Professional Development

ROLE AND SKILLS :

I have never been in touch with this kind of job, but drawing is one of my hobbies and I like it because it is a way to express emotion or deliver a message in a different way than written or spoken. Some of the roles where I would like to work are:

Corporate identity designer:

A corporate identity designer must have the ability to create new types. Sketch and design new symbols. Bring together Type and symbols in a unique approach to represent products, organizations and branding new companies.

Skills: 

Excellent abilities with graphic design software, perform work that requires visual precision, able to apply listening skills to gain a thorough understanding of a project’s needs, natural artistic ability, communicative skills, business skills, time management, and organizational abilities.


Photo editing/ Photoshop artist:

They are responsible for license and research available content. Come up with new photoshoots and choose the best picture to tell a story.

Skills: Creativity, a well-trained eye for colour balance and lightening, attention to details, organization skills, abilities with graphic design software such as Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, etc.


Illustrator:
Their are meant to create images or/and drawings that are able to tell a story, deliver an idea or message. Their work can be used on packaging, advertisements, magazines, books, etc.


Skills:
An excellent eye for colour and balance is a must. Attention to details, excellent skills on photography, drawing, painting and sketching. Great skill on design software. Deadline-driven, self-motivated, focused, adaptable to changes and great written and communication skills

Packaging designer:
His role is to create packaging that take the eye of the consumer and make this one to feel identify with the product. Things to keep in mind are the ease with which the product can be accessed and the protection of the product.

Skills:
Attention to detail, awareness of trends, branding strategies, culture and connections between marketing and people. Deadline framing, communication skills. Typography and graphics knowledge. Ability to work within a constraint budget.

Advertising designer:
They work very closely to companies and clients to convey a message using photography, illustration and type. They produce campaigns for ads. To figure what works better for the costumer they must research trends and use different media as required, this could be print, web, etc.

Skills:
Strong communicative skills, visionary, innovative, marketing skills, media skills. Creativity is and storyteller is a must.

Graphic designer:
Using computer skills or drawings by hand they create visual concepts that inform, inspire, captivate consumers or communicate an idea. Their visual concepts are used in advertisement, brochures, magazines, etc.
Skills:
Broad knowledge about Adobe’s apps, familiarity with HTML. Aesthetic composition with an accurate use of colour palette, attention to details and strong communicative skills.

After all the research made, the career path that most drives my attention is the graphic designer because I like diversification and I would like to create visual concepts for any filed.

Graphic design is a form of art that help us to communicate ideas, experiences or emotions. When Gutenberg Press was invented in 1436 the phenomenon exploded because content could be mass produced.

Some of the key moments are in graphic design are:

  • “105 – Chinese government credited Ts’ai Lun with the invention of paper
  • 1276 – printing arrives to Europe
  • 1460 – 1460 Albercht Pfister becomes the first to add illustration to a printed book
  • 1760 – The Industrial Revolution begins and sets the stage for advances in graphic design production
  • 1796 – Aloys Senefelder work up the concept of lithography
  • 1816 – The first sans-serif font makes a subtle entrance
  • 1890 – The Art Nouveau movement begins
  • 1919 – Bauhaus school of design opens
  • 1957 Helvetica is developed by Max Miedinger, rapidly becoming a popular and standard typeface.
  • 1990 Adobe Photoshop is released revolutionizing the way graphic designers work “

(Eric Miller, November 13/2018 http://www.lifewire.com)

With this list of bullet point I wanted to show the transition of analog design to digital design

One historical Designer whom I appreciate his work is Erik Nitsche. In his almost 60 years of career, he works in any field from graphic design. Illustrator, book cover design, advertising, photographer, typography, etc. The use of simple and appealing design, brilliant colours and delicate typography became his icon. He figured to merge the Swiss style and the approach of Bauhaus style bringing up a very modern looking design.

Figure 1

SELF SKILLS AUDIT

The designer who I appreciate and I like his work is Aaron Draplin. He is an American graphic designer and entrepreneur based in Portland, Oregon. He has a very good time management skill, is versatile, huge knowledge about design apps, creative, communicative, able to create aesthetic composition and control on the colour palette. (Matt Williams 16.08.2016 https://www.format.com/magazine/features/design/aaron-draplin-design-logo-field-notes )
In the next two figures we can find some of Draplin work.

Figure 2

Figure 3

My strengths are that I’m able to create aesthetic compositions, I’m a creative person, communicative, and a good listener in order to understand and accomplish client requirements.

My weak points are that I don’t know nothing about creative apps/Adobe’s creative apps, only what I have learned during my journey on this course, time management, I would like to improve my drawing skills, improve my English vocabulary as I am a person who like to communicate a lot and I think about myself that I have the ability to create visual concepts with meaning but my English is very basic and sometimes I feel that I can’t fully express the intention of the artwork.

Personal Development plan and reflective journal

As my knowledge about creative apps are minimal i will allocate a week for Photoshop and a week for Illustrator.

  • Week 1: Photoshop development.
    Actions to take: read books, YouTube tutorials, skillshare classes, practicing every day

         Week 1 completed: To improve my skills on this field I was practicing at home playing around with the program and following some YouTube tutorials: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DPVHFb4nv4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRK0uhbH8vE ;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xgOWWfurpU.
I also followed this page https://www.photoshoptutorials.ws/
As a long term goal I will sign up for a course on skillshare.com
My learning were how to create aesthetic photo montages and edit images. I have learned the importance of the layer and how the order of them to get a good composition. My skills are still being very basics. Do more practice to get used to the program.

  • Week 2: Illustrator development.
    Action to take:YouTube tutorials, skillshare classes, books, practicing every day

        Week 2 completed: My practice time on Illustrator was a more detail one as for the second class we had to digitize our project.
the followed tutorials were: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2SNeH9v-Ug ; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VieZeQeqYJ4&t=854s ; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PrHjnBl-Dw&t=4s ; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93bP0-fZnZA.
I also practice some work form the book “Classroom in a book” the official training workbook from Adobe Systems.
My key learning are that I get used to the use of the pen tool, creating layers and how to organize them. I like the way how you can digitize your sketches by tracing the scanned piece. Is a program that I enjoy to work with more than Photoshop.



Due to the lack of time the long term goal will be to sing up for online courses.

  • Week 3: Develop a better time management skill.
    Action to take: Goal setting, prioritization, self motivation, focus, planing better my tasks

         Week 3 completed: The development of this stage was very helpful for me as helps me a lot in order to complete all the task,due to my overloaded program between the many hours of work and the course. To achieve this what firs I done was to set my goals for every week. To set my goals I prioritized what matter the most. After, I make a clear timetable for every goal and stick to it. These last weeks were very busy but I self-motivated myself with the reward of all the work.
From this point I have learned how prioritizing your short term and long term goals helps a lot in order to accomplish them. Also, by creating a fixed schedule and timetable compliance helps for a better organization of the work. 






  • Week 4: Improve my English vocabulary. 
    Action to take: listening audio-books/radio, read more books/magazines/newspapers.





         Week 4 completed: For this stage my decisions were to read every day on the bus on my way to work and back the newspapers. the newspapers that most I read was The Irish Times and Independent and Irish Mirror. I also started to listen the audio-book “Building a better vocabulary” by Kevin Flanigan. Talk-radio shows also became a point of interest.  
This helped me to develop a more fluent conversational skill and also helps me to develop the blog.  





  • Week 5: Discover how and where I could get clients or the best options in this industry. 
    Action to take: attending to events that are targeting this industry, get in touch with agencies and designer





        Week 5 completed: As action taken for this stage was to search online for jobs as Junior Designer and attend to a couple of agencies from Dublin. As first step on my career as designer I  don’t intend to be a freelancer because of  my lack of experience in this field. My intention is to start working in a company with a team to gain experience and start building knowledge.  Another idea to look for clients is to attend to an enterprise center.
At this stage I started to have a more clear idea about the path to follow after finishing the course. I will start working in a company/ agency and follow the normal course of the things, from  Junior Designer to Middle Level and then Senior Graphic Designer.





  • Week 6: Improve my drawing skills.
    Action to take: Sketching more often, YouTube tutorials, attend to summer drawing courses.





         Week 6 completed:  I started to work on a personal sketch book where I draw every day objects to improve my drawing skills. I also watched YouTube tutorials videos to understand the anatomy of the human body. Also watched videos about how to get the right proportions as is one of my weaknesses. To be more accurate with my drawing i will sign up for some drawing classes. 
After this I have started to be more confident with my sketches. As I’m a lover of the realistic drawings most of the time I was comparing myself with top artists but I have learned to don’t underestimate my work as everything has a start point. 





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