1. Consider the role of rhetoric, technology, and ethics in acts of making.

I am painfully aware of the troublesome ethics inherent in creating digital work. Free tools exist and can produce great work, but employers and clients look for skills in Adobe Creative Cloud or other paid platforms. On the other hand, the computer is to graphic design as the camera is to photography. Your skills and knowledge are more important than having the latest and greatest tools. In the design fuego project, we designed pretty good looking websites that required no paid tools and very little preexisiting knowledge. We then used free tools to design logos, and finally worked up to the paid Adobe Suite products. Through this process, I learend how little the paid tools matter, they just give us more options as we expand our skills.

2. Leverage Design Principles.

The Non Designer's Design Book touts contrast, alignment, proximity, and repitition as the four main design principles, later adding information about color and type. I already had a rudamentary background in design, but learning this vocabularly immediately improved the design I've done for this class and beyond. I've learned to justify to myself why my designs are the way they are, which makes me very intentional about what I am designing. The "Good Design" project was the first where I noticed all of these elements clicking into place. The text is generally left aligned, the grey tones contrast both white and black text, and my main commentary is in close proximity to the example it is highlighting

3. Engage with others in a workshop environment.

Whenever I create something, I rely on on feedback from my friends and family to give me a new perspective on how to improve what I have done, and to tell me how to do it better. The workshop element of this class has been very helpful in that regard. My peers have been very supportive and give helpful feedback which I implement in my own work. I also try to give feeback using the verbiage we learned from the textbook when I give feeback. For instance, at our workshop for the good design assignment, my groupmates reccomended I make my frames bigger for each portion of the design I was highlighting, which both helped exagerate the feature, and created more space for text.

4. Practice revision within and across media forms.

Revision of my own work has always been a struggle for me. If I edit someone else's essay, I can see where the fat has to be cut. If I edit someone elses footage, I can tell which shots aren't neccesary. The 4 main design concepts we learned have helped me revise my design work, as once I think something is done I try to justify to myself how it uses each of those concepts. If I can't reasonably apply each concept, I know my design isn't as good as it can be, and I need to experiment more.

5. Learn to present your work.

I am much more comfortable with small group presentation than large group. I like having feedback as I am talking, seeing where people are most engaged and their reactions to what I'm saying. I have a harder time getting this feedback in a larger group, even if I pick out familiar faces to check in with, I can get a bit flustered. The UX research presentation was a happy medium, the group was big enough so it felt more like a presntation than a conversation, but small enough to gauge the overall reaction to what I was saying. I try to be vigilant about adding value in what I say verbally, not just reading off the slides, and felt successful in practice.

1. Consider the role of rhetoric, technology, and ethics in acts of making.

As I develop my skills in Adobe Suite, I have to confront the ethics involved in the persuit of that knowledge more and more. I was already familiar with Premiere pro, but in this section of the course I developed longer and more accessible documents than I had before. As I have discussed in the past, working in the Adobe Suite means learning overarching skills that can be used in any program, but also techniques that are specific to each platform and the suite at large. In my accesibilty guidelines PDF, I learned the process for guiding a screen reader through my document. That process can and should be done in other platforms, but I would need to learn a new set of skills to implement it. Acessibility is important for people of all abilities, and I will implement these skills as I move forward in my marketing and design career.

2. Leverage Design Principles.

Our 10 stage spread assignment was the best test I've had of my understanding of design principles. When designing a one page document, every element can be taken in at once. When moving to longer documents, more care has to be taken to make sure the elements are consistent across each page. This entails obvious techniques like standardizing font type and size, utilizing subheaders and page numbers, and maintaining even margins on every page. It also requires more subtle techniques which require varying each page to maintain interest and reflect the content inlcuded on the page while retianing a cohesive style. The magazine I created is a photo magazine, and I used the standard Futura font for every piece of text from page numbers to subtitles. In my article on an artist who utilizes layered scenes, I made sure to layer the photos more to add to the intruige of his style .

3. Engage with others in a workshop environment.

Workshopping with my group has been a pleasure this semester. I got great feedback on my 10 page spread when I wasn't sure what direction to embrace in my design. The central style I was attempting was centered around overlapping photo collages, but I hadn't included the photos yet. My group gave me the idea of a large photo which crosses the spread with smaller photos overlaid to grab focus and represent what different parts of the text were talking about. After implementing those changes, my design felt more cohesive and well planned. The workshops on that project also affirmed what was working. I use Futura as a crutch sometimes since it is plain and always looks great on a sparse white background, so I was unsure if it was right for the context. My group overall liked the use of that font, saying it had the right style for an art magazine. They also liked my vertically aligned text, which I saw as a risk that paid off. I also noticed how much I need peer feedback when I missed a class. I had just developed my a and b samples of my brand design logos and I was unsure of how I felt about them. I got great feedback in my research, but I also feel like the outcome would have been different if I had 3 more opinions.

4. Practice revision within and across media forms.

Our UX Design Branding project was a return to the revision skills I developed in our initial A/B/C logo testing research. In my first UX study, I exclusively made revisions directly tied to feedback from my participants. The branding project was for a company I was seriously considering launching 2 years ago, and I've developed my design skills since that first study. My particpants gave me very useful feedback which I implemented into my final designs, but I made sure to consider my knowledge of design and what the brand is supposed to represent. Instead of being a circut through which revision flows, I made myself a more active participant in the revision process. I also practiced revision in sticking with an idea after getting feedback against it. I was reminded in my 10 page layout that most magazines don't use full margins, but after playing around with shrinking those margins I decided to keep them, as I felt they acted like a frame for a photograph or a blank wall in a museum. Sometimes we make revisions and revert back to the original Idea!

5. Learn to present your work.

Presenting work I've created is always nerve wracking. I always wonder if peers and professors will judge what I have created harshly, and I get scared that I will lose sight of my presentation skills and start stumbling over words. In high school, these anxieties convinced me that I am bad at presentations. Over the past 3 years, I've discovered a joy in sharing what I've worked hard on. This became most obvious in presenting my UX branding project. I was partially limited by the space in which I presented, which didn't have a large screen to interact with, but the small group setting made me feel very at ease. .