This week was a very busy week because of AP tests, preparing for my presentation and meeting with Sutter (the student who is starting the Sunflower seed company) at lunch. I am using a presentation app called Prezi for my final WISE presentation and I am really excited about it! Prezi is really cool because its one huge page and you use animation to zoom into different parts with different information. Its a little hard to explain using words but I will post a link to it once it’s all finished and you can see it live at my presentation! I also set the colors to the same color scheme as my blog and I plan to make my handout the same color scheme as well.
I worked on logos for Simple Seeds (the Sunflower seed company) this week. I met with Sutter at lunch on Tuesday and talked about them, but he had a family friend who designed him another logo and we both agreed that one was better. The only problem with the logo that the family friend made is that it is a really small file so when we blow it up to the size we need it, it gets pixelated. Sutter emailed the guy who made it asking if he could make a non blurry version and the guy sent him another blurry version of the logo so, I used Illustrator to recreate the logo as a vector (a shape that, no matter how large you blow it up, it will never get pixilated). I had never really used the pen tool (the Illustrator tool that you use to create complicated vectors like this one) to create any big project before so it was a little challenging at first. However, after 20 minutes or so I got a rhythm down and the rest went pretty smoothly. I laid out the logo with the company name and am meeting with Sutter at lunch on Friday to order stickers with the logo on it. He is going to use these stickers to stick onto plain packages as a label.
Here is a picture of the logos that I originally came up with:
Here is a picture of the logo that the family friend came up with:
Here is a picture of my recreation of the logo laid out with the company name:
I also helped Sutter register the domain name simpleseeds.org and set up a website on squarespace. I’m going to start working on the website hopefully next week.
This week at Veneer I helped create layouts for websites pages for The Food Business School and a kid’s clothing company called Sprout. For each page that she wanted me to work on, Paige wrote on piece of paper and then sent me the photoshop files and had me make the changes.
Here is an example of one of the pages that Paige wrote on:
And here is the edited version that I sent back to her:
For the Sprout website I had more creative freedom because Paige needed some of the graphics created in addition to making the edits to update the page. Here is a Sprout website page:
This is one of the graphics I created:
Over the past few months, I have definitely worked in a positive direction towards my three main goals (improving my social skills in a professional setting, getting better at design and experiencing work in a real design firm). However, I do not think that these goals can ever been fully perfected. There will always be room to become more sociable, better at design and gain more experience working in the field.
From the beginning of the semester, I knew my tendency towards being shy would be a challenge at my third space. In the beginning, I often felt uncomfortable asking questions or taking the initiative to let Paige know that I had finished the task she had given me or ask if there was anything else she wanted me to work on. As the semester progressed and as I got to know the people in the office a little better, I became more comfortable asking photoshop questions, asking for clarification on a task or asking if anyone wanted me to help with anything. Although I already knew that I was proficient in using Photoshop and Illustrator, I became more confident in using these tools over the past few months because I have been working with them almost every day. I have also become more confident in talking about my designs, communicating how I had created them and why I created them the way I did through working on the t-shirt design, the writing lab logo, the Wishers and Dreamers website and the Simple Seeds branding project. Moving forward I want to continue to improve my communication skills about my work. I know that RISD (the college I am going to next year) really stresses the importance of producing alumni that have strong skills in communicating about their artwork and next year, as a Freshman, I will take a writing class that is focused on describing and explaining artwork.
My last day at Veneer will be at the end of May, but I will continue to work on the Simple Seeds project and maybe Elijah’s rap album branding project over the summer. Because of my WISE experience this semester I am even more excited to attend design school and follow a career in graphic or interactive design. I also hope to be able to start my own small design firm just like Veneer one day!
A WISE Design Experience 