Welcome to my Blog!

After I graduate, I think I’ll be staying at my current job during the summer. I want to take time to continue creating different media projects to add to my portfolio and save up money, as my lease will be ending in September. I’ll try to do some freelance work here and there and once I’m in a better spot, I’ll apply to some places, such as Carsforsale.

On September 7, 2023, we adopted our dog, Loki, from the Humane Society. We don’t exactly know his birthday, but we have it estimated to be somewhere in March. We chose March 10th as his birthday (Mario Day! MAR10), so this March, he’ll be turning 2!

Adopting a dog while going to college has taught me a lot of different responsibilities and to be patient. Loki’s the best dog I could’ve ever asked for as my first dog, and I’m excited to spoil him for his birthday.

We finished our pre-planning for our promotional videos a while back and are starting to work on executing the plans. For my video, my main source of inspiration is a content creator named Linh Truong. Linh’s content utilizes color grading and visual doodle effects that I really enjoy, so I want to learn how to color grade my video as well. I know this will sound very “Gen-Z” but I want to be able to have my video reflect my “aesthetic” as I show my skills.

My classmates and I have all completed our portfolio show campaign pieces. We then set up our pieces in different sections of the room so we could go around and take a look. We were told to come up with two positive comments and two pieces of critique for each design and to pick our top 3 favorites. I ended up being tied for third. I was really bummed out that my campaign didn’t win, but I’m using it as a learning opportunity to do better.

I was finally able to print out Resonance and get it all stapled and cut. I learned to use a scoring tool to help create an indent in the paper to allow a cleaner fold in the spreads. I then used this cool stapler that allowed me to get my staples in the middle of the spreads and once I was finished, I took it over to the cutting machine. I learned that I needed to line up my magazine into the designated area, input the measurement to cut, and pressed down on the levers to do the cut. One of my classmates gave the measurements for each side that we needed to cut, but it was a little bit off with my magazine so I just kept adjusting the numbers until it lined up right. I did the three required copies, but I would like to print out a couple more so I can gift them to the people I interviewed for my industry articles.

For this ad, I chose the Method brand shampoo. My original composition included three different scents of shampoo. Due to my procrastination, I didn’t get all three bottles. Instead, I took an image of the one bottle that I did have and did a close-up shot. With my camera, I adjusted the focus to get a good detailed look of the text on the bottle. I then brightened the color and edited out imperfections with Photoshop.

For this ad, I chose to do one of a Nintendo Switch. My original design was going to have an image of a group of friends playing with a switch, but due to my procrastination, I had to change my composition. I switched (haha, pun.) the design to reflect more on how Nintendo does their advertisements with the red and white. I then took my switch and did a half-and-half look to get a closer detail of the controls, while also showing off the different joy-con colors. I took the photo with the lightbox and edited with Photoshop. To avoid having the reflection of my camera on the screen, I selected the space of the screen and filled it with black. I lightened the colors and edited any specks and dust off of the screen and joy-cons.

For this ad, my product was a bag of Doritos. For the revised image, I laid out some chips first before placing the opened bag. This was to prevent leaving any chip dust or residue in the lightbox. I then took an individual picture of one chip that had the right triangular shape that I needed. Once I got my shots, I took them into Photoshop and edited any specks, dents, and distractive lighting off of the bag and lightened the colors. After everything was edited properly, I took them into my InDesign file and replaced the FPO images, also placing the triangle chip on the A in flavor like how I had it.

For this ad, I chose to do the Pleasing brand. Pleasing was founded by singer Harry Styles, someone that I’ve looked up to since he was in One Direction. It’s a brand that sells nail polish and other beauty products. For my ad, I used their nail polish for the product. The only thing I changed was how wide the description goes across the composition, and which set of nail polish to use (as I never ended up getting the sparkly set unfortunately.) I also changed how the bottles were laid out. Again, I used the light box in the studio and used Photoshop to lighten the colors a bit. Forgot to mention previously, but all of these designs were built in InDesign.

In my magazine, this ad I created was for Adobe Creative Cloud. The original idea was I was going to use my desk setup for the imagery and have it be covered with sketches, tools, and my laptop opened to the Creative Cloud software. It was going to be a sort of reflection of the creative workflow and how designers use the Creative Cloud. I ended up changing it to be an image from the production room with my laptop opened. I think I made a good call as the production room represents a professional workspace compared to my desk.