3 months later…

It’s been about three months since my last post so I figure I’m due to post an update. I’ve been taking a bit of a break from designing during this time because I think I kinda burnt myself out trying to do so much in such a short amount of time last year. Lately, I’ve been coasting through my days and saturating my free time with video games, although I’m starting to get antsy to be designing full time again. I’ve decided that I need a personal passion project that I can also use in my portfolio, so I’ve started back on Skillshare to get some direction and structure.

When I think about my career so far, I realize that I haven’t really had any passion projects that I’ve contributed to, besides my volunteer work for AIGA KC. At my past full-time jobs, I never really cared about the product I was designing for–no one ever took the time to give me a reason to and I didn’t bother to ask–I was just excited to be designing. I’ve always thought of these jobs as “stepping stones” to the next big thing; they were roles where I could gain some new knowledge, but sadly never had the opportunity for me to climb the “career ladder”. But now that I’m in my thirties, I’ve realized that I don’t totally know what I want to do next, only that I want it to be something that I actually care about for once. So my focus right now is to try to figure out what I really want out of my next role: what kind of industry focus, what kind of job title, what I want with my daily workload, etc. My method of research will be a passion project. Here’s hoping it doesn’t take me too long to figure out what that is!

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I did it!

I totally forgot to make a post when I finally completed the course, but I did it! I finished Google’s UX Design Professional Certificate!! I actually finished it back at the beginning of November, but I had a lot going on and also just plain forgot to make this post sooner. It took two months to finish the course, where it took only weeks for the others, and that’s mostly because I was dragging my feet on this one. I think I hit a wall and was just ready to be done with it. I really like the design process of ux design, which makes sense considering that was my whole focus going into the course. But what slowed me down was the research bit. I understand the importance of it, but I’d rather someone else do that part so I can focus on the visual design of the product. After all of that, I think I accomplished what I had set out to do with this course, which was to develop a better understanding of ux design and how it applies to visual design.

What’s next? Well, I actually need to flesh out my third project some more, and go back and make updates and tweaks to my second and first projects. After that, I may occasionally put together some ui designs without doing all of the research surrounding it with the goal being to add to my portfolio and better familiarize myself with the programs.

Also! I managed to get a job within the past two months! I’m working as a web designer for a company out here in Washington, and it’s been interesting learning their process. It’s not really design-focused so far, and there’s not really any HTML or CSS work involved, but for now that means I can spend my time outside of work improving those skills and working on a few passion projects finally. That is, if I don’t get too distracted with cooking and video games in my free time! It’s all about balance.

Oh, another thing that happened in the past two months was Adobe Max! It was online and free again this year, so that was really nice. Of all the sessions and labs I watched, only one really stood out: “Concept Art: Break Artist’s Block with Emergent Design” by Sam Nielson. I really connected with the idea of just making marks on a page to get started and not having a focus when you start, since staring at a blank page can be so daunting. Besides that session, most of the other sessions I scheduled were Adobe XD-focused, but they all ended up being pretty much the same. It was disappointing that I didn’t feel like I learned anything new from them considering that I still think of myself as a newbie to the program. They all just focused on highlighting the new features in Adobe XD which I understand why they did but when you’ve seen it once, you don’t need to see it again multiple times in the same week. If Adobe Max ends up being online and free again next year, I’ll probably try to take different sessions for some programs I haven’t learned or rarely use, since the focus seems to be new features instead of learning actual tips or tricks.

I think that’s all for now. Next week is Thanksgiving and I’ll be spending most of my free time doing prep work for the Elder Scrolls feast that I’m making for mine and my fiancé’s first Thanksgiving away from family as we settle into our new home in Seattle. Wish me luck!

Almost done!

I’ve finally finished the sixth course out of seven for Google’s UX Design Professional Certificate! I’m almost done with the certificate and I’m excited! This time, I built a responsive web design for a ceramics class sign-up process. I decided I wanted this design to be a bit more minimal on colors since I used so many on my last design. This one is partially finished–I built out every page (I think!) for the desktop design but only the necessary pages to complete the flow for the mobile. I also still have the tablet version to finish. So this will be another project to go back to at a later date once the course is finished. But I’m happy with how it’s turning out. I really liked a lot of the functionality I found in Adobe XD that I couldn’t find in Figma, like repeat grids and auto-animate, but I miss the community library tab that Figma has that I couldn’t find in Adobe XD. Anyways, I start the last course today: Design a User Experience for Social Good & Prepare for Jobs. Hopefully it won’t take as long as the last course. Here I go!

Another course completed

I’m officially done with my first course project and the fifth course in Google’s UX Design Professional Certificate! I’ve got a mobile app design and a case study to go with it. I really like how it turned out for a first project. There were some aspects of the prototyping that I couldn’t figure out that I wanted set up for my app’s flow, so I want to dig into Figma further once I finish this certificate program. The next course is Responsive Web Design in Adobe XD and I’m going to focus on creating the sign-up process for a ceramics studio. I used to enjoy ceramics in high school and would love to get back into it one day, so that’s why I chose it as my focus for this next project. I’m supposed to go through every step I’ve learned so far in the past five courses all in this one, so hopefully it won’t take as long as completing all of those courses did!

Onward!

I’ve finished the fourth course in Google’s UX Design Professional Certificate! It actually wasn’t as difficult for me as I thought it would be, and I actually ended up enjoying it a little. It was fun getting feedback on my prototype and learning what can be improved. I think I could have progressed through the course quicker than my actual pace, but I got distracted by a few things that happened to be away from my computer. Either way, I’m excited to make some updates to my prototype and then to get into the next course, Create High-Fidelity Designs and Prototypes in Figma.

Making progress

I’m almost halfway done with Google’s UX Design Professional Certificate! I finished the third course last night. I really enjoyed making digital wireframes and low-fidelity prototypes. I’m a little anxious going into the fourth course. It’s more research-focused, and I struggled a bit with some of the research portions in the second course, but I’m going to try to power through it so I can continue exploring Figma some more and get into Adobe XD to make some high-fidelity prototypes. I’m really excited by the progress I’m making and I’m going to use that motivation to work through this next course.

Two down, five to go!

I’ve finished the second course in Google’s UX Design Professional Certificate on Coursera! I actually finished it late Wednesday night after waiting for two peer projects to appear for review, and waiting on my project to be peer reviewed in return. And yesterday my fiancé and I went hiking at Franklin Falls so I didn’t make time to post the update here. I think the second course in the program will end up being the hardest for me to wrap my head around fully, just because there was a lot of writing to explain things and I like to keep my writing short and sweet and to the point. That, and I think the way some prompts were worded weren’t as clear to me what was being asked. It definitely helped having examples and exemplars throughout the course so I could check to make sure my answers to prompts were matching up with what was expected. I’m on to course three today to start learning about building wireframes and low-fidelity prototypes, and I’m really excited to get to this phase! Wish me luck!

Week of Learning

This week I decided to take on a bunch of different activities to boost my skills and learn something new. I’ve been tuning into AIGA’s Portfolio Festival this week to learn about ways to improve my design portfolio. I’ve been watching the live videos for Lauren Hom’s Intentional Idea Framework workshop to help me process all of the creative ideas I have and actually take action on some of them. Lastly, I signed up for Google’s UX Design Professional Certificate because I realized that while I am capable of being a visual designer in the UX field with my graphic design skills, I don’t fully understand the scope of the UX field yet, but I would like to. I actually just finished the first course out of seven, and I’m excited to keep diving into understanding what the field of user experience design is all about!

An update!

I’ve decided that I want to integrate this site into my portfolio website to help showcase some of the work I’m doing outside of my regular employment. I realized that I needed an outlet that I could post updates to that are both text-based and visual to be able to share what I’m currently learning or exploring.

#1: Hello, My Name Is

Hi! I’m Liz. I’m a graphic designer by trade. For the past so many years since graduating college, I’ve been trying to motivate myself to work on self-initiated design projects outside of my 8-5 job. I haven’t had much luck, but this evening I happened to complete the first project in Creative Workshop: 80 Challenges to Sharpen Your Design Skills. Now, I’ve had this book for years—I bought it a year or two after graduating—but it wasn’t until tonight that I fully attempted and completed project #1, which was to design your own logo. I ended up really liking my first design, which is pretty typical of me, but I also really liked my very last design. So much so, that I decided I wanted to keep track of every project I complete from the book, and so here we are. Here is my completed project #1: Hello, My Name Is.

All of my ideas from project #1

My very first idea during this exercise (ignore the star, that’s how I noted I liked it)

My very last idea for project #1

I wanted my logo to be my name, because Liz is only 3 letters and how hard can it be to come up with a design for that, right? Wrong! As you can see from my sketchbook, I mostly rewrote my name over and over again in mostly similar but some different styles. My current logo is an “lb” for my initials, and one that I designed senior year of college. I didn’t put too much thought into it. My plan anyways is to give out all of my business cards and then release my redesign.

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So the first part of this first project is to answer some questions about yourself; like what kind of design do you like, who are your favorite designers, and what kind of design do you want to be doing? I tried to keep those questions in mind while designing my logo, but I definitely got hung up on the letters of my name a lot. I’m pretty straightforward with my design style, and just life in general. I don’t like to beat around the bush—just give me the facts as they are. So I guess that translated into my design in a way; by focusing on just using the letters of my name and no fluff, I’ve created something that’s essential me. Huh. Well I already thought this project was a success but now I’m starting to realize how successful it was.

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I think I’ll wrap this up by saying I hope you’ve stuck around this far and will stay with me as I make my way through this book. I don’t plan on following a strict timeline for this, since it’s never worked for me in the past, so I hope you’ll be patient! Thanks for reading, and have a day.