Professional Practices (2023)

Today's my birthday and I have officially completed my assignments as well so I'm feeling good. I showed Dean my showreel for the last time and there was an issue with the timing of my artwork and the song in the promotional section of my showreel so I fixed it up in class and got the approval from Dean that my showreel was all good. I also converted all my Microsoft word documents to artworks in Illustrator so PROGRESS! Now all that's left is to fill my spreadsheet and I'll be done!

I feel like I'm almost there, degree project is killing me but thankfully I have most of my stuff done for this course so I feel like I can focus more on my degree project. I saw my friends PowerPoint template and Dean's comment on it, making me feel the need to add some designs but then I remembered Dean's mention of my stuff being fine and not needing to add anything. So, I made sure not to touch any of the stuff I've already gotten the approval of from Dean. Meanwhile, I did some editing on my music. I found out that the showreel should best be 40 - 45 seconds so I came to the realization that I had to edit my music accordingly. Thus I tried the Adobe software Audio Editor for the first time. I asked some friends on how to use it and proceeded to work on it. This is my first time editing music like this, I usually just cut and blend in Premiere Pro so I honestly felt a little overwhelmed with all the extra features. Nevertheless, I pushed through, picking out a secti...

I created the presentation slides and my excel sheet last week. Dean didn't mention any requirements for the presentation slides so I just went the simple route.  I also took a template for my excel sheet from the internet and just tweaked it to match my branding. I also created a mockup for the business card and letter since Dean mentioned that we would get extra points if we did so.

I showed Dean my previous showreel and besides the expected the response about the vibe and original logo, the rest was about the same. He suggested changing the intro obviously as well as the song and mentioned that the images should match the ones on the website.  So I decided to pick a song that was less repetitive compared to the previous one since Dean mentioned it could get boring. I like jazz so I went with that. The song was chosen after a lot of deliberation and advice from Dean, and while editing the showreel I actually felt that the combination of the song, my colour palette and my logo gave off a rather modern classic feel.  You know, a little minimalistic and like walking into an old and expensive but refurnished restaurant with jazz music playing in the background, meant to cater to the younger customers. So I tried to make my intro's transition match with this vibe.

Worked on my business card design. I followed the original design I had in my old business card but in my new colours. No issues occurred. Besides that I finished up my gratitude letter and cover letter😎 I also tried my hand at a artsy resume but still not sure how I feel about it.

New week and new things to do. I worked on my resume this time. Thankfully I had my previous resume so I just used that as my base and build it up from there. I took a lot of inspiration from other resume designs but still wanted it to look like it belonged to me. After a lot of trial and errors I finally got my CV360 to 98%. It took me sooo many tries too. They would mention that I didn't add enough of their suggested words then say I spelt them wrong when I was following their spelling. Then complain I didn't add my LinkedIn URL when I did just because I put it as a hyperlink. After that I worked on my Invoice and my letterheads. This was all pretty easy since I just had to follow my own branding.

I showed my previous website and got a rather disappointing response from Dean so I decided to try a more boring but professional website design. Now rather than showcasing my personality, my website sort of only focuses on my projects. I'm a little sad that I can't reuse my duck picture but what can you do. My original website had a lot of stuff to show since I wanted people to know that I could do a bunch of things but this time I focused more on stuff I wouldn't mind doing for work and am interested in learning more about. I went along with the minimalistic and simple design and tried my best to keep it relatively short and straightforward with short descriptions about my projects and a lot of pictures and videos.

So I've officially started on my assignment and wow it's really similar with my old course's assignment in my previous university. So I started with my logo. Dean says that the cutesy look is not giving professional vibes which I was extremely disappointed by.  It took me forever to design on my own personal logo and now I have to scrap it off.😢 So the new design is now jelly-less but still has my signature colours. I really love the colour green especially this shade so I'm glad I got to keep it. I felt that the extra green at the top of the i sort of ties together the whole look and makes it more cohesive in a way. The text below my name was also changed from creative designer to multimedia designer after Dean commented on it. 

Taking this week off to rest before working on another assignment, I feel so free. All is good!

It's submission day! Everything's done and I've finally submitted every assignment except this one. I am still considering if I should do a final post on my lemon Instagram account though, like a final goodbye. On the other hand, I'm so tired and relieved from finishing everything that I just want a break before working on my dissertation.  On another note, I was also working on my dad's birthday e-card which I was very happy with. I used to make a birthday card for my family every year with different popups or effects but since I'm now abroad, they've been changed to an e-card instead. Still cute either way. I guess it's also a destressing hobby of mine, no need to overthink anything as long as it comes from the heart.

I'll be honest since I knew I would be travelling during Christmas break, I tried to finish a majority of the project before leaving.  I created a lot of the 12 Christmas days posts before leaving the UK. I don't really have much experience with photoshop so I don't know what I was thinking, but with each day I got inventive with it and I felt as though my photoshopping skills were improving so I guess its not all bad. Creating the change in lyrics was also a slight struggle as there are only so many words in the dictionary that you can use in relation to lemon, such as citrus, rind, juice, fruit, slices or sour. @lem0nflora being a total sweetheart had commented for nearly every day of the 12 days and even gave helpful advice, bless her heart.  Next we have the RA project which is its own can of worms. Again my school never really taught us these Adobe applications so everything is self taught. I had to ask Yuin Yi and Selina a lot of questions so thank you to them. The cr...

They said this post was a violation of  their spam policyy, whyyyyy???? There were a lot of mockups used in my presentation so here are the links to mockups used, just in case I need it for emergency. Links: Greeting Card Insta Post Framed Poster Brochure Laptop Calendar Mug T-shirt The rest is using the images provided to us in the Pitching to Clients RA Summer Exhibition 2024 Assignment.

I actually had some issues when creating the presentation slides, since the design was so bright and had so many colors I needed the background to be plain in order for the design to stand out. But plain white was too horrid think about it, and I was struggling to make it work which led to the current presentation slides. Thinking about it now maybe a gray color would have been better but in the moment of presentation slide creation, I was honestly questioning my design capabilities or the lack thereof. #Prayforme Dean didn't mention anything about the slide design so either it was fine or it was so bad that he was speechless. Aside from that, mockups were also a struggle, if the background of the mockups weren't clashing with the product, then they were clashing with the slides. I just can not even.

As mentioned before I had a 12 days of Christmas posting idea, post 1 image for each day of the 12 days of Christmas. This was over the Christmas break which I was not in the country for, honestly ruined the vacation mood when i would randomly tell parents that i had to go home to prepare my next Insta post, but I think it turned out well and I'm pretty proud of myself. I tried to post around the same 2 hours everyday but it wasn't always on time. But I'm glad I tried. I also achieved the target I set for myself which was to get over 100 followers. I'm not really a social media person I like looking at memes and not making them so this was a first, not what you'd expect from a GenZ but I would this was a successful first try. Hilariously enough, this was the account with the highest follower count out of all my social media accounts so go me I guess😂!

Time for what did I eat and how was it during the Baltic Trip? I think this one is a Russian restaurant, one of the first places with ate at in Lithuania. The food was decent but interesting, the dumplings and noodle were like European version of the Chinese dumplings and noodles I was used to, I rate it a 7/10. This was a local restaurant also in Lithuania, expensive and fancy, apparently it was on a Michelin list and was recommended to us by a bar maid. But it was okay I guess, didn't really match the price. Service was a10/10 but food was 6.5/10.   This restaurant also served local food, we were trying to try all the local food in the Baltics. The rye garlic bread was so good but the rest is fine, about a 6/10 excluding the bread, the bread is a 10. This was a restaurant on an island, also a local restaurant with about an average price. It was decent, 6/10. The fish was horrible thou...