https://www.figma.com/proto/axmcf0Ne7dHcKkvWwQrnTm/dma217-project-1?node-id=2%3A26&scaling=scale-down&page-id=0%3A1&starting-point-node-id=2%3A26

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.

I learned how to make a design that will go onto a package and I learned how to print & fold that package to look professional. We used Adobe Illustrator to create our designs. Then, we used video instructions, tape, and scissors to turn our designs into milk cartons.

2. What was easy?

Creating the cup design was easy. By the time I did that, I had quite a bit of practice using the pen tool in Illustrator. Although it is not perfect, I did a good job of tracing over a coffee cup design and changing it up a bit. I liked my color choice and design. Although I could not print the design in color, the design still looks nice. Everything that was not the pattern or the cutting & folding part of this lab was easy.

3. What was challenging?

Making the pattern in Illustrator was very challenging. It took me multiple tries and actually took me a couple of hours to make. It looks okay, but it could look better. I followed the class videos to make the pattern but I still struggled to get it to look nice. It looks okay, but it does not blend the best with my cup design. Also, the cutting & folding part was kind of challenging. It did not take me nearly as much time as I suspected it would, but I would guess that everyone struggled with it at least a little bit. should also mention that printing was tough because my color printer was not working correctly. I replaced the ink in my printer, tried printing using different programs, and changed the file type of my design, but nothing was working. I became very frustrated and it took me a long time to print because of these issues, but at least I got to print something in the end.

4. How could your submission be improved?

I’m sure the folding could have went better, but it still looks nice. I also could have done a better job with my pattern design and tracing the coffee cup. I am still not too good with the pen tool, but it doesn’t look too bad. I guess I should have been more careful, but I got tired of retracing multiple times. Also, my submission would be much better if my printer would work correctly, but I had to use the black & white printer. I could not figure out the issue with my color printer. It took a lot of work to try to fix the issue, but I remain unsuccessful for now.

5. How could the professor improve the assignment for the next class?

While the project was kind of tough, I think Professor Dunkle did a nice job of helping students work through the project. He showed us how to create our designs step-by-step multiple times and showed us how to cut & fold the cartons properly. The Google Slides presentations definitely help and make finding steps much simpler than scanning through a whole class video on Zoom. I appreciate all the help that was provided with this project.

6. How might you apply your knowledge in future assignments or work scenarios?

Before this project, I did not know how to use Adobe Illustrator too well. I now have a much better understanding that will now give me an alternative to Photoshop and Gimp. I also always struggled to use the pen tool, but I now am much better at using it due to the practice I got with the tool. This will be very useful for future designs for the DMAAD Club and future DMA courses. Plus, these skills will be very useful in case I ever find myself designing a professional package if I decide to get into the world of graphic design. It was a very interesting and helpful project.

7. How did a specific reading or video inspire or help you?

The class videos that went over each step of the project were very helpful. I couldn’t have gotten this done without them and the Slides presentation. I did also look at multiple different Coffee Cup designs and abstract patterns for inspiration. These greatly helped influence my designs.

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: