~.:JasmineTea:.~

Step 1: Identifying strengths and areas for improvement

• Think about your achievement last year in school and in the first few weeks of this school year and make a list of your strengths as well as areas for improvement.
• List them in the table below.

Strengths:
Example: I work well with others
• I am flexible working with other people.
• I am organized at school.
• I usually finish things on time.
• I try to solve problems on my own and if I cannot, I ask for help. Not the answers.

Areas for improvement:
Example: I need to pay more attention in class

• I don’t participate in class a lot during discussions.
• I should complete my sentence even if I don’t have confidence in what I’m saying.
• I am quiet when meeting new people from other grades or people I am not used to.
• I sometimes get distracted by little things.

Step 2: Organizing the information
Looking at the table, identify the top 3 strengths and the top 3 areas for improvement.

Step 3: Identifying my goals
Over the next semester, I want to …. (Insert goal here)
 Aim for three achievable goals over the next semester.
 Be very specific in your goals. Do not state, “I want to do better” or “I want better grades”.
 Be specific about what you would like to improve. For example, “I would like to improve my understanding of the concept of change in Humanities or “I would like to learn 100 new words in French.”

Goal #1:
Over the next semester, I want to ….
Understand how to do the redox questions in Chemistry
Goal #2:
Over the next semester, I want to ….
Start understanding business, by the learning we do in Business Studies
Goal #3:
Over the next semester, I want to ….
Be able to draw figures from any angle by the things I learn in Art

Step 4: Developing strategies to achieve my goals and ways of measuring them to know if I have achieved them. For example:
Goal# 1: Over the next semester, I want be less distracted by my computer.
To achieve this goal I will … (these are my strategies)
1. Make eye contact with the person who is speaking
2. Close the computer down even if the teacher hasn’t told me to do so because I know that I listen better that way
3. Never have anything open which the teacher hasn’t asked me to open
I will know I have reached my goal when…
• These are how I will measure whether I have achieved it
• See Y Chart on PPT slide to help you

Step 4: Developing strategies
Goal # 1: To achieve this goal I will…
Step 1
Ask people to explain to me. For example, Mr. Midgley or fellow classmates
Step 2
Practice redox questions until I have the hang of it
Step 3
Continue using them so I don’t forget it

I will know that I have reached my goal when . . .

It feels like…

I understand how to do the redox questions with no problem.

It sounds like…

I can explain how to do them to other people

It looks like….

I have no problems with redox equations

Goal # 2: To achieve this goal I will…
Step 1
Pay attention during class
Step 2

Participate in class discussions

Step 3
Try to understand what my dad is talking about and keep using business vocabulary

I will know that I have reached my goal when . . .

It feels like…

I know what my dad is talking about

It sounds like…

I actually understand business

It looks like….

…I’m smart

Goal # 3: To achieve this goal I will…
Step 1
Practice drawing with many different angles, poses, etc.

Step 2
State the things I need to improve on the drawings

Step 3

Repeat step 1, taking into consideration the things I write in step 2.

I will know that I have reached my goal when . . .

It feels like…

I am confident in drawing figures

It sounds like…

Drawing doesn’t require sound

It looks like….

I can draw a rough sketch of people in proportion from many different angles or poses

Looking back at the things we started off from in the beginning of the unit, I think I have improved immensely.

Like I had written on the previous reflection (here) I had improved in both techniques and designing. When I look at my very first restaurant business card (link) there are many things that I can change to make it better.

I learnt skills on Photoshop that would help me draw things in a better way. I can now create fonts by using the ‘path’ tool like I had done in my food packaging design project and make a font that was more like the one I had imagined. I had to use one that was close to my imagination but now I can create one that is closer to what I hope for. I also noticed that the design is so much ore simpler than the ones that I have made towards the end of the unit. I don’t have much other than text, swirls and tomatoes. Actually, that is all I have. I don’t have color either. I had said that it was because it was more of an expensive restaurant, but I think that was just thought up of as I noticed that it was too hard to add colors.

The same goes for my magazine cover (link). I have very simple lines making my whole magazine. I was happy about this work since I did not use any photos for my design and purely just drew things for the project. However, now that I look at it, I can make it more interesting now. The lines used on the graph could be more complex, making it look 3D, and the parts of the graph being broken off can be made more dramatic as well. That might show how I have improved at deciding what sort of designs are more appealing to the audience.

I think I see the most improvement  in my game cover design brief (link) in regards to thinking about the audience. I started to be more specific than before and actually started to make my design look like it was aiming towards the specific age and gender. The amount of information I included in the design brief increased. I also drew properly for this project for the first time for the graphic design unit. The process, in my opinion was much more detailed as well, compared to the previous ones.

The project that I enjoyed the most was the food packaging project (link). Because I improved a lot on the game cover project, it was a lot easier to put my ideas down and create a design that followed the image in my head. The design brief was more detailed including information on my product (which was very fun to ‘create’) and on the customers. I also had a wider view on my audience. Because my product was a snack that was aimed towards little children, I also noticed that I had to make the product appealing to their parents who were the ones that were going to choose if they were going to pay for it or not. The fact that we got more time on this project than the other ones let me try new things more. I used most of the skills that I had learnt previously and could include some that I found in some other tutorials. For example, for drawing my food product I used a tutorial that showed me how to make an ice cream bar. Although they were two different things, because I had time to go through tutorials, I could use skills that were used during the process.

The final project, the student diary (link) was, I think, the one that I used the most amount time outside of class on. It is true that the food packaging design was the one that I spent the most time on, but I was thinking about this project outside of class the most. It may be because for the food packaging, I had a pretty concrete idea from the start, whereas for this project, I was adding as I went along. Right now, I really like the results and am satisfied with it.

This whole design unit helped me with not only Photoshop and Illustrator skills, but also other things such as writing design briefs, looking at what sort of audience you are targeting towards, showing and explaining our progress and ideas, and seeing what sort of designs were interesting.

Development and Ideas
This is my final work:

*The green for the background is brighter than the actual color when printed.

The Other Student Diary Design

I have another diary cover that I designed because I wanted one that was more colorful. I thought the one with the woman in a kimono would end up more duller.

Because I wanted something colorful, I started by looking at colorful pictures and drawings. I then came across many that included paint sploches or paints in them and I decided to base mine off the idea that people were creating the diary cover. I sketched the hands first then drew faces.

Because one of the hands did not look that interesting holding a paint brush and also because it looked like the paint brush was bent, I changed it into a spray paint can. I then traced my sketch on Photoshop and moved it into the diary cover template and started coloring.

I had to resize and move around many objects. I had no idea what to put for the background, but ended up making it a gradient of green to blue to white. I like the hands bits of it, but as a whole I like the design with the woman in the kimono better.

I changed the design brief a little:

Design Brief Packaging
Development Process

This was my final design (click to enlarge):

Right now in art class, as you have sen from my previous posts, we are working on graphic designs using the applications Photoshop and Illustrator. We are working on our largest project in the unit, and this is my progress so far:
Design Brief Packaging

This is the design brief for this whole project. I am designing a packing for a snack, selling it’s ‘healthiness’ because it contains a lot of both vitamin C and calcium. I made it like this because I wanted to make the product appealing to a wide range of people. The packing was designed to be appealing to young children, from the age of 3, but by pushing the ‘heathy’ idea out, it would be appealing to their parents as well.

This is what I drew for the product to look like:

I used the basic look of the チョコボール, a Japanese chocolate snack.

This is my packaging design progress so far:

The very last picture is what I have right now. I put my character on the front of the packaging, since Mr. McCrory suggested I should, since when the product is put on the shelf, that is where the customers would look. Because I put my character in, I rearranged my chocolate and text a little bit. I started putting in the information for the nutrients, but still have not finished. I have a large blank space next to the big version of my character which I have NO IDEA what to put in yet…Any suggestions?

*I am also open to suggestions for the name of my cow character (Just maybe something to do with milk and strawberry…I don’t really think names like Butterscotch would fit him/her)

I tried fixing the Magazine document by moving the pictures, but it did not work.

-New-

• This post was supposed to be published a while ago, but I think I forgot to press ‘publish’ and saved the draft instead
• I found a way to fix the word documents so I will start fixing them when I have the time

Overall, I think I have improved both on my designing and my Photoshop skills.

I had used free drawing applications before, so I knew a little about the basic things already (e.g. layers) however, since I had not used Photoshop before, it was still hard to find where and what sort of things each tool did. By using it so much during this unit, I learned how to use it as well as shortcuts, different way to do one thing, and which were the easiest for me. For example, for the first project, I rendered a tomato and it took me ages to do, especially with the selecting, and putting on the highlights, and that was why I chose a very simple object to do. In the most recent project, I rendered a gun held by a hand, and I found that I was used to doing it so much more than I was before. That was why I chose to add more details to it.

As for my designing skills, I think the largest reason why I got better is because I thought about my audience, and who my target customers were. For my Villa Italia project, I had a very vague idea of who my target customers were, but could not specify one type while creating my whole project. This is why now that I look at it, what I said my target customers were, were a little bit off to what I produced. However, starting with my news magazine project, I knew who my target customers were. This is probably because I already have a strong idea of what sort of people read news magazines so my target customer was sort of already in place from when I started. This image helped me imagine what sort of things I could put into my design. Because I got used to having a target customer, I think it was easier for me to create one for my latest project.

Compared to my very first project, I am very happy with my result for my game cover project. This is why I think that I have improved my graphic designing skills.

Design Brief Game
Development Process

Graphic Design-News Magazine

Graphic Design