My Positive & Negative Characteristics

I would like to think that we can all improve. Upon identifiying my positive attributes aswell as my negative attributes as a teammate, I have been given the opportunity to reflect on them, and establish how I contribute to a group and how I can negativly impact a group.

Growing up as a Canadian kid, playing hockey was my life. It is a sport unlike any other for building many skills, and comradery and teamwork skills are the major ones. Hockey binds together not just the players on the team, but the coaches as well. In order for the team to be success, everyone must pull their weight, and contribute positively to have success. A team is only as string as the sum of its parts, and everyone has the ability to effect the outcome. This translates to not just graphic design, but any profession or function in life that requires working together to acheive success. Each memeber must acknowledge their own strengths and weaknesses so that they may be active contributers.

POSITIVE
My positive team attributes would be that I am adaptable, c0-operative, hardworking, open minded, and helpful to all members. I look at myself as a leader when it comes to group work as well. A good leader supports his or her teammates ideas and offers support and direction. I have always been an adaptable person, because sometimes you need to sacrifice personal views for the greater good of the group, and I have no problem doing so if its going to benefit the solution. Working hard is certainly something that my parents stressed on me, and every member of a group should be willing to work hard to to achieve a positive result. I like to always help others, even outside of the group, to make sure everyone is getting the most out of a situation as they can. A good group member pulls up their teammates when they are falling.

NEGATIVE
If there is one thing that studying graphic design has taught me, it is that you must be willing to openly accept constructive criticism, and not take it personally. My negative attributes are that I can become to attached to an idea, flighty, passive, complacent, and unrealistic. I have found myself many times were someone or myself proposes an idea and I get excited about it and don't focus on other ideas proposed. I know this is contradictory to me being open minded, but the thing is I am still willing to discuss other ideas and make the right decision for the job at hand. Sometimes during a project, I can find mt mind wandering off to other things. Imagination is a great thing, but I sometimes do not focus enough on the task at hand. One attribute that really bothers me about myself is that I can be very passive. I don't like to make other people feel bad, and I like to hear what everyone has to say because they have a valuable opinion, but this can result in me not voicing my opinion strongly enough. I have really been trying this semester to develop my creative process and open-up my creative mind to all projects. This has resulted in me coming up with great but unrealistic ideas at times. I recently developed a concept for a Hard Rock Cafe shopping bag that would be made out of leather and un-zip like a leather jacket to reveal a t-shirt underneath. While it was a great idea, it was really unrealistic for me to create, so the solution was effected because of this.

people that have influenced me

This topic is a particularily broad one for myself, as I feel that it is impossible to single out one person as being the most influential on my life. We are deeply influenced by the people we grow up with, and the people we choose to be around, however, everyone that has ever taught me something or given me advice has contributed to my growth as a person. I feel that all these people that have influenced me have allowed me to learn a diverse array of lessons, and experience life in ways that have allowed me to expand my mind. I will attempt to credit them all, but for the sake of this blog, I will focus on the ones that are closest to me.

My parents are a gigantic influence on me. They taught me my first lessons and instilled in me the values that have made me into the person I am today. They preached discipline, hard work, and never giving up on your dreams. My father made it very clear that I have a dream and never let anyone stand in my way of reaching it. My coaches in hockey had similar values and further reinforced them on me through hard work and dedication. My parents also made it clear that you work hard and finish what you start.

Teachers throughout my educational career have had great influences on me as well. Consistently through the years, they preached working hard, but also being open minded and thinking for myself. My high school art teacher contributed to these influences in a large way. She helped me to think "outside of the box" and to be aware of the power that we wield as creative people. We have the ability to influence people in our society with pieces of work that cause them to see things differently, and to raise awareness towards different issues. She was always very positive, and never overly critical. I felt that this was good because as a high school student, you are trying to develop and gain confidence in you abilities as you choose a career path, and harsh criticism, while constructive, can be detremental, as it can be received the wrong way.

I feel that all the people I have been around have influenced me and have contributed to the development of my mind. As a creative person, these experiences and lessons are vital as I can bring them back to my work as a graphic designer/artist.

Kevin King's Design Manifesto

1. Allow for the bad ideas – in the conceptual stage, write down anything that comes to mind, even the bad ideas, as parts of them may form the basis of a great idea.

2. Do not rush the conceptual stage – The computer is just a tool, a very sophisticated tool. It does not dictate your creativity, you do. The most time on a project should be spent researching the brand/product/service, writing down thoughts and ideas, and sketching down concepts freely and in an explorative manner, so that all creative options and solutions may be viewed without the constraints of the computer.

3. Experience life – Get out and enjoy life. Whether you are a designer or not, experiences outside of your normal realm will make you a more creative person and more knowledgeable as well, and can be brought to the table for any project. You only live once. Enjoy it!

4. Be passionate – Anything you do in life, especially something like a job, should be something you love and are passionate about. In a field such as graphic design, being passionate about your work and the profession is essential to producing good work and finding the ambition to put in countless hours of work on a project. Great ideas come from people who are passionate about their work.

5. Think about constraints later – although design may be created in response to constraints, it is important to not let them cloud your creativity in the conceptual stage. Think of all your ideas, push them as far as you can, and be free of constraints in this earliest stage. After you have generated several awesome ideas, pull them back and make them work within these constraints.

6. Work around others – People make design what it is. It is a response to their needs. Working in a confined area all the time with no outside interaction limits your insperation and ignores the very people you are designing for. Even if it is not other designers you work around, dialogue between you and them will open your mind to what they want to see, and will allow for feedback and open, fresh thought.

7. Beware the computer – We love our macs, but they can be the worst thing for us as designers and thinkers. All those fancy effects and tools that seduce us into designing solely for the asthetic, and can force us into using the same styles and visual solutions over and over again, making them old and boring. Think on paper with a pencil first, as their are no limits to what you can do or create, then use that sophisticated tool to make it all slick and mass-producable.

8. Theres no such thing as a stupid question – If there was, mankind would not be where it is today. Ask anything and get answers. Learning is one of our greatest tools and we can never expand our knowledge if we don't ask questions.

9. Do not fear failure – We learn from making mistakes, from childhood to death. Do not be afraid of mistakes, embrace them. A grade is symbol that does not necessarily help us. Our mistakes force us to learn and become educated, therefore school is about learning from mistakes and not grades, as is life in the professional world.

10. Indulge into Typography – As graphic designers, words are essential to how we communicate and so is the type we choose to set those words in. Allow yourself to become addicted to it. Take the time to select an appropriate typeface and apply the typography in a way that gives meaning to the word. Type is ever-changable. Manipulate it in creative ways, draw your own, look at other designers type use, look at typographic art, and study the history of type and its current trends to better understand the fonts you are working with and why you chose them.

20 words relating to my design theory

1. Function
2. Visual
3. Asthetic
4. communication
5. Ideas
6. Form
7. logic
8. composition
9. purpose
10. simplicity
11. innovation
12. thinker
13. reaction
14. educate
15. inform
16. strategy
17. create
18. creativity
19. reason
20. sketch

Revised "Design Is" Statement(1)

Design is the communication of ideas and messages that speak to a target market in a way that appeals to them both visually and functionally.

Design Is…

Design is the communication of ideas and messages through visual means that are both asthetically pleasing and functional to the target audience.

Information Usage

The following is a documentation of how much technology I used during a given week. The information is broken into categories and the day amount of time spent using the technology on a given day of the week.

READING (books, magazines, newspapers):

Mon: 1 hour
Tues: 30 minutes
Wed: 0 hours
Thurs: 20 minutes
Fri: 30 minutes
Sat: 0 hours
Sun: 1 hour

LISTENING TO RADIO:

Mon: 0 hours
Tues: 0 hours
Wed: 0 hours
Thurs: 0 hrs
Fri: 20 minutes
Sat: 30 minutes
Sun: 20 minutes

LISTENING TO MUSIC:

Mon: 2 hours
Tues: 2 hours
Wed: 1 hours
Thurs: 2 hours
Fri: 30 minutes
Sat: 30 minutes
Sun: 30 minutes

WATCHING TV, MOVIES:

Mon: 0 hours
Tues: 30 minutes
Wed: 2 hours
Thurs: 2 hours
Fri: 3 hours
Sat: 4 hours
Sun: 5 hours

SENDING E-MAILS:

Mon: 30 minutes
Tues: 30 minutes
Wed: 30 minutes
Thurs: 10 minutes
Fri: 0 hours
Sat: 10 minutes
Sun: 0 hours