Out of the plethora of projects I’ve been assigned, I’ve been making progress on my portfolio campaign. Right now I have a finalized logo (yay!) but then I have to make about ten other components. I’m working on my posters right now. I’m by no means finished but, I figured I’d share my progress.
The completed portfolio show logo!
So the portfolio logo is for our college portfolio show. The gist is, the design students create portfolio show campaign and the school uses the winner’s design.
I wanted my logo to be funky and modern. I like the movement of the words and the fun font. If I had to quickly write up a design statement it would be this: When designing a logo for the portfolio show, I wanted to create something that showcased our graduates. The movement of “portfolio” suggests the playfulness and fresh new perspectives that STC students bring to their projects.
This iteration of my poster is the closest to my original sketch, but honestly, it’s not my fav This is far from done, but I like the emphasis on the logo. So far, this is my fav iteration
I’m far from finished, I still have 10 other pieces to design. Wish this girl some luck!
When you start mixed media animation, there are two ways to go about it. There’s a longer way, and a shorter way.
The more arduous way entails taking a video frame by frame, printing it out, adding the mixed media aspect, scanning it back in, and then lining up each frame in post. It’s very lengthy, but it’s more customizable than the shorter way.
The colored frames for the long mixed media animation pro
The easier way, is to take a video, import it in Photoshop as video frames to layers, make your edits in photoshop, and export, then arrange it in post.
I did both and have some videos and thoughts below!
The long process pros and cons
Pros
It was easier to customize the animations with crayons, markers, colored pencils, etc
More freedom
Cons
harder to line up scanned in images
took a long time to line up said scanned images (very frustrating)
The short process pros and cons
Pros
saved time
was easier to export (create frames, line up in post, etc)
Cons
not as much creative freedom
dependent on Photoshop brushes/photoshop manipulation for mixed media effect
Today in my Production Lab class, we got to engrave tree shaped leatherette ornaments. It was a bit scary, but I think that’s because I didn’t want to mess with the engraver. I made up my designs below in Adobe Illustrator.
The front (v1)The front (v2)The back design
I ended up going with the second front design.
The frontThe back
My takeaways
When printing on this type of leather, bold letters show up better
If I would do this again, I would thicken the stroke of “Ethel Cain”
I had to do this on the fly and engrave the back twice because I could barely see the engraving the first time
It was a lot easier to use the engraver than I thought! Now I’m not as hesitant to use it.
My teacher introduced a new project. Yay! We have to make self promo videos. Honestly, videos aren’t my strongest skill, but this is a great opportunity to learn. I wasn’t too sure what I wanted to do for my video or how to make it stand out.
The more I thought about it, I wanted to do something fun and artsy. Something collage/craft like. So I started looking up “multi media animation tutorials”. There are so many cool ways to add to your videos! (Find a cool example here) It seems like there are two ways to go about multi media animation: using plugins/editing effects or the more lengthy process. The plug ins are not free by any means, so I think I’ll experiment with the more time consuming process. The idea is to take a video you’ve shot, bring it into software and save it frame by frame, print your frames out, and then bring out the markers and start drawing, etc. Most people seem to use Adobe software, but I’ve seen others use Canva and Capcut.
So after getting some inspiration, I got to work. I combed through my email, phone, and my mom’s facebook account to find clips of myself. I brought the clips into Premiere Pro and edited them. It took me a minute, but I started to get the hang of it again. I kept my editing simple. I made a lil montage. I think I’ll try mixed media animation soon!
I’ll be the first to admit, I wish I could do all of my projects to 210% of my ability. But with multiple school projects, working twenty hours a week, and trying to adult, it gets to be a lot sometimes. Because of my busy school and work life, sometimes my projects aren’t to the caliber that I try to uphold. So with some extra time this week, I wanted to revise some past projects.
Victim number one, I mean project number one, was my packaging design from last semester. I love the idea of it, but it just felt a little flat to me. The back seemed too plain.
The original packaging design
I made some minor adjustments, by increasing the size of the tagline above the rainbow, and keeping the rectangle motif. I think that helped it feel a bit more streamlined and professional feeling.
slightly tweaked packaging designnew logo type w/tweaked packaging design
I wanted to play around with the logo design as well. It just felt a bit rushed. In the future, I’ll take my revised versions to my teacher to get some feedback. The new logo design is growing on me. What do you think?
Hopefully I’ll post some more revised projects. Until then!
After the exhausting saga of calling my local legislators, I wanted to draft up a quick library flyer design. I’m not looking to print them en mass from another site, so I want to print them on a 11 x 8.5″ sheet of paper.
The Process
I opened up InDesign and started with a 11 x 8.5” size file. I snapped guides to divide it into four even sections.
I looked at my original poster design. I wanted to take the elements of the big poster and condense it into a small flyer.
After looking at the previous poster, I decided I wanted: a headline, short summary, and a qr code with resources.
The Final Flyer Design
Side by Side Comparison
The Flyer The Original Poster
I can’t decide if I need the black outline or not. It might make the flyers easier to cut (or at least, that was the idea).
How do you design flyers? I’m off to finish some homework. Ciao!
I think everyone on the planet has a linkedin profile, myself included. However, I have not done much with it besides create an account. With some extra time during my first week of school, I wanted to try to beef up my profile.
What I did
Added work experience and skills
I included soft skills and more technical ones
Started watching Learning Linkedin (on linkedin learning)
Change my profile and banner picture
Eventually, I need to update my headshot
Added my college details (degree type, AAS, awards, etc)
Connected with classmates/previous classmates to expand my network
I’ll admit, I definitely need to learn more about how to manage my LinkedIn profile. But I have a great start and hopefully will have more to add in the next months before graduation!
How do you clean up your LinkedIn profile? Any tips or tricks?
I’ve been wanting to make an informative social media post about contacting reps for my library awareness campaign. So, the only way I could give a lot of helpful information was to do it myself.
I found my legislators and called the first one. There was only one number listed, so I called and got an intern. I was expecting a robot to direct me to my legislator’s phone (can you tell I’ve never contacted my reps before?!). I explained to the intern that I wanted to contact my legislator about library funding. I was given the option to either let the intern leave a message or to give my name and number so my legislator could call me back. I went with the latter. I didn’t get a call back from that legislator that day. (I plan to follow up with an email or call again if I don’t get a response in a few days)
I went on to call my next rep, but I called his personal phone. It went to voicemail, and I started reading off my script, but I got cut off after two minutes. I’d suggest keeping your messages concise and/or giving a summary with a request for a callback. My second rep called me a few hours later and left me a voicemail the same day. In his voicemail, he mentioned that he would try to restore some funding, but that cuts would have to be made and might make other people unhappy. I suggest maybe having some compromises in your back pocket (ex: I understand budget cuts need to be made. I suggest cutting the four million expenditure for private school vouchers to restore the SD library budget.)
For my third rep, I ended up emailing him. I found the email along with his phone number. I went back and edited my phone script before sending my email. I got a response later that night.
The Social Media Plan
I wanted to share my experience and tips on contacting my legislators on Instagram and Facebook. I used a Canva template. It’s a lot of information to share! I tried keeping my post simple and then linked a detailed experience in my linktree. I really hope this helps people contact their reps!
Have you ever contacted your local rep? Let me know below. Until next time!
Well team, figuring out how to find your legislators has been a hassle. It’s what I’m working on currently for my library awareness social media campaign. Right now I’m in the midst of finding out how to contact legislators about library funding. I’ll update yall on that later.
Right now, I try to post every other day on my Instagram and Facebook accounts. I primarily repost SD Library Association updates, resources, and legislature updates.
I usually make Instagram posts using Canva templates. Ideally, I’d like to hand craft each post in Adobe programs, but I don’t have that time with school and work.
A recent postThe second post image
I’ve also started hanging up flyers in my spare time. I don’t have as many hung up around town, but I’m trying when I have time.
One of my posters I hung up
In the meantime, I’ll be starting up school and going to work. I’ll keep you updated!
I’m alive I swear! I’ve been busy with work and catching up on adulting. The current library campaign has also been taking up a lot of my energy. (sdlibraryadvocates on Insta and FB if you wanna take a look!)
I’ve been trying to create posts highlighting library resources and spreading awareness of the proposed budget cuts. I also had to make Instagram and Facebook accounts. That was the easy part, figuring out how to connect them was more difficult. I printed off 30 posters at my local library and have yet to hang them around town. I’ll get to that on my days off, this Wednesday and Thursday.
An Instagram post I designed in Canva
In other news, I’ve been preparing for school and buying books. Hopefully, I can keep the momentum going in the effort to save the library! I was able to talk to the president of the SD Library Association and find out that there will be more resources coming.
