Things design students need to know

As you know, if you read my profile, I’m a first year graphic design student. I do have some experience because like most of us, I started of this thing as a hobby, picked up some jobs and started to make money but wanted to expand and become professional.

In this first stage of my school, I have observed some things I think every design student should consider while studying.

1. It is utterly important to build relationships. No matter how good you think you are, no matter how great of a visual visionary you might be. It is impossible to make it not only in school or work but in life, without working with other people. You need to learn teamwork. Some of the people you will find you will hate, and that’s ok. But you need to listen, you need to observe and assume everybody has something you could use. I’m not talking about that fashion girl who draws the most incredible sketches or the guy who always has the best shirts. I’m talking character, world-view. Everybody is there for different reasons, some might not sound be as important as yours to you, but truth is, they are
2. See your teachers as clients. You’re not in high school anymore. Your teachers don’t need/want to hear excuses. If you had a project due on monday but you ran out of ink, your client does not want to hear about it. You missed your deadline. Penalties apply. The more you understand this, the better you will do at school and, just like in real life, these teachers might recommend you or hire you for a job that pays cash, not only a grade.
3. Do all of your homework. I know this one sounds kinda obvious, but it’s not. In my university, the way classes work is, for instance: Drawing :: 3 hours a week in classroom / 3 hours a week at home. Which means, teachers are required to leave 3 hours worth of homework a week. It kinda sucks for me right now because I have freelance work to do, but I love that I am actually learning things. College is supposed to be like this. Yes, they own you. Yes, it’s for own good.
4. Design is expensive. Whether is graphic, fashion, industrial or web design. This carreer we chose is by no means cheap. And there are only so many things you can do to curve the expenses. The only advice I can give you here is: save money, be prepared and the most important: buying cheap the first time will make you buy again in a matter of a few weeks. Invest in good items from the getgo and you’ll be set for a long while.
5. Organize. I suck at this. I couldn’t plan a month ahead. I tried planning my weeks, didn’t work. I like to know I can do whatever I feel like with my time. It’s that simple. Truth is, you will never get things done and you will be miserable. I used to say I worked better at night, which is true, so I basically wasted my entire day playing video games, reading or just doing nothing really, cause I knew that by 9 or 10 o clock my creative neurons would wake up and magic would flow until 3 AM. But truth was I was too tired to do anything. Plan your day. I’m not talking a strict I will be on facebook/digg for 20 minutes, then straight to sketching for 40 minutes. All I’m saying is, make sure you get your priorities straight and get things done. Otherwise you will spend lots of unnecessary  sleepless nights and your product will not be as good, which leads me to the next point.
6. Rest. Like I said above, I did just about anything I wanted with my time. It worked for a while, but then I started school and I had to be there by 7 AM, which kinda messes eveything up. I have to wake up at 530 so I can take the bus at 6.10 to get to campus.Nobody can live with 4 hours a day of sleep.I made a commitment with myself that exactly at midnight I would stop anything I was doing and go to bed. At first it started like something I did conciously but around the 2nd or 3rd week, my body just knew it was midnight and I started yawning like a baby and just had to go to bed.
7. Know what’s going on. Maybe you chose design because you suck at math and hate to read. That’s fine. But you need to know what’s going on out there. You need to know that Georgia is a country and not only related to a John Mayer’s  song. You need to know why gas is so expensive and have an opinion on new energy sources. Maybe you can’t make yourself read the newspaper or watch the news, that’s fine. But go online and read the damn headlines. You can thank me later when your teachers respect you and you realize you were smarter than you already thought you were.
8. Get a mentor. Preferably someone you can call and meet up for coffee, but if it’s some artist online, that’s fine. Just get someone you admire and someone whose style you want, and learn everything about him/her. How they learned their craft, how they see design, why they choose the colors they choose and how they interpret their compositions. Learn.

These are just a few of the things that have helped me. Observe. Not just colors and shapes. Observe people and you will learn a lot and become a better everything.

Camp in an island

Another project for a youth camp. It took place in the scorching summer of the mexican Caribbean. Ages 15-19 mostly. It had a guest band, lots of competitions, around 200 ppl. It was the 11th consecutive camp. Cool place too.

I wanted it to look summery, fun, somewhat messy:

Por amor a México

This is a concert for a school. The concept behind it goes in the songs. All the songs will be about a cry for justice and grace from God to save Mexico. In case you didn’t know, there’s lots of trouble here. Also, the concert takes place 3 days before Independence day here.

So I thought about it and I didn’t want the typical mexican art. I mean, it had to look mexican, but I didn’t want the typical ethnic looking fonts/curves/crap that distinguishes mexican-themed graphics.  So I decided I want a lof of depth, a lot of movement, lots of energy… so I came up with this.

El Diseñador

So this is a project for this class: “Visual Communication”. The idea was to explain the process of communication in the most visual of ways. So my team and I decided that we needed to mock up the editorial process of a newspaper for graphic designers. We came up with some ideas and we simulated a touch screen interface where we moved the elements of the frontpage. I did that with flash.

Anyhow, here’s the frontpage: