Week 5

Originality, as explained in "How to be a Graphic Designer", does not directly mean start from scratch. Yes, coming up with your own ideas in order to create something is wonderful, but sometimes it helps the process along when you work off of someone else's work. This past summer while I was working at my internship at Prime Visibility, the office asked me to design a new logo for the company. What I chose to do was do some research online, come up with ideas, and mess around with typography for the design. Their logo was good enough, but with some graphics, color changing, and a slight typography change, I redesigned the logo from what it originally was. What I did in order to research some ideas for redesigning the logo was slimming though a book filled with business cards and creativity inside of them, similar to what we have been viewing in class. After taking in what others have done with their logos, I went onto the Internet to see what other ideas I can find. When I first looked at their logo, it symbolized an eye, obviously because they are called Prime VISIBILITY. So I chose to leave the eye effect, but I wanted to center to look more like a pupil. After this, I went to some websites that are related to Prime Visibility, to see what they have done with their logos. As said in the book,

Clients often urge designers to 'study the competition.' If a company asks you to design their website, they will probably suggest that you look at the websites of their competitors.

In the past, I have tried to hold onto as much work as possible, in case I should use it in my portfolio. Since I entered the Interactive Digital Design major last year, the work I had made before had nothing to do with the design field. So since my junior year, I have been discarding "not-so-good" work and holding onto average and good designs that would surely look good for my resume and portfolio. Like Gabe Rubin said about what he wanted in his portfolio, "About, Work, Odds and Ends, and Contact", I don't want to have flashy excess material that won't be looked at on my page. I want it straightforward and to the point.