What was easy?: The easy part of this project was creating the baseline grid and format for each of the pages.

What was challenging?: On the other hand, getting the text to look as nice as possible through positioning and not having hyphenation was a challenge, while also not having any orphans on each page. Learning to adjust and embed images in InDesign was also challenging for me because I did not understand the concept of framing at first, but I did eventually figure it out.

How could your submission be improved?: My submission could be improved possibly by having more variety in the text such as by using italics and possible underlines in some situations, though I am not sure how or where those would fit in. Other than that, I am not really sure how my submission could be improved.

How can the professor improve the assignment in the future?: One way to improve the assignment for the future could be by giving more details in general about the project and on what to put onto each page. For example, I was under the impression that the page sizes were set in stone and that they needed to be square. This caused me to be stuck in a bit of a block because I struggled to fit the 2-page image onto the squares. If I knew I could adjust the size of the pages prior to starting, I may have been able to plan my design around the pages a bit better.

How might you apply your knowledge in future assignments or work scenarios?:  Due to the fact that I learned a variety of skills from this project, I can incorporate these skills in future assignments and work scenarios. Firstly, being able to pick fonts that go well with one another allows me to have a greater range of design when creating artwork or posters. I can also use the practice of positioning textboxes and adjusting the paragraph hyphenation to make them look much more clean and professional.

What was easy?: The easy part of this project for me was choosing the city itself to base the designs off of. Creating the layout of the designs also came to me pretty quickly so I did not have much trouble with that either.

What was challenging?: On the other hand, I found it quite difficult to choose the four items that I wanted to use from the city of Florence. More specifically, though Florence is considered to be the birthplace of the renaissance and contains a large amount of culture, art, and famous people I found it quite difficult to choose based on the sheer variety and amount of options.

How could your submission be improved?: My submission could possibly be improved by trying to further balance the amount of letters on the design with the background and images themselves. Other than this, I am not really sure how I can improve my submission further when looking at it myself.

How can the professor improve the assignment in the future?: Honestly I am not sure how the assignment can be improved in the future as I found it to be a good and fun way to incorporate everything learned up until now onto designs.

What was easy?: For this project, I found that searching for the titles of movies was the easiest part. Creating a rough prototype also came easy to me.

What was challenging?: On the other hand, I found that I struggled to make finer adjustments to the two designs to really get it to look right. Another challenge for me was to stick to specific titles, whereas I found myself switching the words themselves as I found that some of the design ideas I envisioned did not turn out as well when actually created

How could your submission be improved?: Honestly, I am not sure how much further I could improve my submission. I have gone through several iterations of each of the words and have determined what I have to be as good as I can get with the designs. If there are any suggestions on what to improve, I would love to know as I am unfortunately unable to see any improvements I can make for myself but also understand that there probably are changes I can make that I just don’t see.

How can the professor improve the assignment in the future?: I am not too sure how to improve the assignment as I found that having the restrictions placed really helped me figure out the core of the designs and what to specifically implement.

How might you apply your knowledge in future assignments or work scenarios?: From this assignment, I can use the knowledge I have learned to create simplistic designs through the use of letters and gestalt principles. The assignment has also taught me how to be efficient with my designs through having to redo and readjust designs multiple times.

• What did you learn?: From this project, I learned the history of constructivist font and was able to apply this history and design into a poster.
• What was easy?: The easy part of this project for me personally was laying out and designing the poster.
• What was challenging?: On the other hand, I found it hard to start as I was interested in a variety of time periods for fonts. Furthermore, once I chose Constructivism as a time period I then had multiple fonts to choose from as a lot of the Constructivist fonts were well made. Lastly, I found it somewhat difficult to use Adobe InDesign for this project as I am somewhat inexperienced with the program as well as the fact that the program lacks some features prominent in Adobe Illustrator.
• How could your submission be improved?: My submission could have been improved by tweaking the Cyrillic Alphabet letters so that they fit better within their margins. I could have also probably leaned for a more constructivist look, but I was not sure how to exactly do that.
• How can the professor improve the assignment in the future?: One way for the assignment to be improved is to allow for more graphics within the project. Specifically in my case, I found it somewhat difficult to create my poster with a Constructivist feel as most art pieces within the Constructivist era had some sort of image symbolizing something along with the font such as a clenched fist or a single watching eye.
• How might you apply your knowledge in future assignments or work scenarios?: Participating in this project has allowed me to grasp the skills needed to apply the knowledge I learned into future assignments through the main use of design. For one, I will be able to better design posters that I make and have better knowledge of font placement within posters. I have also learned to better implement contrast and size within my designs as these uses of space and color are highly prominent in Constructivist art.
• How did a specific reading, video or example inspire or help you?: Some examples of Constructivist art that help inspired some of the designs within my poster includes but are not limited to works by Alexander Rodchenko and El Lissitzky.

What was easy?: I found that making the pattern for the background was easy for me. I also found that the beginning processes of editing the photos were not very difficult to do.

What was challenging?: The things I found challenging around this project include sticking to one metaphor and trying to re-find the mask tool in the new updated photoshop UI. With the metaphor, I originally went with “Rollercoaster of Emotion”, but ended up not liking the resulting designs that I made. I then went through “Curtain of the Night” and “It’s Raining Men” with the same results. The metaphor I did end up sticking with was a “Sea of Paperwork”.

How could your submission be improved?: I think my submission could have had a better blurred background and have more sea related assets in the image itself as pointed out in class.

How could I improve the assignment for the next class?: Honestly I am not sure how you could improve the assignment for next class. Maybe allow more creative freedom with the patterns such as not limiting them to symbols?

How might you apply your knowledge in future assignments or work scenarios?: Of course, since editing images and creating patterns are a big part of Digital Design I am able to apply the processes that I learned doing this project into future assignments. With pattern making, I am able to apply spacing, size, and rotation to patterns to make them look interesting. Furthermore I have learned how to apply patterns into imagery as a background.

What was easy?: I found that creating the rough draft for the designs was the easy part.

What was challenging?: On the other hand, I found that incorporating color in a way that looks nice in each of the designs was a difficult task due to the scenery that I was making.

How could your submission be improved?: I think my submission could use more gradients, but I was unsure how to implement this properly without making it look like the design was overdoing it with the gradients.

How could I improve the assignment for the next class?: I think a good way to improve the assignment for the next class is to allow the student to pick from a list of landscapes so that they are not limited to the four initially given. This way there would be more variety in the assignment and the student could work towards their strengths in some landscapes compared to others.

How might you apply your knowledge in future assignments or work scenarios?: Since color is an important aspect to design, I will be able to make more informed choices on the colors that I use in future projects that revolve around design. The usage of both color theory along with gestalt principles will be able to elevate my designs to a higher level.

Link to Project 2: https://www.figma.com/file/7IuDCLft3AYhyy9pX5dCqW/DMA214-Project-2?node-id=0%3A1

What was easy?: Personally I found creating the baseline of the project to be easy. To clarify, I found structuring the shapes to be the easiest part.

What was challenging?: On the other hand, fine tuning these shapes and creating a focal point for almost every frame was the most challenging for me. Furthermore, I initially struggled with cutting out the foam core due to my inexperience with the blades. Though I went through this experience for a short time, the cutting machine in the other room did make my life easier.

How could your submission be improved?: My submission could probably be improved through a different story as the one I used (Baa Baa Black Sheep) made it some what difficult to come up with designs that matched the words.

How could I improve the assignment for the next class?: One way to improve the assignment is to possibly make printing the assignment onto foam core optional. This is only because the action of doing this does not teach the main lesson of applying Gestalt Principles but instead is only extra work for the assignment’s overall physical look.

How might you apply your knowledge in future assignments or work scenarios?: The knowledge of learning Gestalt Principles will help greatly in future assignments and work scenarios by allowing me to make better choices in terms of design. To be more specific, I do make posters for a club that I am in which I do design from scratch, so using these Gestalt Principles will help these posters stand out more than they already have.

Link to project: https://www.figma.com/file/b08G4jkl9Y3RqguN24dENE/DMA214-Project-1?node-id=0%3A1

Personally, I enjoy this type of typography due to its thick vertical lines paired with thinner horizontal lines. Furthermore on some letters such as the “y” and the “w”, the strokes are thicker on the left side of the letter compared to the right. This text could work well for a digitally written article or on a website, but the issue I can see is that it is a thicker font meaning it would take up more space and cost more on physical mediums. I could also see readability being an issue overtime due to the thicker and thinner strokes on some of the letters.