Here it is. As teased in the last post. My final actual last post for the graphic design class I’ve been taking. It feels like the class was at the same time both very short and also very long. I guess the saying still holds true: “The days are long, but the weeks are short.” Soon it will be summer for real. I’ll probably go and get an ice cream cone (from my local spot, Durham Dari Serv of course). Next time I won’t have to turn the heat up to simulate a desire for freezing desserts either.

We had one last assignment for the class: putting together a portfolio. Rather than make something new, we were to attempt to corral all our previously created work into one, more manageable viewing location. I’m not the most organized person, so this wasn’t as easy of a task as it probably should have been, but I guess that’s my own fault. Organizing everything is something I’ve been meaning to do for some time. I know from personal experience that having all my project files scattered to the wind is the perfect way to accidentally lose things forever. I managed to get it together though. Here’s a screenshot:

You can also of course, just go to the link and see it for yourself. I was most proud of my Bonnaroo graphics, so I naturally put that at the top. It was interesting to go back through and look at the old stuff. Especially seeing how things we learned earlier in the course improved my later work. Font, color, simply properly researching the subject matter. So many things that I was doing in the final projects that I only sort of bothered to think about before, at least in a more in-depth manner. There’s a lot that I notice around me now as well, in various graphics and advertisements I see. Like which particular font they chose to represent a concept. Or the ways in which colors and compliment a design by evoking some feeling or emotion. I was a little worried that seeing behind the curtain a bit might make things less interesting, remove some of the magic, but so far I’ve found the opposite to be true. Things I simply wouldn’t have noticed at all before now offer an opportunity to think more deeply about the reasoning behind it and the intended message. So what’s next? For me, mostly medical school. Perhaps now I’ll take the occasional break from medicine and play around with art and design more often. It can be a welcome break from memorizing biochemical pathways. To end with a song quote: “the hardest part of ending is starting again.”