of a Graphic Design Student

Everything must begin somewhere, so for me to go into talking about being a student I must first begin as to why I wanted to study Graphic Design. As a child, I always enjoyed drawing and art. I remember that my father used to draw and paint cartoons on the walls of our room and somehow from that memory I was influenced to start going down an artistic career path. Of course when I started it was messy doodles and stick figures, so I slowly developed my skills overtime by taking art classes in high school and looking at tutorials on Youtube. To this day I still have the mentality of my artwork not being good enough, but I feel that is a mentality many artists carry.

My interest in Graphic Design began during my freshman year of high school when I took a Digital Design class. My teacher was possibly the best teacher I had in years. She supported me, gave me advice on how to improve my projects, became a friend and mentor to me. I was terrified to start her class because I was not good with computers nor did I know a thing about Digital Design, but that was the main reason of taking the class which was to learn more about it. I ended up loving and enjoying myself in that class which is why today I want to pursue Graphic Design as a career. The picture below is of a typographical portrait project I created in her class, the one project that gave me much struggle because I went past the deadline and needed an extension because my perfectionism took over me. Thinking about it now, I see where I could have cut down my time and not focus too much on the minor details. This project could still be improved, but I was pretty satisfied with the outcome. Sadly the formatting was a little off because it was a copy of an old file that I no longer have access to since it was saved on a student email of my old high school.

I am still not quite sure where I want to narrow down my focus for my future career as a Graphic Designer. I came to the thought that pursuing an Associate’s Degree in Graphic Arts and Design will give me many options to explore and learn about which will allow me to find what I enjoy the most.

My first course is Digital Video and Audio Editing. This subject was not one that I was super excited about because I was not interested in this aspect of Graphic Design, but I do enjoy films. The way certain films are edited catches my attention as some scenes are predominantly better than others. Video editing was something that I wanted to learn as more of a hobby rather than a career, so I am looking forward to that aspect of this course. However, I am the type of person that avoids being on camera as much as possible, so that is something that will be troubling but I know I need to improve on.