Reflection lesson 9

This week, our class was asked to complete our second design project. two direct mailers. The direct mailers were intended to be for two different stakeholders. One of my stakeholders were 16-18 year old high school students whose parents are University of Oklahoma alum. My second stakeholder was the actual alum/parents of the primary stakeholder. In the past weeks, we have been working extensively with indesign. This week, we were ban from indesign and were instructed to use photoshop. I had a positive attitude at first and was optimistic about using photoshop. I was negative about using indesign until I got the hang of it and I figured that photoshop would be the same way. Well, I was wrong. Photoshop is very difficult. I had to look up a handful of tutorials and struggled to find out the tools’ abilities. Also, at the beginning of this design project, I was unsure of the exact purpose and forum of a direct mailer and my level of unawareness is evident in the first draft of my two mailers.

I was much more satisfied with my final copies of my two direct mailers. I feel like towards the end of this project I had a better understanding and grasp on the look and purpose of a direct mailer. If my level of proficiency was more advanced in photoshop, I would have made a few adjustments and refinements, but other than the specifics, I am pleased with my message of my direct mailers.

After completing this project, I think I prefer indeisgn. I am more confident when using indeisgn as opposed to photoshop. If I could start this process over, I would do more research about direct mailers. I would want to do more research so that my first draft of my mailers would be more advanced and my final copies would be more refined. All in all, this was a learning experience and I am eager to power through next week’s social media design sprint.