Grad Project Post!

Okay -so I lied. I said I would put the link back up to my grad blog on the side navigation, and I am still yet to do so. But have no fear fellow bloggers.. in the meantime here is some current progress I have made.

During my last meeting with Mark Busse, I was feeling a little down about the amount of time I was putting into this project -but mainly spinning my wheels. Mark said that if he could physically kick my ass right now, he would. You know you have to pull up your socks when Mark says that to you! I definitely didn’t want to ever feel like this again, so I have been trying to be as productive as possible over the past week.

Surprisingly, this has meant working less. Strange concept to me at first, but so far it seems to be working out for the moment. I have been giving myself a bit of a break because I tend to FREAK OUT so easily, and then get nothing done because I’m so exhausted from freaking out! Not very effective use of time, huh? Mark also mentioned that it is time to make some really big design decisions and just keep getting stuff out to be revised, redone, revisited -just start generating things! I have some logo development photos I will post here, and when I have some time I will be putting up some spread mock ups I have been working on.

I have decided to go with ‘Versa onscreen magazine’ I like the name because has a nice roll off the tongue type of feel, and sounds quite feminine. At the same time, I like the relation to being well versed in something, or speaking, as well as being versatile. This seems to fit my brand identity fairly well. Just to keep myself from spending 20+ hours humming and hawing about whether or not this is good I just up and bought the domain. Granted, it did only cost 7.95 so it’s not that drastic, but in my mind it seems like a decision made -and now time to move on to the next.

**Update - Here’s a peek at some rough rough spreads I’ve done recently

If I can offer any advice to people who are beginning to think about their final projects..Don’t think about it too much yet if you’re still in a fairly early stage of the program. If you’re anything like me, you may do some useless agonizing and make the rest of your classes suffer, as well as your sleep! Also, don’t do something that you have a huge attachment. Keep those great ideas for projects at a later time, very personal projects that you have had stirring up on the side are a dangerous one to do as your final project. As much as this should be your own final project -there are a lot of things that you may not be able to do due to VFS restrictions, so keep that in mind! But also, try to have fun. I’ve realized that as much as you plan, things always go wrong, things always change, things always have some way of turning out a bit unexpected -but that isn’t to say that can’t be a good thing! Just try and choose something you can see yourself loving for the whole span of the timeline, you can’t get bored of this project or it will be a nightmare. Do NOT stress about doing a groundbreaking “OMG” type of project -just do something that you can be proud of at the end, to put in your portfolio and look back on with good memories (hopefully!)

Hope that helps some - I know I was told similar things before starting my project, so it may take abit of your own experience to really realize a lot of this stuff.. ya know, learning the hard way