PR Pubs: Reflection

This week I was asked to create direct mailers that were to be sent to the target audience for the University of Oklahoma recruitment services. I chose two different types of students that the school typically targets, the accomplished athletes and the National Merit Scholars. My reaction to my product was so-so. I feel like what I created was solid and safe, but I usually have much more creativity than what I was feeling with this project, and I was left slightly disappointed in my final design. I think my reaction was as it was because I have very high standards for myself and my first large design project I absolutely loved, so to go from something that greatly inspired me to something that wasn’t up to my standards was a great let down.

Photoshop took me MUCH more time to understand than inDesign. I feel a large reason I was not able to be creative with this project was because I spent so much time re-learning from the videos and messing around learning the tools, I wasn’t able to express myself as much through the design. I feel much more confident in Photoshop now though as I really began to understand what I was doing closer to the time when I had to turn in the project, so I feel my next creation with Photoshop will be much more to my standards.

I do not prefer one tool over the other because they have such different uses. I love the editing abilities in Photoshop, but I love the layout of InDesign and I can see myself using both of them frequently in the future.

If I could start over, I would have spent less time learning every little thing about photoshop and just did research as I went, learning only the things I needed to do, so that I would have had time to really perfect and clean up my design and make it what I wanted.