Introduction

  

Senior photo and 2 images from travels.

Hello there! My name is Lindsey and I am a 19 (almost 20) year old who is an aspiring graphic designer currently studying at Parkland College. I have always lived in central Illinois my whole life, but usually moving around it. Although I have always dreamed of leaving state and attending some art and design University, it was much more logical and financially suiting if I stayed around Champaign to attend Parkland.
I realized I wanted graphic design to be my chosen career path after I was finishing high school and I had taken a web design class. Web design is something I really enjoy, but I feel it would get tedious after awhile. Also, it doesn't give as much freedom to use my creativity like graphic design does with it's vast amounts of projects.

Every designer establishes a creative process, mine doesn't stray far from the process we use in my studio classes. My first step is always researching to obtain more knowledge dealing with the project; I look at what designers did in their work. Next, after I start to feel inspired, I start sketching my own ideas to move towards a concept that could possibly be the solution to my project. After I establish a strong concept, I start to digitize my concept.
Once I start using the software needed, I explore way more ideas/possibilities without straying too far from my concept. During this stage, feedback from peers, my instructor(s), and others is very crucial. The feedback helps give me different points of view and other ideas I might not of thought of. I continue to refine and explore what works for me in my creative process since I am still somewhat new to all this.

Since graphic design is an art, every designer has to know how to get inspired. The main ways I find inspiration is the internet, traveling, and looking at other designers' work.
When using the internet to find inspiration, I often use pinterest and other sites to look at ideas and get information about them.
Although I don't get to travel as much as I want since I am a broke college kid, I take advantage of the time to notice differences in the location or sometimes even the culture from my own. I sketch or write down things that I really like so I can look at it later and I wont forget as easily.
I have been to 6 different countries in Europe and I have been to around 7 different states in the U.S.; I took tons of pictures and made sketches that I still look back to. I really enjoy it and hopefully can afford to go many more destinations in the future.
By looking at other designers' work, it helps me generate my own ideas sometimes. It makes me wonder and try to picture how the way they treated certain solutions would look on mine. I take note of certain details I really like.

Graphic design is a very wide-ranged and interesting career field, but I still face struggles in this glamorous career path. A lot of my struggles deal with creativity and coming up with ideas for projects. I struggle the most with projects whenever I do not have that much knowledge about them. I overcome this by constantly researching until I am overflowing with ideas and examples.
I also tend to struggle if there isn't enough feedback for me to help open up my mind to other ideas and points of view. Feedback is extremely important to me because it really helps me shape my project and make it the best it could be.

Even if I was not a graphic designer, I feel creativity is of great value in not only my culture, but other cultures as well. I feel this way because creatives (creative people) help make the world a more beautiful place no matter what way they express it (music, illustration, paintings, graphic design, etc.).
Without creatives, the world would be dull and bleak; nothing would grab someone's interest. I really love getting to use my creativity towards something useful and to communicate a message, rather than just making art for ones entertainment.
 One of my favorite designers are Stefan Sagmeister because of his unique and obscure way of presenting some of his ideas. I often visit his site and look at some of his work, but I don't really use his work for inspiration for mine; I try to look at other famous artists I haven't seen before.


Below is a image of a logo I created in a past project from one of my studio classes that I plan to feature in my portfolio. I found this design to be creative because of it's use of color that highlights what is important and creates emphasis. I also found if creative because of it's playful way of using the type to make it look like waves of water. Lastly, the imagery used in the logo (raindrop) is a direct way to imply water; so even if the viewer does not fully read and comprehend what it is, the drop will make the connection to water. '

Thank you for taking the time to read about me and my views, I hope that you found this interesting.

Yours truly,

Lindsey :)