Over the past few weeks, I was submerged head-first into Photoshop and had to design two direct mailers for different stakeholders. I decided to design for high school seniors eligible for OU’s honors college and their parents. I thought it was important to focus on parents as well considering the influence they can have on their children during the decision making process. However, jumping into Photoshop was no easy task. I immediately had a slight panic attack, tried to use it, and quickly wished I was back to using InDesign. However, after much trial and error, a long Skype call to my best friend back home who is a graphic design major, and an hour long tutorial with her, I finally felt ready to start playing with Photoshop and attempt to create direct mailers.
During the creation process, I found myself stunned with how easy the simple tools in Photoshop were to use as I continued playing with them. However, a new difficulty quickly presented itself: how did I want these direct mailers to look and how do I accomplish that? I found these direct mailers hard to design. There’s so much information I want to put on them but not enough room. After a lot of creation, editing, and scrapping of work, I finally had my finished products. While I still feel as though there was a better way to design these (which I still have no idea what that would be) I am proud of myself for not shying away from the task and working with the tools and assignment at hand. I think this assignment helped me grow as a designer but also as a student. I had to push myself to continue, even when I didn’t love my work. I suppose that element comes with time.
As for the tools, I am definitely becoming more confident with them. I would feel good about working on a layout for an employer or taking on a task asked of me. However, I am more comfortable with InDesign. While I finally am starting to understand the layers in Photoshop, I know there are many complicated features I have yet to touch and there is so much more to learn. If I was to start over, I would draw out my designs on paper first and find multiple examples of direct mailers I like. While I did look at a few, I didn’t spend enough time on the drawing board before jumping into designing.
Overall, I really enjoyed this project and feel as though it helped me grow as a designer and a student. While there were moments of good and bad, the work continued to get better the more time I spent on it, and I think that is a good lesson for both the world of designing and life.
