All posts by cdaly3

Clair’s semester reflection of GDES_1

Social/Emotional Development

What each level looks like relative to my work:

The levels of social and emotional development are Mature, Young, and Adolescent. When looking at my work, it definitely dwindled towards the end of the semester with my cognitive map. I did not have as much work to bring to the table on critique day because I had a lot of extracurricular events happening. The dance team I am currently on was having longer practices to prepare for the show which was taking up to 7 extra hours out of my week. I also had to perform at every Blue & Gold series game which took more time out of my week. However, I took the much needed time to sleep in order to keep my health, after having to miss a class because of sickness. Because of this, I believe I am at a Young level. I understand how much time I need to put in for my projects, but I need to learn to really prioritize that time outside of my extracurriculars.

My score: Young

How I would improve that score: Giving myself ample amount of time for my cognitive process and trial and error designing.

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Sophistication of Your Work

What each level looks like relative to my work:

The levels of sophistication are High, Medium, and Low. When looking at the semester projects, I can find examples of each. First, we look at the symbol project. My sophistication of work is an odd spectrum of what I believe to be Low and High, when looking at my original six. While the athlete, commitment, friendship, and toughness symbols are not very sophisticated symbols (lacking in massaging and personal stylization) my dance and student symbols have a much more sophisticated look to them. Notice how my least sophisticated symbols have notes from critiques while the others were left alone. My hand-sketches for my second batch of symbols were of Low sophistication, but I do not consider myself a confident drawer. However, my third batch of hand sketches were a lot clearer, cleaner and more sophisticated. I attribute this to a simpler design. The overall product of the symbol project was, in my eyes, very abstract and sophisticated. The lines were clean and I felt that I met my criteria and the class’ criteria of simplicity. 

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Looking at my directional map project, I believe I started out more at Medium sophistication. I understood my way of process after the symbol project and I could better visualize what I wanted to see and what looked clean. After some trial and error, I came up with a color scheme that I thought was complimentary but also bold enough to understand.

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With my data map project, I started out at Medium sophistication with each individual graph. I was able to create these graphs and layouts without it looking like a two-year old had done it. I began playing with hierarchy, color schemes, and typefaces. I believe that by the time I finished the project, I had reached High sophistication. Of course, there is always room for improvement. With my cognitive map, however, I believe that I never reached past Medium sophistication. My symbols were slowly becoming more sophisticated but I never reached a level that looked like it could go on Pinterest.

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My score: Medium

How I would improve that score: becoming more detail oriented in my process

Use of Feedback

What each level looks like relative to my work: 

The levels of use of feedback are Meaningful, Useful, and Trivial. Based on my work, I take every piece of feedback into account. Each phase of my projects has a noticeable difference that is usually taken from feedback. If it is not written on the paper for me, I write it down myself. I find feedback the most important part of getting out of my own head and seeing it through someone else’s eyes.

My score: Meaningful

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Level of Challenge to Yourself

What each level looks like relative to my work:

The levels of challenging yourself are intense, medium, and mild. I found that I took on very mild to medium challenges at the beginning of the semester with my symbol project. However, by the time I reached my data map, I was taking on more Medium challenges, such as adding a slightly distracting background to my spread for the sake of the content and design. I really wanted to make this work for the sake of the topic of homelessness and worked with the challenge it presented. I also took on the challenge of creating each of my symbols for the cognitive map and challenge myself to try and make the details as flawless as possible.

My score: Medium

How I would improve that score: Push myself to do something I had not faith in being able to do

Contribution to Climate

What each level looks like relative to my work:

The levels for contribution are Warm, Room Temp, and Cold. I believe that from the beginning to the end of the semester, I was Warm. Now, I can say that I am friends with both Aaron and Danah and we have a connection outside of the classroom. Even though I may not be as close to the others in the classroom, we acknowledge eachother when seen outside of the classroom.

My score: Warm

Use of Practice Time

What each level looks like relative to my work:

The levels for use of practice time are Consistent, Even, and Sporadic.  Again, as the social aspect of my life became overwhelming, it began to affect my work, including practice time. This is especially true of my cognitive map. But until that point, I would say that my practice time was very consistent. I made great progress during work days in class.

My score: Even

How I would improve that score: Not getting distracted by my devices or emails in class and really focusing my brain

The change within me:

I believe that I was improving up until the last week of the semester. My process was coming along and I was creating more visually appealing work. Still, I need to work on my emotional maturity and then I think I can achieve a higher level of design.

Target & current expert hours: Completed 150 hours this semester. Add to previous 300 hours. 

Expert Experiences: Designing for Topperettes, looking at “Having Second Thoughts”, attending and helping set up student Portfolio Review, Artist Talk for “The Beginning is an Omen for The Whole”, introduction to arts and design class

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My Letter Grade: B+

Symbol Methodology

After choosing to use a Topperette (St. Edward’s Dance Team member) as my symbol, I began to write a list of words that I thought of when a Topperette came to mind. I tried to keep these words as distinct as possible and avoided as many synonyms/repeating ideas as I could.

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After I had done this, I chose the top 9 words. These words either stood out to me the most or I felt best described my symbol with the process of elimination.

Once I picked these top 9, I first put them in no particular order into the 9 circles. After doing this, I moved a few words around based on how I thought I could best represent them visually. For example, I originally put “skill” as a traced symbol but after thinking about it, I felt it would prove to be difficult and that it served a better purpose in the abstract symbol group. Therefore, I switched “skill” and “student”.

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My Pinterest board inspired me to look for clear and clean symbols that took a very minimalistic approach. I took a liking to negative space and image balance. As I thought more about my first grouping of symbols, I thought more about how they would look as icons and in different settings (print, screen, etc.).

I began looking for images to represent my traced symbols on Google and saved them in a separate Pinterest board in order to collect them.

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Creating my own stylized symbols was a much more difficult process seeing as I only briefly sketched ideas and then proceeded to re-create them digitally without anything to trace over. This rushing and skipping over the process definitely hurt me, in my opinion. I am not a strong drawer so I thought that I could skip that part of the process and be fine, but those symbols ended up being my ugliest and with the most negative feedback from the class. They were unrealistic, unshapely and overly busy.

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I learned from my mistakes in that round of critiques and began to flesh out as many of my ideas on paper as I could for my abstract group of symbols. I drew as many as I could think of and proceeded to pick three. After picking these three, I began to recreate them on the screen.

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That round of critiques showed me I needed to work on my negative space, stroke weight, and massaging my curves but my process had improved my work.

I struggled while creating my hybrid symbols because some of my favorite symbols, such as the dancer, were so elaborate and hard to merge. I chose to attempt my dancer anyways, elaborate my “skill” symbol and break up my “student” symbol while keeping in mind my last critiques.

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I chose my three favorites based on the following criteria:

1. minimalistic

2. good use of negative space

3. balance

4. harmony of curves

5. craft

Overall, I believe my symbols to be on the average side of the student spectrum. I don’t find my symbols completely eye-catching but I have seen much improvement from when I first began the project. They meet my criteria set personally and by the project.

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