Closing out my last semester at Auburn University, I am taking a class that has been looming over me since I declared the major: Style and Design. Having almost three months in the class under my belt, I can honestly say that it is not as intimidating as people had made it out to be. It is a lot of work; however, the skills I am gaining in the class have been immeasurable. This class teaches Adobe Creative Cloud, including Photoshop, InDesign, Lightroom, and Illustrator. In this blog post, I will describe what my favorite project has been thus far in the semester and what skills it has taught me.
My favorite project I have worked on so far is the Personal Branding Suite; this can be accessed within this post as well as under the “Portfolio” tab. We were assigned to cultivate a personal brand by creating a logo with variations, a color palette, typography, a business card, a resume, a cover letter, and an envelope. I used InDesign to create my branding suite.
The suite took me weeks to complete, so InDesign and I got to know each other very well. I believe my favorite skill that I acquired through this project is InDesign. I learned that it is very sensitive, and I need to be careful with my actions. The most minor of errors can throw off my entire project. Also, I need to be precise; otherwise, the outcome will differ from what I expected. For example, I originally created my logo
carelessly. I used many white circles to cover up parts of the elements and blend them into the white background. However, as I played around with the variation, I learned how difficult it was to change and move the entire logo around. In the end, I learned how to minimize the number of circles by connecting them all and creating a non-traditional shape. I was also able to group all the elements of the logo together so I could move and transform the logo more effortlessly.
Another great skill I learned is how all of the Adobe applications work together. For example, I found a design I wanted to use for my business card; however, it was created for Adobe Illustrator, not InDesign. I went forward with the design and figured that I could screenshot the finished project and place it into my InDesign project. When I was done designing it and ready to take my screenshot, I learned that I could save the Adobe Illustrator project in such a way that I could open the original in InDesign. This changed the game because if I needed to tweak anything, I could go in and make the changes easier than if I had taken a screenshot and could not play around with the .jpeg image.
Through just one project, I learned so much about Adobe and about how I am as a designer. I am excited to learn more through upcoming projects in this class!
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