Week of September 28, 2021

Remember when I was saying I dropped the ball with my designs for my client well that was not an understatement. This was a dark week for me. I lost all of my confidence in my design skills. I hated everything I designs. I showed it to my friends and family and asked for honest feedback. They aren’t designers though and thought they were “fine” I could tell they did not hate them but weren’t wowed by my designs either. I got a lot of puzzled looks. It was as if they were trying to figure out what was wrong with the designs but could not place their finger on the problem. I felt defeated. I thought I wasted my four years in college. I felt like I was designed to be a bad designer. I felt uncreative and I felt untalented. I feel like I just did not have the touch. That design sense every designer needs to have. I was also falling behind in my classwork at this time and not being attentive enough with my classes, internship, and emails. I was sinking. But I kept trying. I created so many design compositions based on many of my sketches even though I was advised to only create compositions for three out of my 23 sketches. I created maybe 6 different compositions. Then later I took those six and created different versions of them. Then there were 12. Then a day before the meeting I created 3 completely new designs. I didn’t have a lot of time, but I did it. I finally felt proud of something I created. I was confident to share the 3 new designs and that felt so great. My confidence had come back. On that Tuesday I made some final touches and shared my work. I got feedback that most may have felt a little sad or defeated over but to me, it gave me clarity. Professor Biehl had told me to not reinvent the wheel and go back to the drawing board and use something that I knew my client liked. Since we had had him as a client in the past with Faculty Commons. There was something that he liked that professor Biehl had created for him a while back and he still remembered it and had advised me to look at that for inspiration. I had completely put that suggestion to the back of my brain and struggling for no reason lol. So, professor Biehl was kind enough to send me the designs for inspiration and I got to work. I shared it with my mentor he gave me feedback and I even had a separate meeting with professor Biehl, and she gave me feedback and helped me clean up my design’s composition and hierarchy so I could present the work to my client. I forget to mention that my client invited me to a committee meeting to share my designs and get feedback from the entire committee that is in charge of the event along with himself. It took place on Friday, October 1st, 2021, at 10:30 am. The committee consisted of about eight professors including professor Biehl. I dressed in professional attire of course and was visually present. It felt comforting that she was there and had got to see and approve of my work beforehand. I was confident but a little nervous and didn’t know what to really say and fumbled a bit, but I presented my designs, and the committee loved the designs. I presented three different variations. The meeting went great, and I met with my mentor in another zoom meeting right after. I appreciated it. He asked me how I felt, and we went over what was next. That was all. It went well.