What is Design?

Design works to create a presentation of a certain concept in an intentional and effective manner. This can include aesthetics but also goes deeper into the functionality and purpose of what’s being presented. Design is the creative and practical vision of whatever it is meant to portray, and it is embedded in practically every aspect of our day to day lives.

Design Safari

This assignment forced me to think about the purpose of how certain things look, such as the picture I took of the many red signs on the road or the ASPIRE banner on campus. I gained a lot of appreciation for the work and intentionality that goes into creating such designs.

Digital Bank Assignments

• Make a Travel Poster
  • For this assignment, I used Pixlr to photoshop a picture of myself into another picture I took (with a different background). This was by far the longest assignment, as the photoshop took a bit of time. After pasting myself in the other picture, I added a slight gradient to make the colors look more cohesive and just erased the gradient from the Moai’s head so that it was also a focus of the picture. Lastly, I added a title with a fun font and color, copy and pasting the text to make a shadow right below it so it could be seen more clearly.
• Make a Magazine Cover
  • My idea for this assignment was to make a magazine cover and then have the story be the featured work of that specific publishing. I made the poster using Canva, where I played around with fonts and their sizing. Furthermore, I added little tidbits you usually see on magazine covers, such as the “book your trip today!”
• Make an Event Poster
  • To make sure this poster didn’t resemble the magazine cover too much, I decided to go with a design that seemed more like a block party than an official printing. The stripes emerging from the middle of the poster compliment the colors of the center picture, and the little stars with text inside add a bit of fun.
• Make a Newspaper Article
  • Immediately with this prompt I thought to myself, “what if I made a story about a Moai awakening and his first words are knock knock jokes?” This was definitely the most fun of these assignments, as it had me giggling to myself on occasion as I was making it. I used the provided newspaper generator on canvas for this one.

My Takeaways

This unit has made me seek out the intentionality in everyday life. It truly is amazing just how much creativity we encounter in our day to day lives, and how much of it we fail to notice if we don’t look for it. Additionally, the digital bank assignments had me putting what I learned into practice, playing around with typography, colors, shapes and more. This unit has gotten me to think constantly about the purpose of the designs of everyday objects that I use, and these lessons will definitely stick with me as I continue down my creative journey.