What was easy? Thinking of which metaphor to use was easy. I tried to use one that was personal to me. I ended up using the “laughter is the best medicine” metaphor because I believe it to be true, as I do like to watch stuff that makes me laugh when I am sad or not feeling well. The pattern was also easy to make using Figma, I just had to adjust the designs a couple of times but there are multiple ways to easily create patterns.

What was challenging? Deciding how to get the message of “laughter is the best medicine” across was challenging. I struggled for a while to come up with creative ideas and I even restarted a few times in Photoshop completely. Also, understanding layer masking is also difficult since I have not used it too often in the past.

How could I improve the assignment for the next class? Although I am happy with my design, I think I could have combined “laughter” & “medicine” a bit better. Depending on how one looks at it, it may be difficult to tell which metaphor the art is supposed to resemble. Also, I noticed that I did not cut out the guy’s body or the smiley face pills the best, I could have taken my time a bit more so the quality would be better.

How might you apply your knowledge in future assignments or work scenarios?  I am happy each time I can use Photoshop for a project since I have gotten so much practice with it the past couple of years, so I will definitely continue to improve in all areas. Making patterns is something new I learned and I was surprised by how easily someone can create one, so I will definitely do that again in the future. Also, my use of symbols in Figma and the Noun Project websites will be valuable since I now know how to import simple symbols that are free to use and will save me a lot of work.

What was easy? Once I got my color schemes figured out, constructing the designs overall was pretty easy. I had a clear picture of what I wanted to create in my head and I am satisfied with the results. I did not struggle too much with the use of color, as in how I applied it into each piece in the art. Also, creating basic shapes and turning them into complex-looking ones got easier as I advanced through the project through the use of tutorials and playing around with Figma.

What was challenging? Creating a sense of depth using colors and determining which colors to use in each color scheme was most difficult. It took me a while to fully understand how to pick colors using the color wheel. I did not fully understand the color wheel at the start but my understanding has since improved. While I created the art fine, creating depth was harder. I mainly used layering and color gradients to do the trick. The pieces in the foreground are darker and less saturated while I played with lighter tints and more saturation for the background elements. I had to go back and make the foreground elements larger than the background elements.

How could I improve the assignment for the next class? My use of depth could probably be better, as it took me a while to fix and understand. I think my colors are nicely applied overall, but the outer space design and seascape designs could maybe be improved. Also, some of my shapes are pretty basic but I tried to not overthink it so I could spend more time working with color, which was more important in this assignment than the actual shapes used.

How might you apply your knowledge in future assignments or work scenarios? Although this project mainly dealt with color, I learned that gradients can make flat shapes look like 3D ones. For example, the planets in the Outer Space design started as flat circles, but became spheres once I applied a couple of radial gradients. This was extremely useful and I will definitely apply it to future designs. Plus, I see now how complementary color schemes make a design pop. This too can be useful, especially for designs that convey an important message.

How did a specific reading or video inspire or help you? Although I did not really use a separate reading, I must admit that I used previous class examples as inspiration. I looked through older blog posts plus older student examples that were provided in the directions document by the professor to gather ideas. This inspired my Seascape and Arid Desert designs the most. Also, looking back at the class videos greatly helped me remember how to create certain shapes and helped me better understand the color wheel.

2. Using InDesign was easy in my opinion. Although I have not used it before Project 1, it was not hard to use at all for this project. Once I went back and saw how to place each photo in a frame, the process was pretty repetitive. It was a nice learning process that could be a good alternative to many of the programs I have used previously for presentation-like projects. Also, changing the image size and playing around with adjustments was getting easier the more I progressed through the project. It just took some time to get used to.

3. Taking the pictures was kind of challenging. I took many of them with my phone camera, but the quality was not so good at first. I was unhappy with how most of the pictures have came out originally, so I retook almost all of them. When I did that, I tried other techniques to improve the quality. I turned the lights off in my room and used my desk light to create a soft light that greatly improved the quality of my images. I tried a different camera as well, but the quality was not great so I went back to using the phone camera. That took a long time to do and a lot of trial & error. Once I did that, it took a while for me to get used to understanding which photos would go in which portfolio. After reviewing parts of the class videos and the Project instructions, my confusion was greatly lowered and I had a better understanding of what to do. After all, files can get a bit messy when you need to have 3 separate files saved for 16 different images. After progressing through the project, however, I felt more confident and less confused.

4. To improve my project, I am sure I could have done more to improve the quality of my photos in Photoshop. A few of my photos, especially towards the end, were a bit lacking in terms of how many adjustments I have made to them because a few images I thought looked better without a ton of changes. Maybe I could have done a better job with the compression of the images, but I think that went okay. I did not want to lower the image quality too much, but I had to get some of the images to a smaller size so they would fit properly. I also could of possibly played around with the image size better when taking the photos so that they would not look so weird in the InDesign frames, but I tried my best. Furthermore, I could have taken the images better because some of them I had a hard time cropping due to some strange angles I took the photos at, hoping those angles would improve the quality of the images. They did, but in doing so, they were kind of harder to make look better when cropping them in Photoshop.

5. To improve the assignment next time, I would ask the professor to organize the instructions document a bit better because I found it a bit difficult to follow at times even when a lot of my confusion was cleared up in class. I just took me a while to understand which photos were going into which portfolio and to realize which sizes each photo would need to be for each portfolio. The instructions could have probably been simplified a bit more and organized a little better to clear up confusion. I think I did okay though the more I progressed through Project 1.

6. Since I now understand image sizing better, I could use my newly acquired knowledge to change the size of the images to enhance their quality for specific reasons. Also, I would definitely use InDesign again because it was not difficult to use and would work well for many art-related projects in present and future DMA classes (In DMA, there is quite a bit of art-related projects.) I now also have a better understanding of how to improve image quality, so of course I will use my knowledge in other courses because I use Photoshop a lot for all my DMA courses. Also, since I now better understand file organization, that will come in handy for sure.

7. Going back and watching a couple of the class videos from the past few weeks have helped me a lot in understanding what to do because I could follow the processes that Professor Dunkle was showing us on his screen. I also read a couple articles on image compression so I could better understand how to do that since some of my photos were kind of big. I think those helped improve my understanding of the project. I probably could have watched videos on how to make better adjustments in Photoshop, but I think I did good.

Here are a few before/after shots of my photos: