Did you miss anything? Hopefully. It's not meant to be easy to find everything. It's difficult, even for me. And I live here. For now.
Goodbye, not forever for you though. I move out in two months, and when everything is peeled off of the walls, I will have this to look back on. But the real version? It will be done for.
Reflection
This spring, I completed a creative project Connecting Experience titled “Autobiographical Archive - A Digital Design Choose Your Own Adventure Game.” In order to better understand how my learning from this project took shape, I think it is important to simplify the highly complicated process I established for myself from the start of the project all throughout its development and into its finalization. I took on integrating the disciplines of anthropology, web design, and graphic design in a visual narrative environment. To do this, I built a website using the editing program of the third-party site-building service Wix.com, where I could dictate the visual components, their behavior, and the flow of the story. I compiled the design work from my personal space and digitized it through a tedious process of file collection, organization-based editing, and batch uploading. In addition to the visual components, I wrote extensively, creating text accompaniments.
As previously mentioned, the disciplinary perspectives I found relevant to this Connecting Experience are anthropology, web design, and graphic design. I have experience in all of these disciplines from my coursework in the Bridging Disciplines Program and found that integrating the three for this project happened somewhat seamlessly. As I collected information and visuals, I could conceptualize how they might appear on the site, I could choose which information to include and forgo including, and adopt an overall very fluid workflow. When deciding how I wanted my physical surroundings to translate to a digital environment, there were many considerations, such as how to convey a sense of depth when viewing each “wall” of the space. I was able to use forced perspective in many of my designs to achieve this effect, so that it looks like you are actually standing in the room, viewing that wall from a certain angle. During this Connecting Experience, I have been able to apply many of the skills I have learned throughout my certificate program, but specifically, I have achieved the level of comfort with the Adobe Creative Suite I sought to meet when I first entered the program. I was already very familiar with the software but after this project, I am confident in my ability to take that skill with me into the advertising industry when I graduate this semester.
Without a strong design background, the basis of this project simply wouldn’t even exist; without the lens of design and its applications both physically and digitally, the anthropological aspect of this project would be confused, and the storytelling I attempted might not have shone through. I understood when taking on this project that when designing something to be online, user experience is traditionally very important in that process. Anticipating how users will interact with features of the site, the flow from one page to the next, and a menu where all parts of the site are clear and accessible are the main tenets of UX/UI. Knowing this, I wanted to challenge the ease with which a site is explored. There is not one clear path through my project. Users may miss some features and only realize this at the very end when all of the information is presented to them on one page. I was conscious of this while making the site because of the disciplinary lens I gained in my design and web design classes, and decided to move on with my method.
In my opinion, the discipline of anthropology is most different from the other disciplines I pursued in this project. I also think I took a fairly unique approach to the discipline, as I decided to study myself instead of another person or a group of people generally. In past courses, I had performed studies of friends and strangers alike, but never of myself. With each piece of this massive puzzle, I found myself reflecting on the extensive context around each object, discovering more and more to write about. I found every single object to serve a purpose beyond its existence and original or intended purpose. The purpose I give it, the story it holds, whether it was a bottle cap or a painting it took me a year to make, I place purpose upon each item, simply because it belongs to me, because it is mine. This was perhaps my favorite thing to explore in this entire project. I would only remember the story behind the object while I focused on it, scribbling down anecdotes to include in my writing on the site. While photographing or scanning an object and creating the on-hover designs, I reflected on the selected item and which parts of my life it had been a part of, what was happening in my life when it was acquired, and other situational factors that contributed to its story.
In relation to my educational and professional goals, this project has granted me invaluable insight about design, that it mustn't follow any set of rules but the ones you set for yourself. This is not restricted to design as a discipline but extends to how I will use design in my work. In advertising, creative teams will usually build on a strategy or creative insight handed to them by a team of researchers or creative strategists. Whereas some art directors may feel limited by budget, scope, and other factors, instructors in my college and in my advertising portfolio program ingrained in us that it is okay, in fact, preferred that we be ambitious. Be aware of limitations, but don’t be afraid to break rules. That way, when you have an idea that is large in scale but on strategy, it can be seen through, but if your idea is too big, you can work it down into something more reasonable without losing the essence of the original thought. In my work both for my degree and my certificate, I have been able to implement this practice of challenging myself in multiple stages of my creative process and also work towards refining that process itself. Specifically for this project, I had an idea to create something I had no idea whether or not anyone else would be interested in, but I myself was curious about pursuing.
I do believe I did what I set out to do but with certain caveats. There are some aspects of my proposed project that I deemed unnecessary as I got to them in my process, and there are parts of the final project that I did not initially propose. But overall, I found this project successful in its original intent; to learn something about myself. I also found that the knowledge I gained might also be widely applicable to others in their lives. I learned that objects and our surroundings exist in individual contexts; that the purpose of an item or belonging is totally and wholly dependent on who possesses it, when they possess it, and in what way it came to be possessed. These contexts can span any length of time and can involve any number of people or places. Mine are unique to me, yours to you. So, I prompt anyone, after seeing this project and interpreting my contexts: Be introspective about yours.