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Class 1 – Mastery

Mastery inspired me to fall in love with learning again. To appreciate the process of growing instead of looking forward to a final goal. I learned techniques for keeping grit and ambition. About having passion and focus on the things I wanted to learn. Also I learned to take pride in practice and be diligent in repetition.

Class 2 – Defining Clients Needs

Growth came in the form of iteration and patience during the defining client needs month. We learned how to how to do initial research and logo sketching. This was a great month for exploring and brainstorming. We learned techniques like mind-mapping to organize our thoughts. My greatest accomplishment was the multiple styles I used in creating the initial logo sketches.

Class 3 – Brand Development

The brand development course gave many techniques to help with personal and professional development. We learned about mood boards, a clever way to pitch design concepts for branding projects. Another technique we learned is to take a logo from a sketch phase to a digital piece of artwork. My biggest accomplishment was to stylize multiple mood boards with completely different feelings.

Class 4 – Effective Copywriting

In effective copywriting, we learned to write with a purpose. We learned how to speak on behalf of the company entity and how to do proper research to gear the writing towards a target audience. Some techniques that we learned were developing personas, taglines, and advertising campaigns. My personal achievement in this class was my detailed attention in building the customer profiles.

Class 5 – Design Research

Design research taught me how to do primary and secondary research. It showed me the difference from learning facts through first hand experiences in comparison to absorbing information secondhand from someone else’s research. Techniques that helped toward personal growth were place branding and interviews. The highlight of my personal work were the photos that I used to showcase Englewood, CO.

Class 6 – Organizational Structure

Organizational structures had foundations in animation and motion graphics. Movement is a huge skill to learn for a designer who has been working in a flat atmosphere for so long and when the world is moving to a digital space. Some of the techniques that we learned were motion posters, cinemagraphs, and video editing. My biggest course accomplishment was a PSA that I shot and edited for COVID anxiety.

Class 7 – Design Strategy and Motivation

Design strategy was a deep dive into more research. We looked at how to examine direct and indirect competitors. We researched consumer behaviors, habits and needs. All of these concepts were used to put together design and client briefs. My main accomplishment was learning how to find a market value in a saturated commercial market using competitor knowledge.

Class 8 – Design Integration

Design integration stated with voice and tone. We expanded on our knowledge about copywriting and brand development to define identity through the personality of the word. We refined and added research to the client briefs to design a full on brand book. This was the highlight of my Integration class. I spent a lot of time iterating on the correct ways to use the brand assets and organize.

Class 9 – Multiplatform Delivery

Multiplatform delivery was a real look at the professional practice. We went through how an advertising campaign or brand exercise would need assets of all shapes and sizes to communicate the design message. We learned how to do professional mockups and how to take a logo concept to final lockups with clear space. My biggest achievement was the packaging mockup that I did for the sushi restaurant.

Class 10 – Measuring Design Effectiveness

Class 10 was all surrounding surveying and gaining professional feedback of the effectiveness of our designs. This was tough because we really put ourselves out there asking for real critiques from strangers and the target audience. Some of the techniques we used for our thesis process were surveying, and displaying our findings in an infographic. My greatest accomplishment in this month of class was opening myself up for 30+ responses and critiques about my final design work.

Innovative thinking and how to prove it:

One of the most valuable things that came out of research for my thesis was the ways in which you can prove and explain innovative thinking. The cycle for innovation consists of four processes that strive to find a balance between desirability, feasibility, and viability. Through a combination of design thinking, computational thinking, maker culture, and business comes design innovation (Codomo, 2019). The process starts with proof of value, which is when you are defining the problem. Next comes from proof of concept, the exploration stage, when a wide arrange of solutions can come about. Third comes proof of market, which is when you ensure that there is a target audience and a viable amount of sustainable growth to be had.

Wix Design Layout

When I started the thesis project I had some misconceptions of the WIX website editor however after spending time in iteration process I learned a lot about how it could be used to build a very unique and stylized portfolio for design work. One tutorial found on Youtube showed how to make different layers in Sketch and import them into WIX to create a parallax scrolling background page. In addition to this technique I learned yet another website building tool alongside Squarespace, WordPress, and Webflow. Each builder is unique to itself and has its pros and cons. After working on my thesis in WIX I feel that it is intuitive and provides enough easy customization that uncommon sites can be built.

Portfolio

Portfolios are a great way to show process and progress as a designer. A portfolio is the most valuable way a designer can show curation and organization in their work and showcase skillsets and research that goes into creative thinking. A portfolio should be a place where a designer feels free to express all of their talents to make a compelling argument for hiring said designer.

Connecting and Synthesizing

Infographics are a great way for designers to showcase skills for organizing information in a clear and communicative way. They are powerful tools to steer awareness for social issues, for marketers to drive traffic to websites and for educators to explain complex issues (Sheikh, 2020). Infographics can be used to summarize long reports or user testing initiatives. Designers can help break the information into bite sized pieces of research so it is easier digested by a large and less specialized audiences. In order for these graphics to be usable the designer needs to create them with a few specific things in mind. They need to know their audience, set the right goals, and choose the right chart and display types (Durcervic, 2018). Knowing your audience, goals and charts can be as simple as knowing that internal executives might not have a lot of time to take a deep dive into the research that other teams create so using pie charts and number graphics can be easily scanned and digested in a short period of time. The goals may be to show quarterly earnings for a business or results of user polling. The synthesis between too perspectives on infographics are that there are many different use cases for these images and if they are used with the right audience and goals in mind they can be powerfull tools to drive traffic, create awareness, and simplify complex issues.

Problem Solving

One problem that came up this month was how to show quanitifiable data and qualitative feedback in the same graphic about the brand effectiveness. One solution was in the first draft of the infograhpic, which was to make bar graphs that came in from the side of the overall layout. However, for the final, the bar graphs fit better at the top, so a reader can scan through the quanitfied info before jumping into the qualitative feedback. This was a better approach because the first draft splits the information up too much which means it is harded to scan.

Innovative Thinking

The style of my design matches the brand guidelines with color, imagery and typography. There was a plan to have an interactive aspect to the infographic that would’ve added another innovative aspect to the project. The plan was to have more information hidden and then when the reader’s clicked on the titles there would be a progressive reveal of details. Unfortunately, because of the quick time constraint that was not added for this month. Also, hiding information is less scalable and a less passive experience than when all information is presented upfront.

Acquiring competencies

1. Hard Values – Conceptual/Occupational – Hard values are real numbers you can show customers how design adds value to their product, like bringing more people to the website.
2. Soft Values – Conceptual/Occupational – Soft values are harder to show to your customers, they are like brand lifestyle and image.
3. Cross-Discipline Designer – Occupational, Academic/Technical – Designers that are well rounded and interested in human behavior.
4. Infographic – Occupational/Technical – Graphics that can explain complex information in a concise and efficient way.
5. Survey – Occupation/Technical – Questionnaire based on a specific topic.
6. Open Ended Question – Academic/Technical – Learning the “why” during research.
7. Data Visualization – Occupational/Technical – A combination of charts and graphs in interesting ways to display information.
8. Informative Design – Occupational/Technical – Designers that specifically focus on data organization and information architecture.
9. Editorial Infographics – Conceptual/ Occupational – Magazine, social media, new out let graphics to grab attention and gain awareness.

Link To Audio Podcast Spot:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/kxnrgnwjdnhe6bn/Crawley_Jeremy_PodcastSpot.mp3?dl=0

Connecting/Synthesizing/Transforming –

Establishing a brand voice can be a good way to make marketing efforts across multiple platforms very consistent. Tone and voice showcase that your message is selling your product, no matter what channel it is seen on (Heald, 2018). A way to show brand voice to your client is to write a sample. Teams can whiteboard these ideas and narrow down examples until members feel like that have a brand voice direction that their company should embody. Felicia Sullivan also encourages lots of white boarding and brainstorming among creatives to come up with brand voice but she also encourages teams to reevaluate their customer profile. Knowing the ins and outs about the audience lets design teams tailor their voice and tone (Sullivan 2019). So lesson learned, brainstorm, rework, and refine. Video critiques of static vision boards early on in the month helped me refine the look and message of the company and refine. Regardless of brainstorming with others or reworking things on your own, a design needs countless renditions before the work is meaningful and purposeful.

Problem Solving –

I needed to show my intended look and feel of the BoxPark Sushi branding in a concise and easy to understand vision board but all the content I wanted to show wouldn’t fit on a simple 1920 x 1080 landscape artboard. I chose to make a few small tweaks to the design file to be able to make the design board a scrollable prototype in Sketch cloud. This makes the vision board a progress reveal of information, revealing a concise amount of information at a time. One other solution I could’ve mocked up would have been a static landscape board but the amount of information needed presenting would have been a bit crowded and small by the time all elements were visible.

Innovative Thinking –

My work on the dynamic vision board has elements of professionals in the field but it needed some movement and layout refinements. The animated elements could have some adjusted curves to give a more energetic impression and more research done about creative ways to layout elements would have overall lead to a stronger animation. I think that typically pros in the industry use motion along with music to showcase a brand feel because they are much more emotionally captivating then static visuals alone. So I think the initiative to animate my dynamic vision board to music was a good start but it would need many more hours of refinement to be a professional presentation.

Acquiring Competencies –

1. Brand Voice (Conceptual, Academic, Occupational) – Define human characteristics of the company. Helps emotionally connect clients with their target audiences.
2. Brand Tone (Conceptual, Academic, Occupational) – Tone can change depending on marketing campaign and political/current event atmosphere.
3. Archetypes (Conceptual, Academic, Occupational) – Behavioral patterns based on motivations. These are ways to filter common personality types and mix that information in customer profiles.
4. Moodboard (Technical, Academic, Occupational) – Taking photos, gathering styles, collecting images and exploring type/color. This is a one pager to showcase initial design ideas for clients.
5. San Serif Font Psychology (Conceptual, Academic, Occupational) – Less decorative and very legible font families. They are straightforward and produce a no nonsense attitude.
6. Design Elements Effecting Mood (Conceptual, Technical, Academic, Occupational) – Anticipating how color and shape will effect the mood of a design will go a long way showcasing ideas. Just by adding lots of breathing room in a design you can convey a sense of openness.
7. Sound and visuals (Technical, Occupational) – Picking the right sounds and music are just as important as picking strong visuals.
8. Effective Advertising Strategy (Conceptual, Academic, Occupational) – Consumer and Product based strategies. These strategies are successful if they can change the the customers known behaviors.
9. Marketing Tactics (Conceptual, Academic, Occupational) – Technology and trend driven, marketing techniques are there to execute on business objectives.

References –

Heald, E. (2018). 5 Steps to find your brand voice. Retrieved from https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2018/04/find-brand-voice/

Sullivan, F. (2019). Let’s talk about brand personality, voice, and tone. Retrieved from https://medium.com/s/how-to-build-a-brand/lets-talk-about-brand-personality-voice-and-tone-28276a48d5c1

Reflection –

Developing brand tone and voice along with visuals is really the first look at how the research can start being visualized and personal. Developing directive words was a good way to start breaking down the personality of BoxPark Sushi. The feedback from Dr. Baldowski was helpful in refining my message and consolidating my ideas. The static vision board was a good way to take the brand tone and all the research that was done and add some visual elements. Every decision like color choices, came down to the brand benefits and features. The dynamic board was a great way to add motion and sound to the early stages of brand development. The final project, the design brief, was a over-arching way to lay out the early design elements and get all parties working on the project on the same page.

Connecting/Synthesizing/Transforming

Targeting messaging can be a strong guide to making visual decisions for a designer. Through research, a brand can develop a narrative that can be used to create a tribe that customers can meet affiliation needs among others (Felton, 2012). Studies show that story telling in advertising can add positive association, elicit more favorable emotional responses, and encourage customers to use word-of-mouth communication to spread the value of a product (Kang, Hong & Hubbard, 2020). Along with story, advertising agencies need to find what consumer needs are being met by the product. Self-actualization is the highest need that can be met through Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, and messaging should cater to this need if possible (Felton, 2012). Simplifying the message can be difficult. You cannot be all things to all people (Argo, 2020). Using a USP (Unique Selling Proposition) can be a good way for researchers, marketers, and designers to synthesize research into a focused onliness statement that can be communicated through brand messaging.  Often advertisements will use Consumer-oriented advertising strategies to appeal to customers’ needs and Product-oriented strategies to position themselves in the marketplace. Story, specific message and advertising strategies are similar concepts and when used together can open up new avenues to reach an audience. Synthesizing this information leads one to think that these subvert marketing strategies conducted by large corporate companies are good examples of how much power good advertising can wield in such a subconscious way. However, this type of calculated messaging delivered combined with a focused targeted market segment can lend itself to growing a younger business like the fictious BoxPark Sushi. The research advised that focusing the restaurant messaging around a list of rotating, world-class chefs, as the primary selling point was a focused direction to go in. This outcome is listed in the many different perspectives of the BoxPark Sushi creative brief. 

Problem Solving

Simplifying the direction and messaging strategy can be a complicated task when it is so easy to want to offer many features to a large demographic. This month a problem occurred in trying to focus the messaging for BoxPark Sushi. The challenge came from choosing from many features of BoxPark Sushi. On one hand, the messaging could be based on features like speed and convenience or healthy eating but it seemed a bit too generic. Research suggests that unexpected framing of a business can positively impact consumer preferences, so the idea of using a feature of rotating guest would hopefully surprise and delight the customers. Unexpected framing alone could be a product-oriented strategy to lead customers exploring this new niche of the sushi market (Wadhwa, et. al, 2019). The unique selling proposition for BoxPark Sushi would be that it is the only sushi with world class chefs and local ingredients in the greater Milwaukee area. Ultimately this was the most unique selling point of the restaurant and a way to differentiate from the other businesses in Eastside Milwaukee and in the BoxPark structure itself. 

Innovative Thinking

UX research can be incorporated with design research and doing so can help the researcher take a new perspective on the organization of information coming from primary and secondary design research (Vermeeren, et. al, 2016). This month, while researching consumer needs met by BoxPark Sushi and trying to define a message, I began to think of a parallel information hierarchy that was coming from my research. I used Sketch prototyping to create a mobile app layout that had a basic information tree broken down into Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, A Shopping List of Needs, Demographics, Psychographics, Buying behavior and Research Resources. From there, pages in succession go into detail about each consumer need and how they may be met at BoxPark Sushi, a targeting market segmentation, and customer buying behaviors. The mobile app layout makes it easy to focus on the information and how each category relates to each other and BoxPark as a whole. I believe this work and type of deliverable to be common in the technology design world and would match up next to prototyping techniques of professionals in the field today. 

Link to Prototype:

https://www.sketch.com/s/7856a6e1-ff48-43a2-a3fa-025d70478fb2/a/8jdgqD/play

Acquired Competencies 

1. Understanding Product (Conceptual, Occupational, Academic): In order for designers to come up with solid advertising strategies, they must know the product. Use it, eat it, drink it, wear it, be a part of the tribe associated with the product. 
2. Using Themes (Conceptual, Occupational, Academic): A good way to breakdown and organize design messages is to find themes within the brand. Directive words will keep brand on track and people associated with the work on target. 
3. Incorporating Style (Technical, Occupational, Academic): Any good design will need to speak the visual language to communicate a message that has been researched in words and information. 
4. Features to Benefits (Conceptual, Occupational, Academic): Brands are more often than not trying to market a lifestyle connection above the literary sense of a product feature. Nike wants you to believe that if you wear their shoes and clothing you value an active lifestyle, they are not trying to sell the softness of the soles of their shoes. 
5. Demographics (Technical, Occupational, Academic): Demographics are the facts of an area. Population size, gender, age, geographic location, etc. Some projects will call for higher scrutiny of demographic information.
6. Psychographics (Techincal, Conceptual, Occupational, Academic): Psychographics tend to be more qualitative information based on consumer attitudes, opinions and lifestyles. 
7. Product-Oriented Strategies (Conceptual, Occupational): Advertisement strategies focused on positioning in the market place, feature sales, or generic product claims.
8. Consumer-Oriented Strategies (Conceptual, Occupational): Advertisement strategies geared towards the target audience. Coca-Cola selling a lifestyle, not a brown, sugary drink. 
9. Unique Selling Proposition (Technical, Occupational): A statement defining a key benefit that the company is offering a consumer, usually an onlieness statement that competitors cannot claim.
10. Conceptual (Conceptual, Academic): An abstract or generic idea used as a tool and generalized from particular instances. 
11. Technical (Conceptual, Academic): Unique techniques that are specific to an area of study and can be utilized through software or repetition. 
12. Occupational (Conceptual, Academic): Skills designed to be used in a work place or career after education. 

References

Felton, G. (2012). (20130805). Advertising: Concept and Copy (Third Edition). [VitalSource Bookshelf]. Retrieved from https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/#/books/9780393733921/

Kang, J., Hong, S., & Hubbard, G. T. (2020). The role of storytelling in advertising: Consumer emotion, narrative engagement level, and word‐of‐mouth intention. Journal of Consumer Behaviour, 19(1), 47–56.https://doi.org/10.1002/cb.1793

Wadhwa, M., Kim, J. C., Chattopadhyay, A., & Wang, W. (2019). Unexpected-Framing Effect: Impact of Framing a Product Benefit as Unexpected on Product Desire. Journal of Consumer Research, 46(2), 223–245. https://doi-org.oclc.fullsail.edu/10.1093/jcr/ucz008

Vermeeren, A. P. O. S., Roto, V., & Väänänen, K. (2016). Design-inclusive UX research: design as a part of doing user experience research. Behaviour & Information Technology, 35(1), 21–37. https://doi.org/10.1080/0144929X.2015.1081292

Connecting, Synthesizing, Transforming

Good motion design can help communicate the most complex messages like understanding Google Analytic tracking tools or be an emotional method of anticipation for a major motion picture. Research has shown that there can be many use cases for motion design and will change from project to project. The best designers find key design traits that make these works successful. In addition to visual stimuli that is incorporated with motion graphics, there is also an option to utilize sound design and music. Many young designers and design students feel that music helps them edit video or motion graphics because of the rhythm and pacing it can add to transitions and the energy it can add to a work (Kim, 2020). Pablo Ferro also used music to help with editing because it helps with the animation tempo (Willis, 2009). These are similar view points and touch on music, a small component in adding kinetic energy and appeal to successful motion graphics works. Motion design will more likely be successful if there is well thought through narrative or story behind the moving pieces. Even the most abstracted works of motion graphics can be enhanced through metaphorical representations (Weil, 2020). A great example of this use of metaphor and sound design is in the opening credits of The Morning Show. The creative team working for Apple put a lot of thought and energy into telling a story with abstracted 2D shapes that gives audience members a peak into what the content of the program will be. Close watchers may even see character values, themes or motifs. There are variables in these methods of enhancing animations. There may be clients that do not need sound incorporated or the client must specify that they want organic motion with more abstraction than narrative like running live graphics for live music.

Problem Solving

One of the design challenges for class was to take a deep dive into Premiere Pro and get used to using the software. Using the clips provided, there was a choice of videos that could be assembled. Seeing how this was the second month in the Covid19 global pandemic of 2020, I saw Anxiety/Depression PSA in the list of choices and immediately had a vision of a PSA where someone was being overwhelmed with the amount of information surrounding the pandemic. As you may guess, I was a good test case for what a day looks like for one of these people suffering from this anxiety. My goal was to find a powerful way to shoot a 60 second PSA that used todays current climate to write the story for me and ultimately, to encourage other people feeling this way to reach out to their friends, family and loved ones. My solution was to compress major parts of my day into a montage that was showcased me, quietly going about my day and listening to the diegetic sounds of my radio, computers and television. One option I could have done besides this would be to show a montage of me going on a trip outside of my house, showing empty streets, grocery stores and neighborhoods filled with masked-clad citizens maintaining a 6ft personal bubble. Though I like the imagery this solution would bring to the project I felt like it would be a hassle to try and get approval to film in businesses and strangers in my allotted time frame so I chose the solution I could manage with little help at home. Above is the 3 min piece that has a little slower editing and showcases the narrative a bit better than the 60 second version.

Innovative Thinking

My work is still in the learning stages of comparing myself to others in my industry. This month was good for me to get some more technical practice with camera techniques, animation strategies, and creating cinemagraphs. I am excited for a time when the practice will pay off and the ideas in my head of general aesthetics and stories will be able to flow out without the barriers of technical hiccups. I think in comparison to my class my video PSA for the Premiere Design challenge was innovative because I went outside the requirement to use provided footage and instead thought through a narrative, storyboarded a shot sequence and acted in my work. In the future I would like to spend more time carefully editing the cuts, sounds and color the final video to give it more of a professional look. Many of the video creators that I look up to have mastered the art of light capture and color correction to the point where the quality is indistinguishable from video work that is created for major branding and story telling. I think my framing and editing tempo has come a long way and now has the ability to keep viewers interested but I know I need continued practice to reach a new level.

Acquiring Skills and Competencies

Two new skills that I am very proud of are the ability to create cinemagraphs from hi-res video and export them to GIF for web purposes, and I am proud to have learned a smarter work-flow when editing and importing 4k video from my Sony camera. Other than that, here are a list of my learn skills reported in live training responses.

1. Finding Unique Aesthetics– There are lots of designers, agencies and creators that get work out every single day. Designers must look for unique aesthetics in order to succeed. Occupational/Academic
2. Diegetic and Non-Diegetic Sound– Diegetic sound is sound onscreen that the characters can also hear. Non-diegetic sound is like a soundtrack or narration. Occupational/Academic
3. Experience the Software, not Master– It is good to play and create in the software not try to master it. More learning and applicable knowledge will come from experimenting and testing hypothesis. Academic
4. Importance of Visual Hierarchy– Hierarchy is important to all design applications. Readers will scan for large and contrasting information and imagery so those should be the most important elements of the layout. Occupational/Academic
5. Motion Design Mimics Reality– Adding small tweaks to motion curves can give a reality and personality to motion pieces. Occupational/Academic
6. Motion is about Storytelling– Small abstracted designs can form big metaphors and narratives. Occupational/Academic
7. Agency/Freelance Design Careers– Designers where many hats and work many roles. Agency jobs have amazing quality of work and seasoned veterans. Occupational
8. In-House Design Careers– Stable paycheck and support from adjacent departments makes working in-house ideal. Working for one brand can get monotonous and feel like there is no creative freedom. Occupational
9. Human Centered Design– Designed centered around people, for people, tested by people. Occupational/Academic

Reflection

To summarize, this month has been a whirlwind of information. I was a bit confused on what to expect based on the title being “Organizational Structures” and in the first class our professor told us that this was a motion graphics course. After spending an entire, traditional semester learning motion graphics in my under graduate degree I knew that we would not be able to get very deep in the several different applications of motion but was pleasantly surprised to find that we would be animating and editing video. I later learned the Organizational Structures part would come from our weekly readings and videos combined with the constant practice of writing and explaining our work. Looking back at my mastery timeline post in month one of my masters journey I see that I had an expectation of learning different work-flows and maybe touching on an agile work environment. I would have loved to see some type of agile worked into this course maybe alongside the career path portion.

Resources

Kim, J., Bishop, G., Crawley, J. (2020). Organizational Structures Group Discussion. Retrieved from https://www.dropbox.com/s/g1pkkk48q77ds3q/Bishop_Crawley_Kim_Group_Discussion.mp4?dl=0

Weil, D. (2020). The Art of the Title. Retrieved from https://www.artofthetitle.com/title/hunters/

Willis, H. (2009). Pablo Ferro. Retrieved from https://www.aiga.org/aiga/content/inspiration/aiga-medalist/2009-aiga-medalist-pablo-ferro-/

This week’s design challenge was to create a Cinemagraph using Adobe Photoshop! This was a great exercise in that it forced me out of my comfort zone by obligating me to acquire competencies to achieve the task. The last three design challenges were tasks where I had previous knowledge about the software and the use cases so I tried my best to go above and beyond to create something that was still challenging. For the Cinemagraph I learned two great new skill sets; working with video in Photoshop and exporting GIFs for web use. I know the directions on FS One are detailed to export mp4 or mov files for Youtube or Vimeo. I believe that my first three design challenges show that I am able to attain those deliverables so for this project I shot to create a small sized GIF that will quickly load on web and automatically play. Being a high quality video geek it was good to get out of my comfort zone and experiment with how the video could be manipulated in export to achieve a super small file size without a ton of image degradation. The LinkedIN learning tutorial was great because we went through different parameters in export that you can use your best judgement and find a good fit for the particular image or photo you are working with.

Link for annotated bibliography:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/3j6u4y3e2mbn6gz/Crawley_Jeremy_Annotated_Bib_week3.docx?dl=0

Links for Synthesis Matrix (Week 3 is on its own tab)

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1KtFMKYZJk-L992mORYodoxfvkKVjD215_ORiegu_KJw/edit#gid=1625623005

https://www.dropbox.com/s/7jno093v6gvv58h/Crawley_Jeremy_Synthesis_Matrix_Week3.pdf?dl=0

This week’s research was grounded in career paths, work-life balances, and skills needed to succeed in a professional design position. There are three pathways a designer can take when choosing a job. In-house design, solo freelance, and agency work are the most common professional directions. Most careers will involve a mix of these, sometimes even in parallel with each other. Smart professionals that are passionate about a subject tend to have “side hustles” where they explore, iterate, and develop new ideas outside of their 9-5 job (Slim, 2010). An in-house design experience can offer a plethora of awesome benefits to their employees including stability in benefits like a constant paycheck and health insurance. Day to day these may seem like easy things to provided but in reality there is a lot of planning and work that is put in to making sure you have a timely pay period that is deposited directly into your bank account without much thought on your end. These are well thought out endeavors that are executed by departments who are trained to handle state and federal taxes and that are typically accessible to in-house designers. Ease of communication with these departments is another valued benefit of working in-house (Bjork, 2010). Let’s now contrast that with a freelance career where you as the sole individual contributor, are responsible for knowing tax laws, keeping contracts and making sure that you collect invoicing in a timely manner. As a freelancer you may have to balance, maintain your own budget, and do basic accounting for your business with Quickbooks rather than relying on trained professionals to do that for you (Guillory, 2020). That being said, there are many freedoms that accompany the life of a freelancer or working freelance for an agency. Long after years of experience and skill sharpening clients will come to you based on the relationships you have built and there will be a lot of creative freedom in what type of work you want to accomplish (Rassom, 2011). Overall these are choices that will be driven on an individual basis while considering quality of life standards. The connections here are that if traveling often and being on the go is a priority, and you thrive on a rigorous schedule that is set by you alone then agency and freelance work could be a good fit for you in this time of your life. Maybe 10 years from now you have kids who always need to go to the doctor, you own a house and are settled with friends in a town and need a little extra and stable cash flow to satisfy your new lifestyle, well in this case you may find more comfort in a in-house design department for a larger company. Pamela Slim that it is up to the individual to create a vision of their ideal life and to use it like a blueprint of decision making. The outcome of this research is that your life blueprint may change and there needs to be some adaptability in your goals which just may influence where you decide to work (Slim, 2010).

Also this week’s research unveiled a design resource, Aaron Shea. Shea’s passion is for designing for social change whether it be on a small scale like a neighborhood or a large, global scale. He reports on a case study of his where he has a design challenge of helping a boxing gym promote their unique educational tutoring program. The team uses an engagement strategy of building trust with the community and the gym by hanging around, documenting activities and getting to know the people in the area. The design solution they use takes the aesthetics of the boxing gym and the documented activities to make flyers and tabloids the gym can use to promote, and gain support and funding. Their outcomes and lessons learned were that over two thousand of the tabloids were printed and given out in the Baltimore neighborhoods and students felt a greater sense of community which changed their vantage point and made them want to become more successful (Shea, 2020). Another way the team could have taken the solution further would be to hold a neighborhood amateur tournament with local sponsors and school endorsements. There could have been a grade elements to the tournament where like college athletics, students would have to remain “eligible” throughout the year to compete. This could drive home the goal to keep students engaged in sports and education. Shea also gave a TED talk in regards to other ways that you can change peoples behaviors through design. His hypothesis is people can be motivated by force, like a ban on a public park, by money and incentives, and by environment. Habits are formed by doing the same tasks repeatedly in an environment and Shea is passionate about changing the environments through design that can have serious behavioral changes in those habit forming tasks (Shea, 2013). Human centered design has also become a pronominal field for pushing design limits. Human centered design is starting with people, understanding who you are trying to reach and then iterating and testing with users until products have user friendly behaviors (IDEO, 2015). This is the start of some really innovative thinking.

Human centered design adds personality to design and explores the relationship between man and machine. The goal of this type of innovation is to go above what a product is and focus more on the experience of use (Kelley, 2002). Motion graphics can be really innovative by adding common human attributes and experiences to movement. The way a bouncy ball acts in the physical world could be great inspiration for movements of a sphere or flat circle in animation. Convincing use of motion can make design convincing and familiar if human centered design is implemented. The work that was produced from the design challenge was an attempt at innovation and when looking at the requirements of the project, that innovation was successful. Filming content rather than using the canned footage gave more practical use of the premiere software and challenged me to think through ideas before I shot them, as I was importing and throughout editing. A step further would have been to sweeten the audio and spend some time refining the shots with some minor color grading. Due to our time limit and my goal of enhanced time management I went forward without those steps. Sometimes managing my academia and work-life balance is demanding and can result in an over exhaustion of my creative mind (Dorenkamp, et al 2019). A good work-life balance is important to millennials because of our high expectations of intrinsic values and desire to have a profession that invokes real societal change (Mihelic, et al 2017).

The design challenged forced me to practice with my camera, for that I am grateful. Three competencies that I learned from this week’s research and readings are…

1. Human centered design can be a methodology of creating a product starting with people and based on research surrounding the use of the product. It can also be adding human behaviors and personalities to experiences so the relationship between man and machine can be closer and evolve. This is an academic and occupational skill that is conceptual.
2. In-house careers can be stable, offer good benefits, and allow you to dig deep on the breadth of a single brand but they can also be monotonous and have unsuitable work environments. This is an occupational skill that is conceptual.
3. Freelance work can offer constant change and freedom to set one’s schedule but often require expert design skills and ability to manage other aspects of the business like accounting and sales. This is a occupational skill that is conceptual.

This week’s material really challenged what I knew about some aspects of the professional realm. I have a lot of experience working as an in-house designer and I see first hand benefits and downfalls that some of the experts I read about this week. I completely agree that the stability is inviting and can keep employees for long periods of time. Though I do find myself day dreaming about working at an agency, constantly having to pivot design strategies and being mentored by seasoned veterans in my field. Specific areas of knowledge surrounded Employee Retention, Human Centered Design, and Working with 4k footage. All the conversations about in-house vs freelance vs agency got me thinking about quality of life and based on how you define this for yourself is going to determine which job has your needed benefits and will maximize its Employee Retention. Human Centered Design has to keep the human interaction as the number one priority in product development and will only be refined through iteration and testing on users. Last, the design challenge this week forced me to find new work flows in importing and editing 4k footage rather than downsizing or shooting with 1080p. This was a great lesson on compression, uploading and the size of my computer RAM.

During these uncertain times in the world there is a lot of anxiety surrounding the COVID-19 virus. I myself have been overwhelmed by the amount of depressing information that is very real and affecting a large number of people in the world. I made this anxiety PSA to show other people comfort in the fact that a lot of us are in similar situations, quarantined at home. Though it may feel like we are alone we need to make efforts to check in with friends and family members. If there are people out there in need of help and comfort there are many organizations available to help with anxiety and depression like the Anxiety and Depression Association of America (ADAA).

The first upload of the PSA was an attempt to fit the 60second timeline but this next version is the full cinematic piece that is around 3 minutes.