I have learned a lot about myself this semester.  I have learned that although many times I have no idea what I am doing, the more I focus on doing things and the less I focus on deadlines the easier what I am doing becomes.  What I mean to say is that I have learned that the most important part in the design process is to enjoy it.  Enjoy the process because you will never work on the same project twice.  I have also discovered that often times re-examining my creative process leads to new discoveries.  It is hard and you will fight yourself the whole way, but getting yourself outside of your comfort zone is what leads to new discoveries.

My perspective of graphic design has also slightly changed.  In the past, I was always taught that you had to follow a strict process.  Draw your thumbnails, do some roughs, proof things, make changes, etc. etc.  However, this semester I found that some of my greatest ideas came from when I was just fooling around.  Just goofing off and playing around have led to discoveries I didn’t think I could achieve without being serious.  To me, this was the most important thing I could have taken away, creativity shouldn’t be work.

Looking in on my own creative process, I think that I achieve some sort of moment of performance with the research portion.  It is at this point that I am able to see other people’s ideas and take on a problem, and ask myself questions about them.  For example, can I do this better?  Why was this so successful, or why did it fail?  Once I figure out the answers to these questions, I can begin exploring my own ideas.

Hopefully, once I explore these ideas further I can achieve a moment of disruptive wonder.  Hopefully it occurs all the time, but realistically it doesn’t.  When it doesn’t I have to be aware that it isn’t coming and know when to walk away for a bit.  I think that is also important for any young designer, to know when you need to take a break or else you will end up pigeon holing themselves.

In this chapter we discussed the ideas of Disruptive Wonder.  This was actually a relativley new concept to me, but I am very interested in seeing how I can utilize it in my work.  We watched a TED talk video on designer Kelli Anderson where she discussed some ideas of her disruptive wonder.  From creating a reocrd player out of paper to making a fake New York Times that resembles the original identically.  Her ideas are outside fo the box but they have a practical purpose to.  This is I think where many people get lost.  Designing things just because is nice, but graphic designers should also have a purpose.  Sometimes the purpose is just to make something look good and other times it is so much more.

Exploration A was a project where we had to explore different connected connections and create a project based on the connections.  We were asked to think outside the box to try and make connections and explore the project further than what we would typically do.

I found a connection between all of ,my words to zombie or monster and I felt like I hit the jackpot.  I love horror and Halloween is one of my favorite holidays.  I thought this would be a good opportunity to do something either promoting Halloween or somehow making it the main subject.  Since I live in a city and we only get like 5 Trick or Treaters I year, I thought an even better idea would be to promote Halloween safety.

I felt I was very successful in bringing awareness to Halloween safety.  I also felt the idea of having an almost Haloween watch with houses that participate gives people an option to know who is watching out for kids.  I do however, feel I could have pushed the idea a little further.  I think some of the more out of the box ideas weren’t explored enough.

Looking back I like the idea and concept of my exploration.  However, although I was happy with the end result I feel that it could have been pushed further.

SO we are still working on or Exploration A project and I got to say, it has been a relatively eye opening experience.  Once the mind map was created, there were so many relations just 3 everyday words that you don’t even think of.  Like how curtains relate to pizza…it’s nuts.  Keeley and Justin have been great and I think that we work quite well together especially to bounce ideas off.  I was able to come up with my project idea relatively quickly because I love Halloween and see the same thing every year.  Anyway, it will be good to develop this into a finished piece and hope that my classmates enjoy what I have done.

So before I started coming to SCAD, I had a very different approach to completing projects and jobs for clients.  I would do a little research, complete some thumbnails, do a rough, proof to client, make changes, and complete the job.  It was almost robotic, just me going through the motions to get the job done.  It’s not that I didn’t enjoy the job and didn’t have fun with the experience, it’s just that I had a way of doing things that developed my Senior year in college and further developed working for companies that wanted quick turn around.  I had go-to fonts, a place to get stock images, and a way I did things.  It was who I was and I was stubborn to change.

Now, I have had to take a step back and really examine the way I carry myself through the process.  Get out of my comfort zone. “Think wrong,” would be the accurate description.  It’s been hard.  You always find yourself slowly drifting back to the way you do things.  It’s not wrong, it just pigeon holes you into a category.  As a designer, I want to be good at what I do, and sometimes that means being awful at trying something completely out of the ordinary.  Taking a different route to work, going somewhere new for lunch, buying a book that you would never buy.  Things I have been trying to do to make me better.  It hasn’t been easy but it has to be done.

Will I ever completely stop doing certain things like using Avenir or Pantone 2995.  Probably not…it’s who I am and it’s my own personal touch on certain things.  However, will I maybe  use other techniques to create a certain project…sure, why not.

For this assignment, we were each assigned 3 words.  Using these words, we were asked to make a list of all the words that came to mind with these words.  These words could be synonyms, antonyms, even words that related to other words on the list.  We were then asked to send our lists to 2 other classmates and have them add to the list.  This assignment in general was an interesting one.  It helped us to learn to think about everything and not hesitate in writing down the words.  This is a good technique for designers to just get things out of their head and onto paper.  It also teaches designers not to restrict themselves to the first ideas and to keep pushing.  Finally, it helps train the designers to work as a team by bouncing ideas off of one another.  While at first glance this assignment may seem rather easy, it was just the opposite.  It wasn’t that it was difficult coming up with words.  It was a challenge to come up with words that weren’t already used, or to know when to stop.  All in all, I enjoy working with other to bounce ideas off of, and hope to work with my classmates again.