Type for Thought | Mao

Oh Graphics 217, where do I begin? It started with pure curiosity. Switching a from major such as pre-med to graphic design was a step I never imagined. Rather staying up memorizing dense lines of texts and diagrams of the sympathetic nervous system, I now design their very ligatures. Fellow pre-med majors I am soon to blame for all of your chronic headache pains. Yes, one wrong choice of typeface will make you scream gaga for a bottle of Advil. But have no fear, if its one thing I've learned from this course is when and where to use certain fonts. Though if its Papyrus, it might be never. Thinking back, it feels like yesterday when I acquainted myself with the 2000+ Adobe fonts. Type challenge anyone? I will really miss those.

Going back and reading some of my earlier posts, I realize what a process designing has been! Every project has required a lot of critical thinking from conceptualization to finish design. While at times I may have felt a little discouraged with this process, I can say with confidence how rewarding it is to look at a finished piece of work that you are proud of. I can also tell how much sketching, configuring, and brainstorming is put behind something that is very strongly designed. For example, logos! I bet Paul Rand came up with dozens of sketches before finalizing the ABC logo. Something that simple takes a lot of planning-- if not more since we live in such a visually stimulating society. The key is to be clever, as Professor Taylor would say. :) By far my favorite project has been magazine design. While there were a lot of nit-picky details to watch out for, I enjoyed the challenges of handling everyone of them. Whether left, right, or center-justified, text and the layout of text is just so fun to work with.

If anything, I have learned how to design according to deadlines. While this is something I am still working on, I have come to realize how important it is to meet proper deadlines. I can not even begin to count how many occasions I would have been S.O.L. if those lab printers decided to fail on me last minute. In the working world there will be no excuse for printer malfunctions especially last minute ones, only lack of preparation. With anything no matter pre-med or design, we must budget our time accordingly. Just as doctors sometimes only have seconds to save lives, as designers we too work under strenuous time constraints. I can be the best graphic designer in the world, but what difference does that make if I can't meet my client's deadline? With that said, I have definitely learned a whirl of lessons within these past couple months. Even after many all-nighters, I have thoroughly enjoyed this class and all of the projects (as well as mini-life lessons) that followed.