Marcelo Urieta Bravo – Semester Reflection of Grades of GDES_1

My goal for expert hours has been 8 hours per week since the semester started. I am a Communication Major and Graphic Design Minor student who is heavily involved in extracurricular activities; I am currently serving as the Governor for the Texas-Oklahoma District of Circle K International (CKI). As Governor, I am responsible for overseeing the daily activities of about 400+ CKI members and 10 district officers. I also work for the Dean of Students at St. Edward’s University and for the Office of Student Life at the ACC South Austin Campus. With that being said, it is sometimes very difficult for me to fulfill my expert hours and meet my class’s expectations. However, after seeing that I was short on my expert hour goal after my mid-semester essay, I started making positive changes to my lifestyle, like prioritizing, in order to have a balance between my classes, extracurricular activities, jobs, and ultimately fulfill the expert hour goal that I set for myself. I was about 5 hours short of my goal after the mid-semester essay, where as now, I am 5 hours above my goal. This is partly due to the option that opened up at my ACC Student Life job where I got the opportunity to work with the marketing team as well as my own graphic design contributions to both Circle K International and other extracurricular activities.  I did not attend any of the expert hour opportunities offered outside of class due to schedule complications, but it is something that I look forward to taking advantage of in the future.

The first dimension that I will evaluate myself on is my social and emotional development both inside and outside of the GDES classroom. Looking back to the beginning of the semester, I’ve experienced so much growth in these two aspects. I feel like I am at the mature stage (in control) because I learned how to balance both stages. In all of my classes and activities, I have constantly expressed my feelings and ideas. When it came down to giving feedback to other classmates, I was very comfortable and I gave meaningful feedback.  I also looked forward to receiving feedback for my work because it helped me make it better. For example, when I had my first draft of my directions map, I was missing a lot of the necessary aspects for people to understand it and my fellow students and the professor helped me see that. I took their feedback and I added and changed information to make it more legible and easy to understand. Also, I still manage to get 8 hours of sleep, which helps me be energized to complete my daily tasks, attend class, do homework, and be actively participating in class, which also contributes to my maturing stage.

Secondly, I will evaluate the sophistication of my work. When I did my mid-semester essay, I rate the sophistication of my work as a medium (aware), because I was just starting this class and didn’t have enough skill to sophisticate my work. However, now that we are so close to the end, I feel like the sophistication of my work has increased to meet the “high” expectations. Although the initial drafts of my projects are nowhere near being sophisticated, I use feedback, the software taught in class, and my professor’s expertise to improve my work. I find this dimension to be the hardest of them to rate myself all because I am not necessarily sure what it means to produce “sophisticated” work, but based on the hierarchy, cohesion, legibility, and understandability of the three maps I designed for this class, I feel like this support the sophistication of my work. I am also very pleased with the way each map turned out. I do understand that there is so much more that can be done to improve the sophistication of my work and as I move on taking more graphic design course, I hope to have a better understanding of how to make my work better and continuing improving it.

Thirdly, just like I said on my mid-semester essay, I believe that my interpretation of use of feedback is meaningful. I am very detail oriented and I pay closely attention to every comment/suggestion that has been said about my work because I always want to make it better. For example, with my graphs spread, I was not confident with my first initial drafts because I felt like I needed to do more…but didn’t know what. When it came down to the critique, I was open for feedback and I was writing everything down on my notebook in order to make changes and improve my spread. Thanks to the feedback from my classmates and the professor, I was able to “sophisticate” my spread making it my best map in my opinion.

I strongly believe that the level of challenge to myself is intense. Since I had experience making symbols, I feel like I didn’t challenge myself enough when that assignment came about. But as we moved through the semester and we started doing the maps, something that I hadn’t done before, I felt the need to challenge myself in order to learn and produce great work. I am usually my toughest critic because I know that I am capable of doing great things; for example, when we did the decision-making map, I had no idea on what to do or how to even start. But I spent a lot of time coming up with the main idea and possible scenarios. I knew that this was something new to me and therefore I needed use this as a learning experience while challenging myself to learn different tools, like the live trace option. Also, for the info graphic, I had to do some outside of the classroom research in order to collect the data and necessary information to complete this map. It is important to note that during my mid-semester essay, I gave my level of challenge to myself a “medium,” but after successfully completing the maps assignment, I felt that my challenge level increased to intense because I needed to work on something that I had no prior knowledge.

When it comes to my contribution to the climate, I believe that it was at room temperature. As I reflect on this, I am a bit disappointed since I didn’t improve on this since my mid-semester essay. I do feel like I contribute positively to the classroom climate by participating in group and individual critics, but I still struggle with asking more questions and participating more in class. I was also absent three days since the mid-semester essay happened. However, even when I don’t attend class, I make sure to talk to my classmates to make sure that I am up to date with everything that needs to be done for the next class period so I can be prepared. I am hopeful that in future semesters, I will improve my attendance and also be actively participating in all my classes.

Lastly, for the use of practice time, I am consistent. After the mid-semester essay, I have been successfully dedicating 8 hours a week to this particular class so I can successfully achieve my expert hour goal. I know this is a low number, but I have many things on my plate and I am very busy. However, even when I am working, I manage to put in practice everything that I have been learning in my graphic design classes. My bosses and even my fellow club members come to me so I can help them design flyers, t-shirts, etc. In this GDES class, when it came down to major assignments or finalizing a project, I made sure to spend more time working and improving the project. I do struggle with having enough time in a day to get things done, but it has not been an issue for this class. I always have my assignments ready by the deadline. So far, I am ending the semester with 117/10,000 expert hours. I look forward to continuing my journey to become a graphic design expert.

To conclude, in almost every category of this evaluation I was able to improve from my mid-semester essay. Looking back and reflecting on my work, I feel like I was able to use the feedback provided from my classmates and new tools to sophisticate my work and be pleased with the way they turned-out.  I also feel like I’ve grown as a designer throughout this course and I am more confortable stepping our of my comfort zone. When someone is asked to grade themselves, I feel like they automatically go for the highest grade, in this case an A, however, I feel like I do deserve an A because I’ve worked extremely hard in this class and I’ve met the expectations, and in some cases, I even exceeded the expectations.  The six aspects that we were asked to evaluate ourselves on, truly symbolize everything that we were exposed throughout this class and I feel that each aspect helped be grow and understand how to improve my own work. Although this class has come to an end, I am looking forward to continuing with my expert hours so I can complete my goal of 10,000 hours in 26 years. I know that it takes a lot of work to be a good graphic designer, and I am willing to continue to work tirelessly to be a great graphic designer. I am proud of the work that I’ve done, so here are my final maps for this course:

Graphic Design I – Mapping Project (Cognitive Map)

For the Mapping Project (Cognitive Map) assignment, we were asked to create a flowchart that mapped a decision making. This basically was a project intended for all of us to use the skills learned in this class throughout the semester. The completed poster had to be printed in a 16×20 matte paper.

I decided to map the decision making process of “Should I Clean My Room?” because it is something that I struggle with the most and because I thought others would find it helpful. I had a clear idea from the very beginning; I did not have any trouble coming up with the different types of questions. However, what I did struggle with was the size of the project as well as incorporating symbols throughout the composition. I feel like I do have a lot of written and not so much of symbols. The main goal was to use as little text as possible, but I was too focused on making my map legible that I felt the need to include word for word on my questions and answers.

My design is good; I used colors that work well together and I also managed to keep a reasonable amount of space between each part of the design. However, like I mentioned before, adding more symbols and reducing the amount of text would of enhanced my overall design.

Graphic Design I – Mapping Project (Information Map)

This Mapping Project (Information Map) is one of my favorite assignments because we were able to do research and also use our creative minds to make the information collected appealing. For this assignment, we were asked to create an infographic using bar graphs, line graphs, and pie charts in order to showcase the data collected through our research. The project allowed us to be creative since it didn’t have many requirements and guidelines.

I created my infographic about Austin, Texas because the city has shown rapid growth within the years and I wanted to know more information about the population. This included pie graphs about demographic profiles and population by gender. It also included a bar graph with the most up to date information about the age structure in the city. Lastly, I also showed the population growth using a line graph.

For me personally, incorporating graphs and text into a design was challenging. I had to make sure that the text was placed effectively and that the graphs worked well with the text. I focused on the aspect about this being a professional and informative infographic and that helped me determined the colors that I used as well as the typefaces.

Graphic Design I – Mapping Project (Artifact Map)

For the Mapping Project (Artifact Map), we were asked to create a map. We were given ideas such as a map from school to work, home to school, and work to school. In class we went over the assignment and talked about the different maps that we could use as well as identifying the specific uses for other maps. This project has to be constructed using AdobeIllustrator.

I focused on a directional map because I wanted to share with other students some of my recommendations around St. Edward’s. I basically picked my favorite places around campus that were fairly close on a walking distance. I am aware that the majority of the students living on campus don’t own a car, so I wanted to help them out by providing easy to follow directions.

To make it easier for the students, I included the walking time using a radius method so they can know how long would it take them to get to a place. I felt like by doing so, I was able to take a lot of unnecessary information, such as individual time per location, which ultimately help make this map legible. If I could add something, I would definitely add any of the pedestrian lights for safety reasons.

Graphic Design I – Symbol Methodology

For the Symbol Methodology assignment, we were asked to create three symbols that represented who we are. We had to pick a topic that served as the umbrella for the project. After long deliberation and many different big ideas, I decided to focus on my personal interests. My personal interests that I picked were: traveling, shopping, photography, music, social media, biking, volunteering, reading and creativity. I represented each interest with particular object, such as luggage, shoe, camera, computer, bike, book, and abstract symbols.

Here are the original 9 symbols:

The luggage, the shoe and the camera were traced, the iPod, the computer, and the bike were stylized, and lastly, the last three symbols were abstract. When I created these 9 symbols, I focused on using the principles of design such as balance, unity and proportion. I wanted every symbol to have similar qualities so it would be easy to hybridized.

Here are some of the hybridizations that I made with the original 9 symbols:

Again, when creating these hybridizations, I also focused on the principles of designed such as balance, unity and proportion. It was important to consider these principles because it helped me make connections between each symbol.

After the first hybridizations, I continue exploring options and creating more unique hybridizations. It was not a long process, but this assignment involved a lot of mixing of symbols.

Here are the final three symbols that I created from some of the original 9 symbols: