During my time at Seattle Pacific University, I embarked on a wilderness venture project that initially began as a seemingly straightforward pattern creation. If my memory serves me right, the first step involved selecting a word that encapsulated an aspect of my identity, followed by merging various images and text to generate a unique pattern.
One thing that stands out vividly in my recollection is how utterly perplexed I felt about this assignment. As a transfer student, I found myself completely unaware of the expectations surrounding this classic art project. I turned to my professor for guidance, but even they struggled to provide me with a clear understanding. Seeking solace in my classmates, I soon realized that they too were grappling with the project's essence but recognized the need to produce something aesthetically pleasing and artistic.
As a designer who values functionality and logical thinking alongside visual aesthetics, this project posed a significant challenge for me. I did my best to work with the information I had, but when the time came to present my results in class, I couldn't help but feel disappointed by the visual confusion evident in my work, especially when compared to my classmates' creations.
The subsequent assignments followed a similar pattern, and gradually, through trial and error, I began to grasp how to communicate my ideas effectively and achieve the desired outcomes. It was a painful learning process, but as the mid-term approached, I suddenly realized that all these individual assignments would ultimately converge into a final project. With this newfound realization, I made a conscious effort to make my designs more cohesive and interconnected. Despite the initial struggles, things somehow fell into place, and the outcome turned out to be the best it could have been.
Had I been aware that the entire class was working towards developing a brand identity, I would have approached the project with a completely different perspective right from the beginning. Understanding the overarching goal would have allowed me to carefully select the initial elements that aligned more closely with building a cohesive brand.
This experience taught me a valuable lesson about the importance of having a clear vision and plan right from the start of a project, rather than piecing everything together at the end. When you know that all the components will be interconnected, it becomes much easier to create a harmonious whole.
