Getting Back Into Graphic Design

(I made this solely out of text freshman year of college)

       I'm a multimedia communications student. I take classes in video production, photography, web design, audio techniques, and graphic design. I like all these facets of my major (well, audio isn't really one of my strongest points). However, along the way of taking all these classes, I've kind of forgotten my first love: graphic design.

       I'm not saying graphic design is my strongest skill, but it's what I've been doing since I was 14 years old. I consider photography to probably be my strongest of the 5 facets right now, and although I've been taking pictures since I was ten, I was only taking pictures to document what was happening around me, nothing really creative. But anyways, back to graphic design.

       From the moment I got my first laptop, I was designing logos, backgrounds, pictures, pretty much anything my imagination came up with. At first I used the oh so lovely program Paint (it was all I had then) and then I upgraded to Photoshop. Sometimes I would forget to do homework because I was so engrossed in it. I even entered a graphic into a National Fine Arts Festival competition and got a college scholarship out of it.

       I was going to go to school in Ohio and major in graphic design and then I started hearing about this program at a college in Pennsylvania that had a major that incorporated all sorts of media and since I had just started getting into photography my senior year of high school, this seemed like a pretty cool idea and I was excited to try out other forms of digital art.

      I started getting caught up in all things photography and video related; getting my first DSLR, getting Apple certified in video editing software, running cameras at conventions, etc. Then I stepped into my Design & Visual Language class this semester. While this class isn't solely dedicated to graphic design, it rekindled my love for it. If I'm completely honest, it rekindled my love for designing and creating in general.

     Our first project was to redo a horribly designed ad. We were told to tear it apart and start afresh. Using photoshop for projects other than editing photos was something I had to re-teach myself. But, it's just like a bicycle, you never forget it.

      My skills are a bit rusty, but I really like my project. The ad I re-did had no name and I wanted to keep it that way so that I could focus on the design and not focus on thinking up a good name for it.

This is my re-vamped ad. Please note the phone number is not a real number. =]

Love, love
-Kate