1. How many hours of practice time per week would you consider excessive? How many hours would not be enough to create sophisticated work? Where are you situated?

I think the hours of practice would depend on the person’s previous experience, but for me over 6 hours a week would be too much for me as it would start to affect me studying for other classes. Again, depending on the project there are different amount of time you should put into that project, I would say a good amount of time would be at least about 12 hours for a project in total. I think I was prepared to spend an adequate amount of time on some projects since I had worked on them previously, but others I had to work a little longer on, either because the program decided to crash when I was working on it or because I hadn’t worked on it as much as I’d liked previously.

2. What does the “next level” look like? What would the next level in the designs of your maps look like?

I think “next level” would be an improvement of your previous work and be unique to something you created. I think my projects had improved as I gained more experience with using Illustrator than I had before and it let me create my ideas easier. I also incorporated aspects on some of the other projects to make interesting illustrative choices in my projects such as the cutout of pie charts that I used in the Perfume map which I learned how to do in the Bills map even though I hadn’t used it in that.

3. What was some meaningful feedback you received about the maps and what did you do with that feedback?

I got a lot of good feedback from the feedback sessions, I’m not too confident on the aspect of choosing Type so hearing how others chose theirs and how they came to their conclusions helped me decide what to do for mine. I also got a lot of feedback from Reina outside of class when we worked on our projects together. It helped to see my project from a different perspective as I could sometimes get sucked into my projects after working it on a long time.

4. Describe what level of challenge you encountered in the creation of your maps. What was the hardest part / what was the easiest part? What was the most enjoyable part of the process?

I definitely encountered problems with illustrator where I wouldn’t know how to make specific aspects on illustrator such as the zig zag line on illustrator and how to vary the colors on that stroke. This ended up in me having to restructure my initial idea for the project to something else which I actually felt that this made the project better even though it proved to be more challenging.

5. Did you do anything else outside of class, extracurricular, related to art, design, or creativity?

I made a chalkboard sign for the salon I work at to promote sales for displaying outside the salon. I also designed loyalty cards for the salon which I made on a program that was specifically designed for making those types of cards. I also continued to work a little on the French curves to practice for making the symbols I use in the last 3 projects. I worked on personal art at home too which included painting a painting I have been working on for a while.

6. Whether positively, negatively or neutrally, how has your life outside of school impacted your school work?

It’s been a lot better, but I did recently get under a lot of stress when my class for next semester was cancelled a week before finals as I had to get that fixed immediately so it wouldn’t mess up my personal schedule (work) for next semester. That caused me to have to have a lot of work that I ended up getting behind on due to it not being something I was planning on having to deal with. However, I did end up getting it solved by talking to my advisor who helped me figure out what to do.

7. What does the most ideal classroom environment look/feel like to you? What does it mean to be part of a class? This semester, what was your part / role / contribution to this ideal vision? Looking back in the semester describe the physical location you think you were at your most optimum and flourished the most.

I think the best type of classroom is one where everyone feels as though they have a voice, being able to comment on other people’s projects so they can also reflect on their own work by constructively criticizing other people’s work. I think I aided a lot in giving people feedback on their work as well as challenging but listening to what other people wanted to give feedback on my work so I could better understand where I went wrong. I think the place I got most work done was in the library because I was alone and I tend to work best when I am alone as I don’t get distracted as easily.