Well, like most courses in iMedia, Visual Aesthetics kicked my butt. I entered the program with a journalism and broadcasting degree and felt fairly comfortable with basic design concepts. While I understood that creating solid designs would require hard work, I don’t think I realized just how much.
Anyone can design a website. Or an application interface, or a magazine, or a PSA. But it takes an extensive amount of time and attention to detail to make something really work on its own – and more importantly – for a client.
When it comes to Visual Aesthetics, a designer can’t really afford to skimp on anything. Everything has to be done with a purpose. When I started iMedia in the fall, I understood that fact, but I just wasn’t sure why certain design choices worked more than others. My only reason, in my mind, for designing something, was “it just looks good that way.” That kinda of reasoning might work for an undergraduate class assignment, or even in an iMedia course, but no one coming out of this class will think it will work for a client.
Moving on from this course into my final semester at Elon, I’ll be carrying the principles taught in Visual Aesthetics along with me. I’ll be building a mobile website for my capstone project. Because of the nature of the users of the site I’ll be making, a clean legible interface and solid information architecture will be tremendously important. That makes all of the skills I picked up in Visual Aesthetics key to a successful capstone project.
While I’m not sad the course is over, I am certainly glad I went through it. It’s an empowering feeling to look at what my skills were just five months ago, and compare them to now. As I’m only a few months away from hitting the job market again, it’s great to have that confidence.