I felt really tested my Illustrator skills, as well as my planning skills. I think that having to go through so many steps showed me how much work goes into making symbols, logos, etc. If I had not gone through the process of starting with objects, abstract and then hybrids I would have not come up with the same results. I think my work would not have been as interesting without this process. This process has also taught me to try and do that with all of my design work so that it can be more original as well as more interesting. I think that my last “tree” symbol could have been reworked a little more so that it wasn’t so basic. Unlike the other two symbols I feel like that’s the one I did the least amount of work for. Overall this was one of my favorite projects and I really learned a lot about the design process as well as Illustrator.

The second project that I feel really tested my design skill was my cognitive decision making map. I had to put a lot of research into the questions that I was asking in order to try and get an accurate answer for the end of the map. My map was a way for people to try and decide what country they should live in the UK. The thing that really limited me on my work was the size of the paper. Although, the size of the paper was a challenge I think that it made me have to eliminate information that wasn’t as important, and only focus on the main ideas. I think that if I were to improve this work I would try to incorporate more questions to make the map more accurate. I got stuck at points in the project because I wasn’t sure how to categorize my different ideas so that the readers would understand my map fully. This made me evaluate my information more, and I think pushed my design skills. I like how the map turned out but I would have liked to include more options. Like my symbol project this made me realize how important research is to make your work mean something more than just a pretty picture.

The last project I wanted to talk about was my weather report video. This project out of all the other really tested my computer skills. While the other project tested me in a planning aspect this one tested me in a planning aspect as well as having to learn a completely new program. I had no skill at all in After Effects and immediately assumed that I was doomed. After some tutorials I got the hang of the program, but then soon realized that planning would be another problem I would face. Since, I didn’t know the program I didn’t realize how hard it was to delete/ rework things I had already put into my file. At one point I had to completely re make my file due to a timing issue. Since the project was so tedious I learned to how to prioritize, as well as plan rather than just jumping into a program especially one I had never worked with before. I think my project turned out good considering I had never used the program, but I do feel like it could have been given more interest. If I had more time I would have liked to add more effects to really take advantage of the program.

Symbol Project

Cognitive (Decisions Map)

Weather Report