What’s the most important thing I learned about design?
- Create rules and stick with them. Everything you do has to have a rhyme or reason to it. Your design may be beautiful but if you have different parts in one design that do not work together, what is that really communicating? Your design needs to have a consistent feel and it needs to communicate.
What’s the most important thing I learned about typography?
- There is so much to know about typography. Before taking this course, I looked at type like any other human being — just a body of text. After getting video critiques back, it opened my eyes that you have to pay attention to double spacing, to leading, to kerning, to justification, and especially to spell check… I feel as if there is still so much to learn and to practice with this in order to fully perfect it but I pay attention to these little details way more than I ever used to.
What’s the most important thing I learned about myself?
- I should not be intimidated by other people and their designs. I should be proud of who I am as a designer and I need confidence in that if I am ever going to be successful. It is really easy to compare yourself to others and feel intimidated by working with other people. Don’t do that to yourself because it will get you no where. Instead look at others people’s work as how you can learn from it, not as what you are doing wrong. I learned that I might actually have potential as a designer some day. I started believing in myself because of this course.
Now that you’ve been through it, what three pieces of advice would you give yourself if you were just starting to take this course for the first time?
- Don’t procrastinate. You will regret it especially at 12 AM, 1 AM, 2 AM, 3AM….4:30 AM. Save yourself the trouble, start early, and prioritize this class above classes that will not matter after this semester. Your sleep cycle will thank you for it and so will your portfolio.
- Just because you have a deadline on an assignment does not mean you should stop working on it. You will learn from your mistakes if you keep creating and you will improve. With this being said, go to office hours and ask for help. It will only make you a better designer.
- Surround yourself constantly with creativity. If you really are going to procrastinate, do it correctly. Spend hours on designspiration, dieline, and various type blogs. It might spark an idea in your head.
