Day 1: Continued work on project #2. Things have finally started to fall into place with this project. I got some great feedback from Jesse over Teams throughout the day. We chose the layout that we liked the most/was the easiest to read. A great start to the week!
Day 2: Spent the morning applying the layout to the other pages of project #2. It started to get tricky on certain pages because of the huge variation in the amount of text for each page. The layouts that looked good on pages with lots of text looked weird and sparse on pages with less and it was hard to stay consistent while trying to fit everything on each page. Sought Jesse’s advice in the afternoon, got some feedback, and went right back to work.
Day 3: Spent the morning tweaking the layouts on project #2. I also had the chance to meet with some of the other lovely team members of PSDDB throughout the day. I met with Rob Newell the strategist, Monica Martinez one of the freelance designers, and Lorill Hancock one of the project managers. They gave me some great book and movie recommendations and some even better advice. I learned that it’s important to keep an open mind and to maintain a big appetite for learning. I was also reminded of the importance of staying connected with people in the industry.
Day 4: Spent the day making more tweaks to project #2 in order to prepare for the second internal meeting in the afternoon. I was feeling quite nervous but things were slowly but surely coming together. Everything started to feel more manageable and I could feel myself improving my typography skills. I guess practice really is the best teacher (not to discredit the incredible teachers at IDEA. I just felt myself starting to marinate a bit more in the lessons you all taught me). Had the internal meeting in the afternoon and got some great feedback on making layouts more consistent. After that, I met with the lovely project manager Erica Johnsson. She gave me a great book recommendation and told me that her husband, Markus Wreland was an IDEA alumnus. What a small world! Also the IDEA 21 GRAD SHOW SITE FINALLY LAUNCHED!!! I was so nervous and my hands got really sweaty, which made it hard to focus. Luckily it was almost 5 at that point.
Day 5: Had my weekly meeting with Jesse. We went over what I did during the week, who I met up with, and chatted about random things like what movies/shows to watch and how deadlines are a great way to cure perfectionism. We also discussed what games people at PSDDB could play together online to make up for the lack of in-person interaction. In the afternoon, I continued my work on project #2, mostly incorporating the feedback from yesterday and getting into the details a bit. I also met up with Dan O’Leary, another freelance designer. Got a great book recommendation from him as well (I might become a bookworm again with all these great recs). We also talked about how hopping from hobby to hobby had helped us with design and how exercise was also a great way to bring out creativity.
