• 

This graphic design project has been engaging to say the least. From collecting the images to creating a draft, and then hearing feedback to improve the initial design, I really appreciate the way this project was set up.

When I initially created the draft of my project, I didn’t have a clear end goal that I wanted to reach, and I think that was pretty apparent by the sub-par image I ended up with. I had the idea to cut out images and pair each of the cutouts with a specific caption to explain the relevance. During my draft stage, I thought that using colorful captions against a highly contrasted and blurred background image would help the captions to “pop” more, but now I realize that it looks a bit tacky that way. I also left each of the cutout images without borders or drop shadows, which contributed to the choppy and unpolished look of my draft in the beginning.

After posting the drafted design on my blog, I waited for the constructive criticism to roll in from my peers. Each piece of feedback that I received was both helpful and considerate of my own hopes for the design, which really helped me feel better about the revisions I ended up making. From the four girls in my group, the most common pieces of feedback included the following: using less color for the captions (or one uniform color), framing the captions, outlining cutouts, and using a less busy background. Some other pieces of feedback included making the center cutout of myself larger in size since the focus is on my personal experience, as well as adding a brief explanation of PCOS for those that may not know much about it.

For my final draft, I stuck with the idea of a magazine cover approach. I still believe that this is one of the most effective ways to communicate several pieces of information quickly, while holding onto viewer engagement. I used the same images as my draft, most of which were taken with flash to help ensure each image was focused and sufficiently lit. This time around, I chose to use a photo of the Palouse hills as my background instead of the streets of WSU because I really liked the suggestion of using a less busy background in order to direct more attention to the pieces I’d be focusing on. I changed the hue, brightness, saturation, and levels slightly to give the hills a more green look which would help bring my final piece together. Next, I used the pen tool, magnetic lasso, and quick selection tool to create each of my cutout elements. After cutting out each image, I used the drop shadow and stroke features on the layer style tab to add a white outline, helping each image have more substance over the background. Each photo was outlined in white which I countered by outlining each caption in black. For the captions, I liked the idea of eliminating a lot of color, so I decided to go with a classic black and white approach. With white rectangles that contained black text and were outlined in black as well, I think the captions of my final draft look much cleaner and well thought out than what I had for my initial draft. Finally, I also decided to add a short excerpt that briefly describes what PCOS is. This simply gave the full name for PCOS and defined it as a hormonal imbalance, which would help provide important context to readers that may not know otherwise. This context helps my graphic design to be more effective, as people would better understand the relevance of each image.

I am much happier with my final draft of this project, and greatly appreciate the feedback from my peers that helped me reach this final design. This project was structured beautifully and I hope it was just as beneficial for everyone else. I think my new graphic design project is much cleaner and well put together. Time for Unit 2!

Photo of myself is credited to Jenny Griffin, who captured the picture in Ocean Shores, WA on June 24th, 2019.

All other photos are my own intellectual property and were taken by me on my phone.