New Media Design

My Experience

Design is something that people often try to box into one category or another. Is it the act of sketching how something should be? Is it being creative in design software and creating something whimsical? Or is it just ensuring that a website, document, or other deliverable visually appears cohesive? New Media Design taught me that the answer to all those questions is, “Yes, and so much more!”

Throughout the course, I learned the basics of Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop. I also learned how to translate those design skills into arguably easier-to-use software like Canva and Figma. These four programs are invaluable tools in any communicator’s back pocket and allow those of us who work in communications to help ideate, design, and deliver any idea into a reality. The skills learned in this course are foundational stepping stones for the rest of the work that I will do, not only in this course but also throughout the rest of my career.

The most impactful information that I learned in this course focuses on the general principles of design and making them functional and accessible. I would argue that these two ideas, functionality and accessibility, are the cornerstone of communications work in general. Ensuring that colors contrast and compliment appropriately, fonts are suitable and legible, and every other design detail of my work is something that I will further emphasize in everything I do.

Throughout the semester, I worked on a total of four projects. The first was an “old-fashioned” postcard made in Adobe Photoshop. This project allowed me to gain experience with layers and masks by way of adding texture to the overall image and embedding individual images within my text.

The second project I completed was a personal style guide. This project was more challenging than I anticipated because I had to make decisions about fonts, colors, and logo designs that I felt best reflected my personal brand. I utilized Adobe Illustrator to design both my logo and the overall style guide. I am most proud of the personal logo I created. It includes a city skyline with my initials built into the buildings as if it were part of the skyline.

The third project was to create a style guide for a fictitious brand called Mazevo Brewing Company. This project was a collaborative effort in Adobe Illustrator and Canva between my fellow group members Erin Kenney, Hailey Hubbard, and Skylar Little. In the style guide, we collectively ideated an entire brand, including a brand voice, logo variations, color palettes, typographical guidelines, and a mission statement. This project emphasized the importance of how critical and meaningful design choices are for a brand (or project) early on and that choices that are made can impact the success of that brand or project.

For our fourth project, I worked alongside my group members in Figma to create three variations of an online brand/identity: a desktop website, a mobile website, and an application interface. This project allowed us to put our brand style guide to the test and utilize our font and color selections to build three responsive and accessibility-friendly website/app prototypes. Figma was a relatively intuitive tool to use and drew upon the basics I learned in the earlier Adobe courses.

Overall, I learned foundational design principles that I will be able to carry with me into the rest of the work I do within the Emerging Media Master’s program and my day-to-day professional work. Being able to say I am familiar with Photoshop, Illustrator, Canva, and Figma provides an advantage for me to elevate the quality of my work and expand my professional skillset.