Statement of Intent
Being a first year student at OSU comes with many “firsts” – some challenging and others exhilarating. This “first” of creating my own website portfolio enabled the development of a personalized page to share all of my designs with the faculty. Starting with the About page granted me the opportunity to make a first impression by giving viewers a sneak peek of what makes me, me.
Ideation
To begin this process, I was able to research what exactly makes a “good” design. This topic is evidently hard to define and based majorly on opinion, but my research allowed me to narrow down the most important qualities. These included creativity, thoroughness, understandability, innovative materials, honesty, and usefulness (Assignment 1 Notes) . Using various organizations and foundations to explore ideas truly impacted how I now view design as a whole. In my opinion, the most important qualities include understandability and functionality, which is what I based my decisions on in the following exercise. The good versus bad design assignment (G:B Design) made me recognize which features I also wanted to prioritize and highlight in my portfolio, especially like hierarchy. Ultimately I came up with the examples below to express my thoughts on both good and bad design.
Iteration and Production
Initially, I thought of this assignment as a resume – direct and concise. Overthinking interfered, which led to hours of critiquing and changing the content. Of those thirty-four revisions, three are attached here OG About, About 2, About 3. My original organization included sections of background, career goals, job experience, references, and contact information. This shifted slightly as I continued to tweak wording within my background and career goal paragraphs. I was able to combine and remove information in order to make the page easier to read, yet simultaneously descriptive. Finally, I decided to incorporate the following sections: background, career goals, job experience, and contact information. I understand job experience may not be important to some, but personally, it has added to both my design and communications skills, therefore I felt as though it was necessary to add. This led into my concluding minor changes in wording and display, leaving me with my final product (AboutMe).
Reflection
Throughout this project, I have faced self-doubt on multiple occasions. The constant encouragement from Deb and Jennifer propelled my self-agency within my portfolio. Not only was I able to get a better understanding of how to use Carmen Canvas and the portfolio website, but also how to stand out by providing my own originality. I was able to accomplish creating my first post and page, which is something I would not have known how to do so beforehand. Learning these skills will allow me to continue to improve upon my page until the final review is done by the faculty. I look forward to being able to add numerous assignments, experiments, and projects within the page to truly present who I am as a designer.