The case study presentation for my virtual graffiti app prototype, AugTag.
I. My story
I have loved art and design since I was a kid. Drawing Pokemon and Digimon on anything and everything made me want to create my own original characters and design the animations for video games. I discovered a passion for musical theatre when I was ten, then a knack for writing in middle school, both of which developed my love for telling stories that still influences my creative process to this day. I especially loved the way that high fantasy built entire worlds from scratch and took inspiration from that; I will always immerse myself in a project where I can build a world to supplement its concept.
This love has also manifested from a deep interest in anthropology and sociology. When my work is being built off of this world, I want it to be truly informed by the way that people think and interact with their surroundings, other people, and the product. That is one of the key factors that drew me to User Experience Design in particular: the focus of optimizing the creative process towards the understanding and connection of people to their interfaces.
But what drew me into graphic design in particular came from taking a design class at my community college. I took it mostly just to take a class, but I fell in love with the way I was having to engage in the creative process. Each assignment involved a challenge that needed to be solved. Designing a logo for an event, recontextualizing a piece of art to convey a message, building a brand identity for a food truck–each brought out my systematic problem-solving skills that are more suited to STEM work along with being creative and artistic, engaging my mind in a way that I hadn’t experienced while working in other mediums.
The other thing that I discovered while taking that class was how much I loved talking to other people about the process and the work that I had made. My experience with writing in particular really soured me to engaging in the critique process and talking to others about writing. Oftentimes, I found that the people I talked to were more interested in me just praising their work or thinking that they were smart, rather than telling stories or creating work worth getting lost in. While taking the design class, I found myself actively wanting to talk to people and share my work and get critique to improve it. It should be noted that I am a deeply introverted person who is perfectly comfortable going days without talking to another person, but when it comes to design, there is nothing that I look forward to more than working with fellow designers. It was an amazing discovery to find something that really sparked a passion for other people.
Ever since I transferred to Portland State and joined the Graphic Design program, that passion has only grown more and more as I have learned from so many brilliant teachers and worked with so many talented people who I know are going to go on to do amazing work in this field once they’ve graduated. I have been so lucky to find something that, along with being a viable career path, constantly brings me joy and pushes me to improve myself every day. It’s a feeling that I hope every person is able to find, one way or another.
II. My process
I am most inspired by finding creative and unique solutions to problems. To me, every project brief is like a puzzle, and so every project is a game to find the best way to put that puzzle together. I like to take a systematic, methodical approach to my process, building the project out one brick at a time. This is similar to my writing process, where I would typically spend just as much time researching and pre-writing as I did actually writing, so everything would essentially fall into place once I got to working on the prose.
However, I love incorporating humor and surreal ideas in my work if the opportunity presents itself. When a project is left open-ended for me, I will always try and find an angle that hasn’t quite been looked at before. My favorite example of this is the Beverage Packaging project that was assigned in Design 225. While most folks did the smart thing and designed bottles and packaging for coffee, energy drinks, cocktails, and other things that they would drink, I was inspired by a project from a previous class where the beverages were drinks for aliens. I decided to take that even further by pushing the idea of what a beverage could even be in this context. That led to the idea of “Be Like Us!”, drink-presenting code for androids that simulated human emotions for them. I got approval to go for it by my teacher (shoutout Nicole Marsh!), so I was able to build a whole story around what could have been a simple beverage. I consider it to be the best representation of how I like to wiggle when I am given the room to approach a project with free reign.
That is not how most projects tend to go, though; the best solutions to my project briefs tend to need a refined, practical product that is meant to satisfy a client. Particularly with my work as a Web Designer and passion for User Experience Design, it is in my best interest to be as widely accessible as possible. This is a challenge that I also really enjoy, as it takes me outside of my own head and into the minds of those around me.