Summary of Learning

We are coming to an end in PR Pubs and as we do so we were asked to reflect back on what we have learned throughout the course. It was very rewarding to look at the first blog post in our class and compare it to our most recent ones. At the beginning of the course we were still in our infancy stage of learning not only Adobe programs but also various ideas of design. Learning more about how alignment, typography and other design tools are used in the creative process was fundamental in getting me to become a master PR professional.

One of my favorite projects of the course was the first one. I created a business card and letterhead with Nintendo as my company. What I learned from the very beginning is that great design does not happen on your first go around. Rather design is the art of fine tuning and constantly reworking your vision until it is as good as it will get. At first I was not capable of cropping out the background, making shapes and adjusting proportionally. With more practice, peer advisement and review of tutorials, I was able to make a killer design. I kind of started to think of design as a master wood carver. You may be able to make something that is recognizable on your first attempt, but it will take going back to your design and looking at what needs taking out or shaped to make your creation resonate.

Looking at some projects that I could have went some further links on, I would say I would change some things in “My Social Sprint” post and “Direct Mailer”. For the first, I need to look at how my words and fonts can be more legible for my audience. Just because social media is more mobile, fast and inclined to have more discrepancies does not mean that my audience will give a lousy design a past. Every day people are getting better and better at using social media tools to deliver great designs and as PR professionals we need to be in the top of media curators. In addition to that project my “Direct Mailer” also would need some re-tweaking. I want to make sure that each stakeholder gets a mailer that is designed just for them. Making one for the teachers that would be a little more different, yet still get my message across would go a long way in making my company or organization stand out.

Overall, I feel like I have made great progress in my pursuit of becoming a PR professional through this course. The ideas of design and creating for a company’s personality have been taught and expressed in other courses I have taken, but this course had a lot of tangible projects that gave you the power of design. I will never take for granted the aspects of InDesign and Photo Shop that help us make our vision and creativity into a reality. The world we live in is all about user curation. People upload millions of post, videos, songs and photos on social media every day, but what most are lacking is the ability to see their designs become reality. Taking curation a part, I feel like this class helped all of us become “the cure” in curation. We have the ability to make our content better than everyone else because we have the knowledge and know how to do make some awesome designs. I cannot wait to apply what I have learned in this class in my future designs.