Reflection, The Second Time Around

I will not say disregard the two previous posts, but what I will say is that I am in no way shape or form happy, or proud of those two posts, but they exist, and that is that. This is not a make-up post per-say, but more of a reflection of my thinkings and findings today while in the senior critiques and afterwards while eating lunch in my apartment.
What a day today has been! Today has been a giant day of pure enlightenment for me as a designer. However,  I won't lie, I wish I had this revelation earlier in the semester, not at the very end, once all my studio classes are done and over and everything is accounted for and turned in. BUT! I am not letting that bog me down, instead I am using this as a starting platform to make myself soooooooo much better as an all-around graphic designer.

I met with Jamie last wednesday after our last day of class with her(in viscom1, that is) and I had a meeting about how my performance in her class was. I was nervous about what she was going to say because I knew that I had a lot of improvements that I could make. But I still wanted to meet with her nonetheless because I knew that I was going to hear valuable information that would surely help me grow as a designer. I met with her and, as I had imagined, she told me of areas that I needed to improve on, and the main area was my blogging. I knew she was going to say that from the beginning, but what i hadn't thought about was why we were blogging. And Jamie said that by me focusing on my blog more, it will help me grasp what I am trying to articulate when ever it comes to speaking about my own pieces and about other peoples work. I will have a much stronger vocabulary and preciseness to my thoughts vocally.  I never gave it time to really think about the importance of the blog.

From there I moved on with the week, focused on all the other projects that needed to get done by their deadlines. I didn't really give my meeting with Jamie much more thought other than what I gave it the rest of that night. Then it came to yesterday and the end of semester review thought process blogs were due and I was just now starting them. Stooooooooooopid me.  It was a horrific idea to do that. But I did it, and I haaaaaaaate those two blog posts, but they happened, and I don't think I will necessarily go back to redo them, tho I may, because they are just. that. bad. So I posted them and moved on.

I headed back to Design to sit in on senior critiques. One of the girls went up to present and after she was done, it was open to questions and comments. I had a question for her and I planned it out in my head and went to ask the question, and the question turned into a large jumbled mess of words that no one really understood, and all I could think was "damn." I tried my best but yet I still failed, and so for the rest of the crit I was just letting that really get to me and upset and annoy me. I had started to concoct a plan as to how I could make more of those little moments not happen any more, or at least not happen nearly as much as they do happen now-a-days.

I went home after the critiques and had an epiphany as to how this semester has and has not been good.

I have definitely had a good semester, I have learned a lot, but I could have pushed myself alot more than what I did. I do feel that this semester was successful, I created good projects, got high grades on my first two projects for Jamie, and overall did really well in both Type and CD+F. But the conceptual side of this semester I feel that I have been verry lack-luster.

Thinking conceptually for me has never been an easy task, and most definitely thinking conceptually in graphic design is a biig part of the entire package that is "Graphic Design", or at least good "Graphic Design". I did not actively pursue strengthening my conceptual side of thinking and that was definitely what I needed to do. I, for the most part, quickly jumped to the formal aspect of my assignments but did not give the conceptual aspect of the assignment almost any focus at all. This Christmas break I am going to read at least 1 article a day and then blog about it. This doesn't have to be a gigantic post, just a simple a post housing my thoughts about the article. I will blog one post a day every day for the entire break to work on my articulation of what I want to say. It will also broaden my horizon of design topics so I can have a more well-rounded education.

This has been a day full of realizations, too bad this came too late after the deadline for the post. But I still felt that this was necessary for me to get this written down so I could remember everything I was thinking(but i've already forgotten stuff from this afternoon, damn...)

Here's to me and my blog post a day!