Good Times Shouldn't Mask Amazon's Threat to Retailers

This article talks about how even though retail stores are doing well, they should not overlook the threat of Amazon.com. E-commerce has helped retailers increase sales, sometimes almost doubling quarter sales from year to year. Amazon has been a threat since the beginning. Many people are going into physical stores to look at items and shortly after, find them online and purchase at a cheaper price. This is called "show rooming." I think this topic can relate to the design field in a few ways. One of which being that clients don't have to choose YOU. They don't have to choose your small business or corporation just because you're local. They have options. Just like you can shop at Target for a toaster, but then find the same one on Amazon for $5 cheaper. Clients always have the option to outsource their designs. They could choose someone across the world to make a design for them and save hundreds of dollars. Maybe the quality might not be as high, but in my opinion, people could see their savings as something more important than something a little lower in quality.

For a website to be usable, I believe there has to be semiotics. Users need to be able to find their way around a site and without symbols and signs (semiotics), that would not be possible. If someone wants to go back a page, there's the agreed upon sign is an arrow to the left, to go forward, it's the arrow to the right. Also, to make it known that something is clickable, there will be something that tells us we can; something that differentiates the clickable items from the non-clickable. Typically a "home" button is a little house, or the name or logo of the website. All of these things are signs or symbols that let the user know where to go. It is pretty much universal.

Common skills needed:

Art direction, creative direction, design skills, development skills, illustration skills, photography skills, production skills, project management skills, public relation skills, and writing skills in certain situations

How will I prepare myself in college to have a successful design career:

Take necessary classes, always ask questions to gain comprehension and understanding, work with as many applications as possible, improve on the programs I need more experience with such as photoshop, premier, bridge, etc., expand my horizons and try new things such as videography and animation, apply and gain relative experience through internships and beginner level jobs.

Positions that would be a good fit for me:

Production Designer, Graphic Designer, Photographer, Photo compositor

Questions:

1. Is travel required more for a specific field than others?
2. For the photo retouching jobs, is there a decrease in applicants due to the movement towards non-retouched images in todays media?

After reviewing the AIGA salary survey I learned a few things. One of them obvious, the higher up in the company you are, the more you will make yearly. Another thing I learned is that freelancing with no employees pays more than I had thought it would. I understand this position also depends on how much experience you have and how many clients you have, but it is still higher than I had anticipated. The average salary for a "Designer" was what I had always thought, around $45,000. If you're the head of a department or an executive, you will obviously be making more on average.

Project 1 required us to create a personal brand logo for ourselves. This process involved many steps and critiques and we ended up with one final successful logo for ourselves. Here is my process:

1. The beginning of this project started out with creating a moodboard to gather our inspiration for colors, text, and overall style and feel.

2.Logo Sketches: We continued this process by sketching out ideas for our logo beginning with the 6 categories of logos; logotype, product/service, initial, literal, abstract, and allegorical. From there, I continued to sketch 80 total logo ideas and narrowed them down from there.

3. From here, I narrowed it down to fewer, more developed logos brought into illustrator and converted them into vector images. This allowed me to play with color and size and strokes, etc. to get a better feel for what my logos' potential could be.

4. When I chose a final logo, I tested whether it could withstand various effects added to it to mimic possible situations it may be exposed to such as motion blur when a car drives by, embossing, distorting it as if it were flying on a flag or on a shirt, etc.

5. After critiquing each of my semi-finalized logos, I decided on one of them for my personal brand use and continued to tweak it until I felt it had reached its full potential. I played around with the color, stroke weight, rounding corners, and a pantone color scheme. This is my final brand board featuring the logo in color, black and white, the pantone color used, and a typeface choice if I choose to add a title. 

-Set alarm

-check time

-text

-text

-snapchat

-text

-social media

-call

-text

-photo

-check time

-check time

-text

-text

-text

-make reminder

-social media

-social media

-text

-alarm

-check time

-text

-text

-snapchat

-text

-social media

-call

-text

-photo

-check time

-check time

-text

-text

-text

-make reminder

-social media

-call/text

-social media

-text

-alarm

"In this study, emerging media technologies were defined as: Email, mobile computing, podcasts, digital audio/media player, mobile communication device (e.g., BlackBerry), instant messaging, interactive web pages, and blogs."

American Journal of Business: "The most commonly applied ‘shorthand description’ of emerging media is that it is communications – of all types – based on digital technologies, and increasingly with interactive components. Among definitions designed to transcend user jargon, is that offered by Neuman (1991) more than a decade ago. He argued that what we define as emerging media will a) alter the influence of distance, b) increase the volume and speed of communications, c) enable interactive communications and d) permit the merging of media forms."

My definition:

Any mode of communication whether it be through pictures, blog posts, statuses, etc such as social media, online blogs, or websites.
​

What is Graphic Design?

AIGA : "Graphic design, also known as communication design, is the art and practice of planning and projecting ideas and experiences with visual and textual content. The form of the communication can be physical or virtual, and may include images, words, or graphic forms. The experience can take place in an instant or over a long period of time. The work can happen at any scale, from the design of a single postage stamp to a national postal signage system, or from a company’s digital avatar to the sprawling and interlinked digital and physical content of an international newspaper. It can also be for any purpose, whether commercial, educational, cultural, or political."

Treefrog.ca "Graphic design is art with a purpose. It involves a creative and systematic plan to solve a problem or achieve certain objectives, with the use of images, symbols or even words. It is visual communication and the aesthetic expression of concepts and ideas using various graphic elements and tools."

My definition:

Graphic design is the art of projecting images, ideas, and concepts through text, symbols, images, and other media.