What I've Learned So Far

Q: What have you learned how to do since you started working on your senior project?
Honestly, what I've learned since starting is how to be more patient with design. Multiple sources I've read, especially the design books, have stressed the importance of drafting, re-drafting, and re-drafting the re-drafts. They basically told me that in order to find what truly works in a design, I need to design MULTIPLE times, which really tested my patience.

When I usually design, I would get an initial idea and simply run with it without any thought of other ways to rework it or improve it. So practicing this was really irritating at times, especially after getting (mostly negative constructive) feedback from Elissa, Jocelyn (assistant design editor), Mr. Strand, Mimi Orth, Paul Ender, Dan Austin, and even Cynthia Schroeder (the day she dropped by). It meant sacrificing lunches and staying after school until 5:30 to re-design 90% of the original spreads in Strand's room (whose air conditioning has been broken for the past TWO WEEKS and gets to be, like, 137 degrees inside with (what feels like) no oxygen... with flies.) In the end, it'll pay off, though :D

My senior project so far taught me to change my attitude towards conceptualizing designs by designing multiple times and then stepping back to see what works, and what doesn't. I've applied this with yearbook, which really benefited in the long run because it (hopefully) will pay off in a more visually impacting book. On another note, it has also taught me that I can't be lazy.


Q: Post evidence of this accomplishment. 

Note: I've laid out all the failed yearbook spreads I've designed in the past week. Sadly (but thankfully) none of these will make it into the book. 

Another Note: This is just 1/4 of the drafts. The rest is either currently inside the yearbook room, or I threw them out by accident. There are also all the drafts that DIDN'T make it to the computer (I always do preliminary sketches on whiteboards and random pieces of scratch paper).

Q: What research helped you to do this and how?

I got the most input about this strategy mainly from the book, Graphic Design Thinking: Beyond Brainstorming, by Ellen Lupton. The book is mainly about the preliminary stages of a design project, in which one of the steps needed is to draft and draft and draft. One part of the book really helped me because it had a case study called Texturactive Identity, which took an in-depth look at the creation of a logo for the fictional company Texturactive. The graphic designers that were assigned to tackle the project of creating a logo for the company mocked up at least 10 different logos, each completely different from each other. They all looked beautiful, and utilized the meaning of the company name well, but the wow factor was lacking for some compared to others. From there, they stepped back and examined what strategy(s) worked the best and created the final product from their consensus. 

I have now applied this strategy to yearbook as well; last week, the division pages for the book were mocked up and resulted in 9 different spreads. We hung up all 9 (including the 2 we designed at Yearbooks@theBeach in August) and stepped back, picked apart each one and looked for what worked and what didn't work. We came to a consensus on combining the looks of two different spreads together. Ultimately, we came out with a stronger design than if we had simply stuck with just one.