Sophomore Portfolio Review

I have been in the Graphic Design program for about two years now and throughout these two years, I’ve learned many new skills that have made me a better designer. Each project has challenged me and pushed me to try many different techniques in order to improve the sophistication on my designs. Learning basic design elements s helped me find a very unique, colorful, experimental and visual appealing technique for my designs. You can see my technique being effectively used on the Type Specimen Book and the Critical Mass Video Animation.

Out of all of the projects that I have done, the Type Specimen Book, has to be a project that truly represents who I am and what I am capable of designing and creating. This was our final project for Typography I and by far my favorite Graphic Design project ever. Our goal for this project was to produce a 16 pages (plus cover page) specimen book. We had to integrate the concepts and skills that we learned throughout the semester in this multi-page document. This project gave me the opportunity to explore the creative and production aspects of the typographic grid, as well as to learn the fundamental principles and protocols of publishing design. Since this was the culmination of my Typography 1 class, I was very confident using InDesign and I knew a lot of tricks and techniques that helped execute this project effectively.

I definitely took advantage of the fact that Trade Gothic Typeface has an extensive family and decided to illustrate and showcase the differences and similarities throughout this book. I made many sketches prior to selecting the ones that actually made the book. I was just familiarizing myself with the Trade Gothic Typeface family and also testing potential design ideas. I also focused on using color effectively to enhance my overall book. I fist came up with the colors for the front and back page, and that influenced the color schemes that were used throughout the inside of the book.

Although this project took a very long time, I enjoyed working on it so very much. It challenged me throughout the time frame of the project, but I never gave up. I keep pushing myself and seeing the final product made it worth it. A few months ago, Professor Lorena Howard-Sheridan contacted me asking for my permission for her to use my Type Specimen Book on her website where she showcases student work.

 

Another project I want to showcase is the Critical Mass (Video Animation).

For the Critical Mass (Video Animation) we were asked to create a short video animation using Adobe AfterEffects. This project introduced me to after effects; before this class, I didn’t have any prior knowledge as to how to create a composition and using this program. However, we did get the opportunity to do a lot of the work using other Adobe products such as Photoshop.

What I liked about this project is that we were free to animate anything that we wanted. This was the perfect opportunity for me to create a video animation for an organization that I have been involved with for years. I wanted to create a promotional and educational video for Circle K International (not the gas station in case you are wondering). I was able to use many different animation techniques throughout this project. Two of my favorite techniques were the pencil writing effect that happens at the very beginning of the video as well as the many different animation effects that I used on the Circle K International logo, such as rotation, appear, and scale.

This was a very challenging project because it took me a very long time to finish it and because I wasn’t that familiar with the program. I had several moments when I thought about giving up, but I kept pushing myself to finish because I not only wanted to get a good grade, but I also wanted to share this with the organization that has givens so much to me. I am very happy with the way this video animation turned out and in fact, Circle K International has been using this video as a promotional/educational material.

 

To conclude, as stated at the very beginning of this critical assessment, I have only been in this program for two years. However, throughout these two years, I have learned so much and my work has definitely increased its sophistication level. I had some prior knowledge before joining the program, but I was never challenged like I have been in all of my GDES classes. I also became familiar with InDesign as well as AdobeAfterEffects which is going to help me in the long run whether I want to create posters or promotional videos. I can’t say that I am an expert or that my work is always sophisticated and perfect, but after every single project, I learn new different things that contribute to finding my own designing techniques. I look forward to continue building my design skills as well as finding who I am as a designer.