Week 6: Design Practice Reflection and Summary

This past week I was asked to complete three different design assignments from the Design Assignment Bank. The three assignments I chose to do were Your story as a game, VHS #4life, and The “Vogue Challenge”. All three assignments had the following in common, editing photos, adding text to a picture and including yourself a photo of yourself. I once again found myself using Pixlr to create most, if not all, parts of each assignment. I do think learning about photography and design prior to completing these more intricate assignments is very useful. It allows you to expand on what you have learned and how it can be applied to what you create.

Design Assignments

The “Vogue Challenge”: Choose an image that is clear and has decent lighting. Add ‘Vogue’ to the top and create a caption or headline to go with your cover.
VHS #4life: Create a VHS tape for a movie that came out after 2005. Give it an 80s styled makeover.
Your story as a game: Create a game menu or cutscene from a story that you wrote. Include details that catches the audiences attention but doesn’t give too much away.

Personal Reflection

Through the creation process I learned how to be more flexible with what I design. I don’t like to step out of my comfort zone, when it comes to different texts or different styles. I ended up being more willing to try new things in my pieces, such as using new fonts, and using different filters. The hardest part for me was deciding on what fonts I should use. I didn’t want to choose a font that clashed with the overall theme of my designs. I had a hard time with picking what colors to make the font as I am not well versed in color theory. The easiest part of each assignment is envisioning how I want the final product to look like. When it came to creating what I envisioned in my head into a digital design I felt stressed. Being able to picture in my mind what I want something to turn out like but not being able to execute it exactly how I pictured it, drove me crazy. I do believe I am a creative person, I just need to understand how to utilize the tools around me in order to showcase my creativeness. The assignment I enjoyed the most was the VHS tape. I felt like it allowed for a lot of creative freedom even if there were certain criteria to be met.

Conclusion

I once again find myself enjoying what I created this past week. I like the style of this class and how you get to build on what you learn by applying it to each project. In almost every design, editing, typography, balance, depth etc are often in what you create and how you work them in can make or break your design. I am glad I get to be challenged with each new assignment I come across and I hope to see some progress in my skills as time goes on. I look forward to seeing what I will create in the future.