This week in my PR Publications class, our main assignment was a seemingly simple one: choose a company and then create a likely business card for it. I decided on Lululemon, one of my favorite stores (though, admittedly, its the only store I ever truly splurge in). This was our first real assignment in class, and so needless to say I was pretty nervous, especially after the week before when I realized that I wasn’t nearly as creative or tech savvy as I thought I was.
Tuesday’s class wasn’t the best start to my creative career. In order to get inspired and to get a feel of the company we choose, my teacher had us all create a few Pinterest boards and base our designs off of those, so I had a general idea of what I wanted to incorporate in my business card. I knew I wanted to include a sort of criss-cross design, as many of Lululemon’s clothing items have crossed backs or fronts. I also wanted the colors to be black, white and red based, since those are the colors included in the logo. So, with all this in mind, I set about creating my own business card…and failed miserably. At first it was too plain, then it was too crowded, then the colors didn’t look well together, and when I tried to use different tints it looked even worse. I left class that day feeling very discouraged.
Today, however, with a little help from Ed Sheeran (currently obsessed with his new song “Shape of You”), I let the music and my Pinterest boards further my inspiration for my design. The resulting product was quite different from my original conception: I used black and white along with varying shades of pink, blue and yellow. I changed the font to something more simple and thin. I included the criss-crossed lines, but changed the colors of those probably about 10 times. In the end, I was pleased with the outcome, but still wished I had more time to make it even better.
This assignment helped me realize even more so than before that designing and creating is truly a process. Great works don’t happen in a day. They don’t even happen in two days. It takes time, effort and practice to create something truly beautiful, and I hope by the end of this class, I will be able to say that I have.
