Musings

This class has been extremely helpful because it was my first exposure really to art and design, on a professional level. Starting with fine art, and working our way into design was a great way to approach the class. It helped distinguish the two while showing various manifestations of visual aesthetics. Things in this class were brought to my attention that are absolutely vital to the career I will pursue after the program. I hope to design interfaces for the traditional and mobile web – and while large parts of this lie in usability – a great deal of successful design lies in visual aesthetics.

One of the most important things I learned in this class is how to use information. Firstly, I learned quickly that less is usually more, and displaying things in the simplest matter is usually the most successful. Making the viewer/user work too hard, without an intention behind this, should be avoided. Also pertaining to information, when designing for the web, less is more. And it is very important to take the size of the browser into account when deciding how you will approach design.

Another important lesson I learned lies within typography, which is obviously an extremely important aspect in design. Typography is used in almost everything I hope to design in my career, and I now know that there is a very specific intention behind every decision made in this aspect.

The most important and helpful thing about the class though, was the critiques. Although my anxiety was pushed to its limits a couple times in the class, this is where I learned the most. Hearing not only Motley’s, but the rest of my peers’, opinion on my work along with everyone’s work was invaluable. This is where many lessons were learned and stuck with me. I’m very glad I got to take this class and I only wish I could have spent more time working on the projects, and mastering the techniques.