Logos, Logos & More Logos!

I felt as though I had a pretty productive week this week. I continued and finished organizing all of my past projects and plan on setting up a time to meet with Professor Marchese to decide what projects I should make changes to.

I was able to add some projects that I had done outside of school to my mind map, including logos, websites and posters for clients. I am still unsure which ones I want to include on my resume and in my portfolio so that will be a decision I will have to make in the near future.

In the very little free time that I did have this week, I was able to get some reading in of Burn Your Portfolio. I only got to parts 1-5 of section 1 but hope to finish section 1 in the coming week. Something that definitely intimidates me about going into the design world is being overly sensitive to critiques on my work. I am a very emotional person and find that I often get attached to my work very quickly. Part 4 of section 1 really stressed the importance of being able to take constructive criticism. Author Michael Janda said, "If you interpret design critique as a character critique, you are setting yourself up in a defensive position that will impede your ability to improve your design skills and adapt to different creative environments." I think it will be good to let this sink in in my last few weeks of college so when I do go out into the real world I can take critiques that are meant to only put me in a better direction as a good thing rather than a bad thing.

This week, I also really focused on getting out as many different logo options as I could. I struggled with choosing a solid direction to go with and knowing whether I should go with some sort of watermark or symbol to represent myself, or more of messing with different ways to write my name.

I worked on different variations of KP, KEP, Kaylee Powers, Kaylee Elizabeth, and Kaylee P but did not fall in love with any of them. I did another page playing around with symbols of things that I love: the sun, waves, palm trees, lollipops, candy, lipstick...nothing was working. (This stuff is harder than it sounds when you have to do it about yourself!)

Then I thought about how pretty and unique I think keys can be...they're dainty, different and ironically start with a "K." I was thought I could incorporate the term "key to success" into my branding somehow, and Professor Marchese also suggested how it could relate to "finding the right fit" for me and my future. After this I was super excited about all of the options I had and immediately started doodling different styles of keys and designed how the end of the key could look like a "K."

In class, we looked at everyone's logos and got feedback from Professor Marchese as well as our classmates. We were lucky enough to have an alumni IDD student, Caroline Pettinato come in and speak to us about her first job at ESPN. She gave us tips and advice as well as answered our questions about portfolio review.

My plan for this week is to vectorize some of my key sketches and play with a bunch of different type treatments for my name.

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There's No Turning Back!

I am truly floored at the fact that Senior Portfolio, something that always seemed semesters away, is already here. I'm nervous, and overwhelmed, but also excited and ready to take on the biggest challenge that I'm going to be faced with in my college career.

This week, I ordered the books, Burn Your Portfolio: Stuff They Don't Teach You in Design School, But Should as well as How to Devise Innovative Digital Products that People Want. I just received Burn Your Portfolio last night and have yet to receive How to Devise Innovative Digital Products so I unfortunately did not get to any reading this week. However, I did print and read all of the logo tutorials that Professor Marchese added to blackboard. I was able to learn how to design and layout my own mindmap to begin to organize all of most important things for my resume. The 10 Tips for Designing the Perfect Logo article was also super interesting and informative. I also liked seeing examples of the evolution of logos that have already been created.

I created a rough draft of my own mind map and included all of my experiences, awards and honors, as well as my hobbies, skills and involvement in organizations as well as at Quinnipiac. I also started a few very rough sketches for some logo ideas to brand myself but did not feel confident in any of my ideas.

In class, we discussed some of the positives and negatives of being in the millennial generation. We're known as multitasking, tech-savvy, optimistic and efficient individuals, while we can also be stereotyped as entitled, lazy, attention seekers with a need for validation. We are more part-time workers, feel we should set our own work hours and don't expect to stay at the same job for more than three years. We also spoke about reasons why someone may not want to hire us: If we aren't able to be found on Google, have too many of those Budweiser cup pictures on Facebook and apply for fifteen different positions from the same company.  We talked about how the little Generation Z'ers below us are already digital natives and make their own success and how important things like communication skills and interpersonal abilities are to employers.

After this discussion we each typed up everything we wanted to include in our resumes and printed them for Professor Marchese to go over.

Throughout the week, I was able to organize a lot of my work from freshman year through now into folders by each class, project and file type. I also deleted multiple saves of many projects that I had and made small important changes like making sure all of the pictures were embedded.  

I started cleaning up my Facebook page as well as improving my Linkedin profile. I created an Instagram account for design called Designs by Kaylee and am looking forward to start putting some of my designs out there :)

This week, I plan to work on another set of better logos, update my mind map and resume, read more of Burn Your Portfolio and research brand design, business cards and design resumes.

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