In this class, the professor asked a question “How we look for a job?”.  I didn’t know how or where I should look but some of the other students had some suggestions like creativehotlist.com, indeed.com, howdesign.com and a few others. We discuss two words which I think the professor thought we should know, Credibility and Humility. We talked about Temp agencies and recruiters, how they operate, they kind of experience you’ll be getting. Also, we touched on the benefits of freelancing, including their salary and additional skills to have as a graphic designer.

I think being a freelancer is for those you who just want to do more than just sitting in an office staring on the computer screen. So the professor went over the difference between freelancing and working as an employee for a firm. I think both has its pros and cons, one has freedom of time and the other has a steady income. I’ve learned in class, freelancing is not just about designing something for the client. You have to develop a relationship with them, so you can get referrals if need to, you have to know how much to charge for your design and you don’t want to charge too much because you can loose a client. I was advised by my professor to add on 25% more to the cost to make up for unforeseen circumstances. This I didn’t know, never would have thought about that. I thought I would have to just deal with whatever comes my way.

I did not know you had to have some social media presences. I thought you had to have your portfolio as usual (up-to-date) when acquiring a client. I mean having your physical portfolio or digitally and social media presence is too much because what you have in your portfolio will be the same on your social media (that’s my opinion).

In class, we saw a video of a graphic designer named Marian Bantjes which she explained some of her work. I think she’s one of a kind, I’ve never seen someone that uses so many illustration art in designing. She likes to use allot illustrating designing with or around her art which I thought to be very distracting especially the macaroni piece. I like the idea how she uses the old Christmas cards to make Valentine cards was very creative with the way she incorporates her illustration skills. But the idea of this video is for us as students to find our strong suits or the area we’re strong in and incorporate it in our design.

I don’t think I have a strong suit because this is my third year and I haven’t had much projects other than the ones I worked on for class projects and I do not work. I like to design logos, book/magazines covers and maybe do some photo shopping which I’m not really strong in.