Assignments

Hello fellow classmates. Many of you in this class already know me, for those of you that do not, my name is Colin Niebergall and I am a senior Public Relations Major, With a Minor in Technical Communications. My hope is to be able to find a company that offers educational benefits so I will be able to pursue a MBA after I graduate with my undergraduate in PR. This plan seems like the most efficient to expand my professional career. As all of you should know, plans never seems to go the way you plan them out, for better or for worst, so I always go with the flow of things. I Actively think about my future, but always keeping an open mind to different paths in life that seem to creep up. Saying that, I really don’t know what to expect in the next few years of my life after I graduate in December 2011, but I do know one thing – I do not want to be stuck in a career choice where I will be unhappy. Easier said than done, most would say, but my goal is to wake up in the morning and be excited about my work/profession/job.

Now, for this class, my goal is to expand my knowledge of design. Design is something that interests me because it is a way of communicating with visuals, at least in this class. Let it be through text, or images, etcetera, we see design at almost everything we look at. We never really stop and think about the procedures and thought that go into the actual design of a product though. What works, what doesn’t work, principles, the usual, and outgoing ideas that come forth. What can make or break a company, a team, or an organization. Even while you are reading this blog on your own personal computer, think about the time, money, and effort, that the company put forth to make the design of your computer. It just didn’t pop out in one single thought. It took teams of people, with different skills and abilities, to produce the unviewed communicated tool of design that is at your hands right now. Design is sneaker than one might think, but the power of it is amazing. It affects both the conscious and unconscious mind at the same time.

On to the assignments in this class, I could see myself doing everything that we came up together in class on Thursday. Seeing that we have a total of five assignments though, I think we could split the semester up into two sections. Section one would be geared towards designing stuff for our own professional selves, for example, resume design, business card design, things that we can use when we all get out into the job market. The second section would be geared towards our own majors. For my major, I could see myself designing advertisements, brochures, flyers, and most importantly logos. I want to focus on logos because this is an area of design that I lack in knowledge. I have designed logos before in other classes, but I tend to judge my own work to the extreme and can never really be satisfied with what I have come up with. They seem to have held up pretty well for a grade in those classes, thank goodness, but I know that they would not be implemented in a professional environment for public view.


Sum everything up in an easy view:

• Section 1 – Two assignments
o Resume Design – Non basic – Creative design
o Business Card Design – American Psycho anyone?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoIvd3zzu4Y
Have an open mind people…it’s funny.

• Section 2 – Three assignments
o Advertisements – Company that one might work for, maybe advertising plan: Implementation, design, setup, pricing ect.
o Brochures – Company that one might work for, Same as above
o Logos – Redesign of a current company, or self made logo