This week’s reflection post will be slightly different. Rather than reflecting on the week’s work, I am going to reflect on the whole process of my second design project.

1. What were you asked to do? For the last 2.5 weeks or so our assignment has been to create two direct mailers on behalf of OU student services. We had to pick a primary and a secondary target audience and do research and analysis of these groups to see how we should target them. Then we were supposed to create the front and back sides of two direct mailers on Photoshop.

2. How did you respond to what you were asked to do? I was a little nervous at first about using Photoshop; but as I put elements on the mailers it got easier to see my vision come to life. I did not enjoy doing the target audience segmentation matrix, but it did greatly help me decide what things I should speak to in my mailer to best reach the audience.

3. How did you react to what you actually did? I found myself frustrated on a couple of instances while using Photoshop. Although I was angry with learning the program first hand, I was also shocked in the end to see that my designs actually didn’t look that bad.

4. Now go one level deeper: Why do you think your reaction was what it was? Like I’ve said in another reflection, Photoshop has always been quite intimidating for me. I think I was shocked at my work because I didn’t think mastering even these basic elements was possible. I think I was frustrated while using the program because I wanted things to be easily movable like the were in In Design, and I didn’t enjoy having to switch between layers or figure out which layer moved which thing.

5. What are some differences you found between Photoshop and InDesign? Do you feel like you prefer either one? The big difference is that in ID every object is movable and you can easily click between them. But, while in PS you have to switch between layers and can only edit objects if you have that one selected. This was frustrating because I often forgot about the layers and moved the wrong item. With that being said, at this point I think I prefer In Design to Photoshop because ID is a little easier to work with. I would like to do more on both to increase my familiarity with the programs but especially I could see myself using ID a lot in the future.