I am a designer

Toronto Image Works Class of Spring 2012

My Experience with TIWI has taught me (1) computer applications: Adobe InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, Bridge and Camera Raw and (2) elements of design: layout (simple zones), engagement, scan and skim elements, thumbnail sketches, typography, typesetting, working with clients, speaking about design projects, colour managed workflow and how people perceive our visual world (including a brief biology lesson on eye balls).  It was 14 weeks packed with learning, great mentors and fun colleagues!

On the final day of the course we presented our portfolios and for a brief moment I thought that was the end.  Then it dawned on me just how much valuable information Tom, my design teacher had to share with us – because I spent the next week or so getting my portfolio polished.  Tom gave me a semi-private lesson on building identities and designing logos, saying that there just wasn’t enough time in the course to go over everything.  It reminded me that in our first couple of introductory days he emphasized that we should continually be learning and growing in design and I can see why.  Now that my portfolio is printed and bound (and looking great), I have started applying for design jobs.  One job posting after another asked for a designer with extensive web building experience.  I have designed my own websites, but the skills employers were asking for were beyond the scope of my experience. So along with looking for work in my field of print production (books, brochures, posters, logos, stationary, direct mail, etc.) I started learning WordPress.

Technically speaking I began playing with WordPress in my first week of class, but the course was too intensive and I quickly found that WordPress was going to have to wait until I was done.

Let me know what you think of it so far – it is going to be a work in progress – getting better as I learn more and more 🙂



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