Creating For Me

I use art as expression and a stress reliever. I create because I see an idea in my head and need to see it on paper or on a computer screen in order to get it out of my head. When I was an education major, every art teacher I observed and worked with gave me the same advice. They told me to never stop creating. They said that it is so easy to stop doing art for you when you have a full time job. You have other priorities and obligations when you get home and art falls by the wayside. Even though I am no longer pursuing a career in education, the advice still applies. Whatever job I find, I still need to find time in my life for my art. I need to create without rules and guidelines. I need to create for me and me alone in order to keep my passion alive and my mind sane. 

Making My Own Luck

A friend of mine graduated college with a Bachelor’s Degree in Accounting before he decided it wasn’t what he wanted to do with his life. He was interested in websites and how they worked behind the scenes. He taught himself HTML and CSS using free online tutorials. Nine months later, he saw an ad for a web development internship online. One of the requirements for the application was a web portfolio, which he didn’t have. Instead of giving up, he contacted the company via Facebook and asked if there was anyway he could apply anyway. He told them he was willing to work, unpaid, in order to learn and gain experience. He just wanted to be a part of the web design world. Admiring his enthusiasm and self-motivation, they gave him an interview, which led to a three-month internship, which eventually led to a full time position. He could have accepted the fact that he did not qualify to apply for the position and moved on. Instead, he chose to go after what he wanted. He made his own luck. This story is similar to others I’ve heard throughout this semester. Recent college graduates going after their dream job they feel they aren’t technically qualified for and succeeding. I want that to be me. I want to be able to say that I went after my dream. But, honestly, I don’t know if I have the necessary guts to make my own luck. I probably would have passed over that internship because I didn’t have the necessary components to apply. It scares me that I might pass by my dream job because I’m not bold enough to take risks when the opportunity arises. 

Resume

According to the authors of “No Plastic Sleeves”, “best practice is to keep your resume to one page”(206). Since I have had a lot of jobs in my life, this proved difficult for me. It was hard to narrow them down because none of them were shameful or ended on bad terms. I was never fired. I never quit. It was simply that my jobs had expiration dates. Each job shows a different part of my qualities and skills in the working world. I also have awards and activities from both universities. I don’t want my resume to look crowded but I also don’t want to leave out something that will give a potential employer a better sense of who I am. 

Page Layouts

 The pieces are chosen. My presentation book has arrived. Now comes the page layouts. The authors of “No Plastic Sleeves” suggest including “a series of images or thumbnails in order to showcase important aspects, close-up details, or even sketches of the work at various stages”(92). I started laying out my pages in inDesign. For my websites, I chose to show what the home page and interior pages look like. I also added smaller images to highlight certain parts of the site. I did the same for my eBooks. While planning out how the different pages were going to look, I tried to keep the composition of each pages as close to a grid as possible. 

Online Architecture

The authors of “No Plastic Sleeves” warn, “Determining how to name sections of your website and subsequent navigation will tell your target audience a lot about you right upfront” (171). I used an information architecture to plan out the navigation of my site. I knew I did not want a “portfolio” tab in my nav bar. In my opinion, my whole site is my portfolio. I also knew I wanted to categorize my work into digital design, game design and fine art. Then, I wanted to use a secondary nav bar to categorize further. I chose to allow the viewer to choose one of the three main categories from the home page and then include a hover drop down menu on all of the interior pages for the secondary nav. Choosing to organize my site like this shows viewers the diversity of my work. 

What’s Good Enough?

It’s time to build my portfolio. The question is: What work do I put in it? I have eight years worth of work to sift through. What pieces are good enough? What pieces belong? It is easy enough to get rid of the bad pieces. The ones I am embarrassed to show my friends. But I have a good number of pieces I am proud of as well. I know I want to have a good balance to my portfolio. My web portfolio should display work from digital design, game design and fine art. It should show all parts of me and what I am capable of. It should have an generally even amount of work from all of the sub-categories within the main three, such as print, ui/ux, motion, 3D, eBook, painting, printmaking, game art, etc. My print portfolio, however, should focus on design and the sub-categories within it. The authors of the book, No Plastic Sleeves, advise taking “out any pieces that appear to be redundant, or offer essentially the same idea, demonstration, or method. If they simply repeat something that is already well presented, you should consider removing them” (7). By choosing pieces from the different subcategories, I will have more of a diverse portfolio.

Social Media

As a culture, we are constantly connected to each other. That has its advantages and drawbacks. Lori Deschene explains positive aspects of social media in Manage Your Day-To-Day: Build Your Routine, Find Your Focus & Sharpen Your Creative Mind. She says, “You can leverage it to make new contacts or expand your business. You can use it to showcase your expertise, share what you’ve learned, or learn from people you admire and respect. You can use it to stay informed, entertained and connected”(133). I decided to use social media as a tool to showcase work outside of my web portfolio. I have a lot of photography that I would have liked to include on my website. However, I felt it was more appropriate to create a flickr account to display my photographs. I also have videos of my animations and walkthroughs of my eBooks that I showcase on youTube. I also signed up for LinkedIn as a way to keep it touch with my professional relationships. All three of these social media sites are linked to my online portfolio. I have also signed up for pinterest this semester. I have been avoiding pinterest because it was my understanding that it was primarily hair & makeup tips, fashion advice and recipes. However, pinterest has been a great source of inspiration. Its many design boards have quality examples of brand boards and information architectures. They have product designs and posters, letterheads and business cards. Pinterest is (partially) a community of designers and design lovers, sharing good design with one another. (Though, it is mostly hair, makeup, fashion and food). 

To Do Lists

As the end of my final semester at Quinnipiac approaches, the adage,  “so much to do, so little time”, has never been truer! I have to finish my web and print portfolios, write papers, and prepare presentations. I have gotten very little sleep over the past couple weeks and even pulled a couple all-nighters. I keep reminding myself that it will all be worth it. All of my hard work will be evident when I have portfolios I can be proud of. I have taken some advice from the book, Manage Your Day-To-Day: Build Your Routine, Find Your Focus & Sharpen Your Creative Mind, on how to make it through these last weeks. In the book, Mark McGuinness recommends limiting your daily to-do lists. He suggests writing the list on a post-it note. He says, “if you can’t fit everything on a list that size, how will you do it all in one day?”(28) Granted, whether or not you can accomplish a post-it note worth of tasks in a day depends on the size of the task. Still, he makes a good point. At the beginning of last week, I made a list of everything I needed to accomplish that week. I, then, made note of what day those tasks needed to be done by, and chose the best days to do them. I proceeded to make seven smaller lists, one for each day of the week. Each day, I looked at to corresponding to-do list and accomplished everything on that list. For me, it was a less daunting way to approach the week. I found myself only focusing on the daily tasks. I was able to pace myself and still be productive. I can proudly say that I was able to accomplish all of my goals for last week and plan to do the same thing this week.

Distractions

I have been staring at a blank blog for the past 30 minutes. In that time, I have flipped to two other websites and checked my email in another window. About 10 minutes out of the 30 were spent staring off into space, daydreaming. I have so much going on in my head and around me that it is hard to concentrate on the task at hand. Writing a post. This is how most of my work starts off. Once I have a solid idea and actually start working, I get in a zone and everything around me turns to white noise. It's the getting started and shutting off the distractions, that is tricky. Christian Jarrett, a psychologist, warns that having email, social media and other distractions open and readily available while you are trying to be productive, may not be the smartest idea. He says that even though we may tell ourselves that we are going to take a five minute break to check our email, the break usually takes a lot longer. Once you break from working, it is easier to stay on a break and get distracted by other things. Instead of ignoring distractions, he advises we get rid of them. He says, "we must strive to remove them entirely from our field of attention. Otherwise, we'll end up using half our mental energy just keeping ourselves from breaking our own rules" ( Manage Your Day-To-Day, 83-84). I get distracted very easily and I am working on becoming more focused. Today, I worked without music or Netflix playing in the background and have found that I have been very productive!

My "Career"

I was asked today, like I am asked every time I meet someone lately, "What do you want to do with your life?" I feel like that is such a loaded question. I want to be a graphic designer. However, that could mean a lot of things. Graphic designers are very talented people. We can do many things. Using the skills that I have acquired at Quinnipiac, there are a lot of possibilities. On top of that, with technology changing rapidly, there are new possibilities emerging every day. Asking me to pinpoint, today, what career I am going to have for the rest of my life is nearly impossible for me to answer. The concept of "career", itself, is almost a thing of the past. People are no longer entering companies right out of college and staying there, in the same position, until retirement. According to Robert Safian in Maximize You Potential: Grow Your Expertise, Take Bold Risks & Build An Incredible Career, "The average time an American worker stay in his or her current job is 4.4 years"(46). He explains that when someone has a passion for what they do, they are constantly learning new skills. Especially in the design world, keeping up on new trends and technology is very important and leads to new opportunities. Personally, I like the idea of staying at one company until retirement. However, not in the same position. Who knows what opportunities there will be for designers in the future? All I know is that I plan to constantly learn and grow as a designer and go wherever my work takes me.

Brand Identity

 "Even if the brand identity is not published or visible, to have one, to work to create one, is vital for making a coherent book, It is the guiding light that shapes the 'flavor' of what one chooses to include in any portfolio"-Valan Evers, Photographer and Faculty, The Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale, as quoted in No Plastic Sleeves by Larry Volk.

The operative word there is "work". Creating a brand identity has been work. It's soul searching, in a way. Creating a brand identity for yourself is creating a logo, color scheme and word mark to represent who you are. Who you are as a person, as a designer, as a brand. After I had a logo that I felt was successful, I started working on a color scheme. I knew I wanted it to include black, white and grays, so my logo could work next to other color schemes if necessary. I chose teal as my accent color, not only because it is my favorite color, but because I feel like teal is bright, calm and happy at the same time, while also not making a big deal about itself. I think it can go unnoticed if it is not put with the right colors.
The next aspect I chose was my font. I wanted a sans serif that looked modern and classic at the same time. After looking at font after font, Century Gothic just seemed to fit. Looking at my brand board, I felt like something was missing. The colors were too solid. I needed a pattern. Something to give variety and style to my brand. I made a pattern out of my logo and applied my color scheme. It was just what I needed.

Mind Maps

This week, I assembled a mind map to organize the information my portfolio will hold. To do this, I used coggle.it, a free online mind map generator. My mind map includes a list of the projects I have done at Quinnipiac, as well as outside projects, categorized by media. I did this so I can reflect back at all of my work and effective choose the right ones to showcase in my portfolio. I have also included a list of my technical skills so employers will have a better sense of what programs and languages I am proficient in. Though my courses will not be listed in my portfolio, I included them in my mind map as part of the brainstorming process. My portfolio will include an About section which will contain my identity (business cards, letterhead, etc), my resume, a short bio, and contact information. I will also link to this blog.

A mind map is just another way to visually brainstorm, similar to sketching, storyboarding and drawing thumbnails. I am a visual learner, which means I understand information better when I can see it. Organizing the information in a colorful web, makes it easier for me to see and comprehend the portfolio process as a whole.