Multimedia Reflection

In my last entry, I mentioned that I am nearing the end of my senior year in college. In that post I made a reflection about my digital portfolio class, following the same guidelines I wanted to reflect on one of my production heavy classes, multimedia communication.

Multimedia communication is oddly enough taught by the same instructor as digital portfolio, I really enjoy his teaching style so I learned a lot in both courses. Like the digital portfolio class we were asked to complete an assessment at the beginning of the semester, my answers are below.

1. What do you expect to learn in this course?

basic mechanics and techniques for creating digital content/platforms

2. What is your relationship with technology like?

proficient I am familiar with adobe photoshop, InDesign, illustrator, premiere, Microsoft word, powerpoint, etc.

3. What are your goals for this course?

My main goal for this course is to approach my projects from a designer perspective so I can create content more in line with my preferred style.

4. What are the biggest challenges you’ll face in this course?

Using programs that I am not used to or do not prefer using. Getting out of my usual routine/being lazy or procrastinating on projects.

5. How do you plan to overcome those challenges?

 By having a more positive mindset and being openminded and creative!

• 

• 

I really enjoyed the flow of this class because it started off at a pretty upbeat pace, we would balance the readings, regarding principles of design, with small in class assignments. I really liked how for most of our projects we would do a small, quick, in-class trial run on a random subject. For example, we had an infographic assignment, but before we chose the topic we wanted to do and put a lot of time in it we played around with the platform (infogram) all using the same subject first.

The setup of the course allowed for a lot of interactivity with one another. We would discuss readings and class topics together and provided a lot of feedback for each other throughout projects. The type of connections we had with each other allowed for us to fine tune our projects and create something overall successful.

The type of resources we used helped me gain a better sense of design and how to go about them. Prior to this course I had some experience with design but never really dove into it conceptually. I feel that through this course I was able to meet my goal of trying to approach designs with a better perspective and create a cohesive style and I was able to challenge myself by practicing software I don’t normally use.

Aside from small practice in-class projects our projects consisted of creating an infographic, a prezume, 2 multimedia pieces using free software, an adobe spark graphic, and a website.

I had a lot of fun working on all of these assignments, I used software I was not super comfortable with for all but 2 of the projects and I am overall very proud of all of them. I feel like this semester especially I was able to create a cohesive style throughout most of my projects and classes which makes me excited for where my work is heading. Of all the projects we did in this course the one I am the most proud of is the infographic project.

For our infographic project I decided to create an infographic resume using Adobe Illustrator. I have used Adobe Illustrator in the past but am not the best at it so figured this would be a great opportunity to work on my skills while also creating something meaningful for my career. I ended up working on this project continuously in other classes as we fine tuned our resumes. While I still can make minor improvements I’m really happy with the current result. This was our first major assignment in this course and my classmates provided me with nice feedback that helped pull this piece together.

I am overall very satisfied with all the work I created in this course however one project that I could have made better was the small 8-bit art assignment I did. For one of our assignments we were to find free software online to create something whether it was a graphic, video, or whatever. I wanted to do something fun and different and stumbled upon a free 8-bit art making site and decided to do that for my mini project. I created the following design which is fun and chill but I would love to put myself up to the challenge later on to create something more interesting and complex or even simple but more intriguing and of meaning.

Overall I really enjoyed this class I feel that I learned a lot about the concepts of design, I got to practice my skills using a variety of software, and I created nice work for my portfolio. One thing I really like about this specific instructor is how much he tries to help students by providing them with a ton of resources. Even though it is important to know how to use professional software such as the Adobe suite, what is most important is being able to create at all so I appreciate knowing how to find free software.