reflection

I think that putting in nearly 40, or more than 40, hours a week on practice (more than six hours a day) is excessive, but I think that setting aside less than two hours a day is not enough time to dedicate to improvement. Practicing is essential to improving one’s level of sophistication in their artwork because through practice you learn to troubleshoot technical problems, or you learn shortcuts that can help you later. I’d say that between four and five hours per day of practice time (which can be spent on multiple projects throughout the day, not necessarily a single project in a single time period!) is how much time people should attempt to make to work on practicing and learning new ways to make work, and this is where I’d say I’m at, around four hours a day on various projects, whether they’re individual work or assignments for class.

To me, sophisticated work is careful work. And by this, I mean that sophisticated work has been scrutinized since the first draft by the artist, and has been improved as a result of personal feedback and intuition, but also from critiques from peers. It pays attention to design choices and elements that require an equal balance to be effective. I would say that my maps are sophisticated in the fact that I carefully took into consideration the critiques of my classmates as positive feedback toward improving my designs and making them clean and direct in their readability by the audience. Specifically I paid close attention to color schemes and icons and how to best utilize these elements for emphasis of certain areas of the maps, rather than simply “decoration”.

As stated above, I especially appreciated my peers’ feedback on my icons. I knew that I liked the icons I had done, but I was worried about how they worked in combination with text, and so I really valued the feedback and suggestions that my classmates gave for resolving the issues that I had with balancing my icons and text on my maps. With this feedback I received, I was able to pinpoint specific problems in the maps and make iterations that improved upon and resolved the problems. These critiques/feedback were especially helpful in my second map, as seen below (click to enlarge).

I’d say that the challenges I faced were minor to intermediate; I didn’t really face any extreme difficulties that I couldn’t work around or that caused me to start over on a map. I think the most challenging part of my maps was picking interesting fonts to use that are not default fonts, but rather fonts that are more fitting for the map and information they go with. But once I picked some I liked, I had some peers help me figure out which font(s) would be the most interesting, fitting, and readable for the maps I was doing, so now I have a better idea of the criteria to think about when picking fonts. The easiest and most enjoyable part of my maps was the icons by far. I love to mock up icons and symbols, so those were the most enjoyable for me to do and to fit into my maps.

Outside of class, I do a few other things that do relate to design. Specifically I am interested in mocking up logos for friends, and I also like to design aerial maps of properties, so I liked how the symbol and map assignments we did in class can help me think about design choices for the logos and maps that I’ve already enjoyed doing. I also enjoy creating digital portraits of pets for friends, as far as other extracurricular art projects go. Below are two examples of the most recent portraits I’ve done in two different styles.

As far as my life outside of school affecting my schoolwork, I’d say I’m somewhere between neutral and positive. I always make sure that my schoolwork comes first and that it is finished before I do anything with friends or family, but I also make sure that I do make time for others so that I can relieve any school-related stress. In addition to that, my family and friends are always super supportive of my artwork and even help to offer critiques themselves so that I can receive feedback from non-designer people, as I might if I were presenting a work-in-progress project to a client, so I really appreciate that.

The most ideal version of a class setting, at least for art classes, to me, is one that is fairly individual-based but the overall mood should be relaxed and welcoming, which is how I felt that this class was. By this I mean that students are expected to work in class for the whole class, but they have the opportunity to get answers, feedback, and other suggestions from peers or the professor throughout the class and not just on critique days. I never felt stressed coming to class, because I knew that if I was facing any roadblocks in my work, there were multiple people to get feedback from, or give feedback to. To be a part of class means to be one of these students that can give and receive feedback to peers and to be there to give positive critiques and suggestions where requested. I’d say that I was definitely part of this ideal vision as someone who gave feedback to my peers to help them resolve issues in their projects, and also took any critiques to heart to improve my own work.

Below are my final maps!
Map 1 – Good Reads
Map 2 – Needs versus Wants
Map 3 – Branching Out

In my opinion, the first meta skill correlates to the “ten thousand hours” that were brought up at the beginning of the class. Experience in general, of anything that relates to what we do in class, or anything that makes use of learning from the programs that are used and will be used for graphic design. This meta skill evaluates just how much practice one has made time for and used for improvement. On this skill I would give myself a consistent rating. I use programs like Photoshop and Illustrator nearly every day, and I’m constantly finding new ways to perform a task, such as finding and using shortcuts and “cleaner” methods.

I believe that the second meta skill evaluates how involved the creator is with the work. By this, I mean that here is where iterations are critical in producing the best possible outcome of a project through repetition, and smoothing out any “kinks”, physically or metaphorically, in the piece. For this skill, I would give myself a medium rating. I don’t often like to do iterations, but I understand how important they are in the production of a final piece.

The third meta skill regards feedback; to me, this is asking how much consideration I gave the feedback. It means that if I made good use of the feedback, I was able to explore more options to the process of my work rather than simply “tweaking” a few things here and there. On this skill, I would give myself a meaningful rating. I made sure that I recalled any “issues” that my peers had with my work during critiques and thought about several options to changing it. Not only did I just simply amend the problems, I used that as a reflection for figuring out how else the piece could be improved or changed. Often times when I went back to change something, I made changes from the critique first, but then I improved upon them by making other changes that needed to be fixed as a consequence of my first edits.

I believe that the fourth meta skill deals with my mentality throughout the entire creation process. It regards whether or not I did the project just to have it done, or if I did it because I was truly engaged with the process and the end result. On this skill I would give myself a medium rating. I would have given myself an intense rating except that I do not feel as though I engaged every single facet of the project and pushed it to it’s limits. As I stated above, I do not iterate often enough to say that I have gone above and beyond on challenging myself.

The fifth meta skill also regards the “ten thousand hours” like the first. However, this one is different because it does not just regard practice time of the projects in class; this one also includes other projects for other classes or for personal work. In a way, this meta skill regards a wider range of practice hours than the first meta skill. On this skill I would give myself a rating for “lots of other stuff”. I am constantly working in Photoshop and Illustrator for personal artwork or things for other classes that are not necessarily centered around my major.

To me, the sixth meta skill evaluates to my growth as a student pursuing graphic design and how I have learned and developed from my experiences in the classroom. It evaluates how I have reacted to problem-solving and critiques and practice time for myself and for my peers. For this skill, I would give myself a mature rating. I feel as though I have certainly learned new things and have developed through this course, benefiting from crits (both those on my own work and from others, I feel like I was able to use those to think differently about my own projects) and having to problem solve.

Lastly, I believe that the seventh meta skill solely regards my relationship to my peers. It evaluates how helpful and constructive my suggestions might have been in critiques. On this skill I would give myself a room temp rating. I would hope that I have given helpful suggestions for my peers to help them problem solve or think about something differently to work around an issue, but I honestly don’t think that anything I said would be more “mind-blowing” or complex than feedback any of my other peers could have given.

Overall, I disliked the collage project because it’s simply something that I don’t think enough about. I don’t have the “abstract” mind that I feel is required for a successful collage. Thus, I went with what I knew, and that was a digital collage that had the feel of being its own image (something “magazine worthy” instead of “fine art worthy”, as was said during the critique).

I admired how abstract or well planned other collages looked, and it made me curious as to what their thought processes were for creating it. Instead of “thinking outside the box”, I confined myself to what I knew, and I think that was reflected in my collages. For me, I played it safe because I grew stubborn with physically cutting apart images that I was tired of anyway.

After hearing the critiques, I don’t think I really would have done anything differently. I don’t feel as though I would have been satisfied with any of the physical collages that I might have tried to do, so I still would have gone the digital route.

After hearing the critiques from all of the projects, there are three major things that I feel that I could have done differently for a stronger collection of images, in addition to smaller composition changes.

1) Visit South Congress more times. While I visited South Congress three times, I don’t feel that it was enough. I don’t think that I let myself really explore all of the little niches. As a naturally shy person, I think I just felt awkward taking pictures in a very public place; I’d much rather take the pictures at home or along a secluded nature trail. The hustle of the city just doesn’t interest me as much for photography.

2) Selected more images in my composition. I think I just felt very overwhelmed by the project and trying to relate my images to the Gestalt principles that I didn’t give myself enough time to enjoy the task of taking the pictures, and thus I felt limited in the images I could choose from in the final selection.

3) Take pictures as interesting subjects rather than subjects composed of Gestalt. I think I limited myself in general by trying to force the Gestalt principles onto my images, and I let that dominate what I saw through the camera. I didn’t take pictures for the sake of them having an interesting composition.

Additionally, the technical presentation of my images wasn’t the way that I had wanted it to be. Ideally, the images would have been seen horizontally, so that the viewers could see the continuity that united the images, instead of them being viewed vertically. I suppose my shy personality came into play here because I didn’t ask anybody if they knew of a way to make this possible in the blog. The image composition has been changed below to better reflect the continuity of the curve.