Before and after presenting work via social networks

One of the greatest benefits of the Internet, for graphic designers, is the opportunity to submit our work for evaluation by the community and other design professionals. A good designer understands the importance of learning from others and the value of honest feedback toward the improvement of their skills. Fortunately there are a number of fantastic websites available for a designer to submit their work and possibly gain some insight.

The Background:

For this week’s project you will find a website that offers designers / artists the opportunity to upload and submit their work for public appraisal. There are many sites to choose from but you may want to start with sites like Deviant Art, a website with a long-standing history of providing artists, from a variety of disciplines, the tools necessary for sharing art, design and insight from a vast community of art lovers.

It is perfectly acceptable if you want to submit your work to a site like Facebook but consider your audience. When posting design for analysis you will usually gain more insight from other designers over the opinions of the community at large. There are web sites available that are more focused towards the artist and design professional, so although the choice is yours where you decide to post your work, for this assignment you need to call upon a website designed specifically for design.

Remember, do not indulge in validation but rather seek out valuable insight that may lead to improvements in your craft.

What to Submit to the Website

Because your portfolio should demonstrate learning through gained experience, it is good practice to return to a design you know could benefit from change. Look through your current portfolio and choose a sample of design that could use more attention. Your challenge this week is to redesign that particular project into a piece you are more excited about. Once you complete your redesign you will then submit that design, along with the original, for appraisal by the public on a social network site of your choosing. Be sure to upload your projects early enough in the week to obtain comments and feedback from viewers!

Submit a link of your before and after examples along with short description of why you choose that particular design and how your changes improved it.

Make sure your submission is accessible by the public. Anyone should be able to look at and write feedback of your work without having to provide a password or become your “friend.”

What to Submit to the Drop Box

Create a flattened version of your before and after project files (JPG or PDF recommended). In a Microsoft Word document, copy the brief description of your project you posted to the website as well as the top 3-5 comments you received from others regarding your piece. Create a zip file of the two images and your Word document and submit it to the drop box below.

Submit your completed assignment by following the directions linked below. Please check the Course Calendar for specific due dates.

Save your assignment as a zipped file. (Mac users, please remember to append the “.zip” extension to the filename.) The name of the file should be your first initial and last name, followed by an underscore and the name of the assignment, and an underscore and the date. An example is shown below:

Jstudent_exampleproblem_101504