Visual aesthetics has been a challenging but rewarding course. I’ve learned about the world of design and about my own design aesthetic, and even though it’s not fully developed yet, I believe I am on the right path toward becoming a great designer. I can thank this course for that.
Some of the most important things I’ll take away from this course are how to communicate and talk about design as a designer. I came into this program with no design knowledge so to hear terms such as “sans-serif” “line weight” “vector” “gestalt” and “rasterized” threw me off at first, but now I am fully confident in what those terms and others mean, and how they affect design aesthetic. I can walk into a design firm and discuss design in design language. I can also discuss and demonstrate the process of design. At first I hated having to do wireframes, sketches and content layouts, because I became used to creating things as I worked on the final product. Now I realize how important those things are. They have helped me cut time in half because having an idea about what you want to do and how you want it to look is so much better than going into a project blind with no direction. Plus it expected in the professional design world. Creating a final product without sharing ideas with the client first would be ludicrous so I’m glad I learned how to effectively do those things.
I also learned that design is not only about making things look pretty. Design is also implemented in the way the information is presented. Design should be clear and concise with the intended user always in mind. It’s not about what I think looks pretty (because I’m not designing for myself) but it’s about what the users wants to see and what would effectively guide them through whatever information is being presented. Illustrations, drawings, colors, and fonts can be as pretty as they want to be, but if they user cannot make sense of it (such as overly used script font) then the product is not successful. Even looking back on my old designs, I can see how the Visual Aesthetics course has impacted me in a positive way. I would typically use bold bright colors and jarring typeface when completing assignments because I thought it was cool. I had to learn that what’s cool to me is not always cool to my audience and unless I’m designing something exclusively for myself, the audience is the most important.
Visual aesthetics unlocked my creative thought with assignments such as creating an alien typeface and creating a motion type video. It added to my arsenal of tools by pushing me to learn programs such as After Effects and Illustrator to engage the audience in my presentations. Although I’m not a master at any of the tools I used in the course, I have become better, and I will continue to become better as time continues to tick.
I can honestly say that I really appreciate this course and the adages of my professor. Being very knowledgeable in the field of design, he was able to impart design wisdom in me and was always full of insight when critiquing my projects. I appreciate that (even though I never got an A on assignment) because with each project I became better in design and the presentation of it (due to increased emphasis on the important of presentation, something I can apply to any project).