[pcc_life] Tales from the Breach:Swimmingly, So Far

Am moving forward into that ultimate term of PCC Graphic Design training. Am quite amazed at what it's prepared me for...but more on that later.

The GD6 course is running along fine, so far. The first project...the product is dirt. We get to make it look good!

Here's the deal: the notional client wants to sell dirt. They want to sell it in three varieties to two markets in each; six different ways. The first one, Dert, is for kiddies. Perfect for making mudpies, building mud cities, invading mudcountries. The second one, Durt, is down-to-business, industrial grade fill. The third one, Düyrt, is your basic, high-end, 'gourmet' product, for tasteful landscaping, fine gardening, and cordon-bleu mudpies.

The point here seems to be unity across a range. The question to be answered is, given a range of objects to be sold or marketed, how to make them unmistakably related whilst still asserting each's appropriate individuality. I'm going for a solution that uses layout to make the unifying connection, type and simple graphics to define the economic stratum (kids/low-end, adults/middle-end, toff/high-end), and color to indicate gender-based market slant.

To be honest, I have a little trouble with the standard blue-for-boys/pink-for-girls sterotype. But in our culture, it IDs the gender line like nothing else. This is playing the hand you're dealt, working in the seeming-societal verities that one is supplied.

The real triumph of the past few days was the portfolio class. however. Even as I evaluate portfolio cases and decide which way to go in that direction, I have a range of projects already that I can start to work into portfolio pieces.

The instructor, Precious (I love saying that for some bizarre reason) requires that we have a minimum of ten projects for display. In my selection of what I thought of as best, she found eleven. Moreover, the star piece was a poster I did to illustrate the term project I did for Geography of Oregon class last term...friends,this thing was a one-off, a knock-off, a tossaway, and it somehow distilled everything good I've been struggling to learn and apply about design into one lodestone for the rest.

There's a moment when everyone knows that they've accompilished something. And there are other nice things happening to me right now. But this one had me coming home on tiptoes with a grin on my face, something The Wife[tm] couldn't help but react to, and The Day Job tends to wipe the smile off my face on a fairly regular basis.