Week Seven

1) Identify what you personally have completed since last week

Week seven has been quite a slow week for me. I haven’t been able to start working on the second banner as I am still waiting for direction from the marketing and promotions team on things such as the size that it needs to be and the details of what needs to be included.

2) How you accomplished those tasks including any resources you used such as tutorials, meeting with group members, meeting with other groups, books, etc.

      The resources that I personally used this week were meeting up in person with the other graphic designers and the art direction team, as well as communicating through email and Facebook with members of the marketing and promotions team and the executive directors. On top of that, I’ve also continued to work with the Adobe design programs Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator

3) What your team has accomplished in the last week

      Much like the previous weeks, our group hasn’t really accomplished much as a team as we all have individual project requests to work on, however we’ve been continuing to communicate with each other through Facebook to make sure we’re all relatively on the same page.

4) The biggest difficulty in the last week

      The biggest difficulty in the last week was (and unfortunately still is) trying to get information on the second banner from the marketing and promotions team, as I have been unable to start working without it. I’ve asked the team leader for the dimensions and what needs to be included in the banner multiple times and the one time they actually got back to me on the subject, they gave me with the wrong information, so until I receive the correct information, I’m at a standstill with this project.

5) What you personally aim to achieve before next week

Next week I aim to have the second banner completely finalized and approved. I would also like to accept and begin working on another graphic design request.

Week Six

1) Identify what you personally have completed since last week

Since last week I have created a pull-up banner for the marketing and promotions group that will be used when their team is promoting and selling tickets, as well as on the day of the conference. In addition to the pull-up banner, the team also made a request for a smaller banner to be created, however, it has yet to be determined whether the banners should look the same or not, so I am waiting for further direction before I start making it.

2) How you accomplished those tasks including any resources you used such as tutorials, meeting with group members, meeting with other groups, books, etc.

     The major resources I personally used this week are the Adobe design programs Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator. Additionally, I used my email and Facebook to communicate and share my work, both with the other graphic designers as well as members of other groups, including the marketing and promotions team, the art direction team and the executive directors.

3) What your team has accomplished in the last week

     Again, we are all working individually so we haven’t accomplished much as a team, although we have continued to communicate and keep each other updated on our progress through Facebook.

4) The biggest difficulty in the last week

     The biggest difficulty in the last week was communication, once again. Because there was no scheduled class, many people did not want to make the trek out to the school to talk about things in person, so we had to rely on email, Facebook, phone calls and text messages to communicate with one another. Unfortunately with the kind of work that graphic designers do, trying to work with someone who isn’t sitting beside you, viewing the screen you’re working on is difficult. There were multiple mishaps due to miscommunications and misunderstandings that likely wouldn’t have occurred if we met up in person, so things ended up taking much longer than they needed to, which was a little bit frustrating.

5) What you personally aim to achieve before next week

Before next week I hope to have some more direction on the way the second banner should look and, ideally, I would like to have it completed so I can take on another project request if there are any available.

Week Five

1) Identify what you personally have completed since last week

         Since last week I met up with the team leaders of the art direction group and the sponsorship group, along with the executive directors, and together we made the last few tweaks and completely finalized the sponsorship package. Unfortunately we haven’t been receiving many graphic design project requests, so I am currently in the process of waiting to be assigned my next task. 

2) How you accomplished those tasks including any resources you used such as tutorials, meeting with group members, meeting with other groups, books, etc.

The most necessary resource for me this week was meeting up in person with the executive directors as well as members from the art direction team and the sponsorship team to finalize the sponsorship package. Originally we tried to use email to communicate the tweaks that needed to be made, however we unanimously decided that it’d be much easier if we all sat down and made the changes together. In addition, I used both InDesign and Photoshop when creating the package.

3) What your team has accomplished in the last week

As I mentioned in my blog post from last week, each graphic designer is working on their own project requests individually, so there really hasn’t been much accomplished as a team. We did, however, have a short in person group meeting and continued to use Facebook to communicate and keep everyone in the group up-to-date with our progress.

4) The biggest difficulty in the last week

         Personally, in the past week I haven’t had many difficulties. The only issue I can really think of is the fact that I’m still not a fan of the colour palette (and I still don’t understand how it relates to the theme of “Breaking Barriers”) but despite that I think the sponsorship package ended up looking pretty good.  

5) What you personally aim to achieve before next week

Before next week I hope to accept and start working on another graphic design project.

Week Four

1) Identify what you personally have completed since last week

After I received the required content from the sponsorship team and the approved logos from Alex I was finally able to begin working on compiling the sponsorship package. At the moment there are still a few tweaks that I am in the process of making, but other than that the package is basically done.

2) How you accomplished those tasks including any resources you used such as tutorials, meeting with group members, meeting with other groups, books, etc.

One of the resources used for this week was meeting up with my group to go over the ideas Alex had for the logos. In addition to meeting up with the other graphic designers, I also met up with the team leader for the sponsorship team to get a better idea of what she wanted the package to look like. Lastly, I used the Adobe program InDesign to create the package.

3) What your team has accomplished in the last week

      As we’re all working on each of our own projects individually, this week we haven’t really accomplished much together as a team. However we have used Facebook, as well as our in-person group meeting, to bounce ideas off of each other, share our work with one another and help anyone that is in need of assistance.

4) The biggest difficulty in the last week

      The biggest difficulty that I’ve had this week was trying to work with the colour palette that was chosen by the art direction team. Personally, I don’t think the colours go well together so the fact that I’m constrained to using them makes creating visually appealing graphic design projects tricky. Furthermore, I don’t understand how the chosen palette relates to the theme of “Breaking Barriers” so I feel like I’m spending far too much extra time experimenting with how to use them appropriately. On top of trying to work with the palette, another difficulty I had was trying to find good pictures from any previous conferences to include in the package, as I found many of the ones I was coming across didn’t meet my criteria.

5) What you personally aim to achieve before next week

I aim to have the sponsorship package completely finalized and approved so that the sponsorship team can start using it to secure sponsors as soon as possible. I would also like to accept and potentially start working on another graphic design request.