PromoteCards

Promoting oneself is so important in today's society because of the vast amounts of competition.  When everyone has almost the same qualifications it is vital to try to stand out. The postcard is the perfect way to promote oneself in a professional way, but stand out due to the design aspects.  Future employers will see the postcard and be able to immediately understand who this person is, not just from the text, but from the supporting graphics and the picture. The postcard also communicates with people that one knows how to use various Adobe Creative Cloud applications, which is a leg up in the communication field.

This exercise has every aspect of design communication wrapped into one.  A professional, clean, to the point biography had to be written in order to communicate to future employers, or anyone at that, who this person is from a professional standpoint.  Writing this bio was hard because it wasn’t simply bulleted points stating accomplishments, rather it was a fun(but still professional) way to communicate oneself to the public. People are accustomed to trying to present themselves professionally, like in resumes and cover letters, but this project was different because it required visuals to back it up, a professional picture and supporting graphics.  The professional picture had to support the text, the two had to work together in this case. The supporting graphics could be tricky because they had to be relevant, something that makes sense when describing the person, not just thrown in for a requirement and still be deemed professional. In many cases graphics can hurt and not help the design, this is why it is important to pick wisely.

The postcard project was a struggle because it involved writing a clean and consist bio about ourselves, along with design elements to enhance it.  The main design element that was chosen was a Mandala, that had yellows and blues and a trim of black. The initial reason for choosing a Mandala is because they are beautiful and are all different.  The mandala was focused behind the silhouetted picture. The mandala represents balance because of its symmetry. Its design is complicated and intricate but overall is balanced and clean. This was suiting for the postcard because the bios overall message was that of balance; being fun and going with the flow but also being responsible and a hard worker.  Also, Mandalas show cultural awareness and are widely accepted, and do not give off an unprofessional vibe. The Mandla and the bio work together in communicating who this person is.

Surprisingly for once photoshop wasn’t the hardest part of the project.  Finding a professional picture was what took the most time, but once a suitable picture was found it was a breeze.  Silhouetting and using the clipping path wasn’t too hard. The picture that was used had the very top cropped out so a little editing was done to fix it by adding to the canvas size and clone stamping the top portion of hair onto the missing part.  The Mandala was also slightly edited in Photoshop by removing it from its background and deleting the black ring around it. At this point in the semester these were easy things to do. In Indesign the picture was placed on the left side of the postcard with the Mandala in the back almost directly behind the head, utilizing layers in the process.  A text wrap was placed on the bio which curved around the Mandala and picture. The text wrap was a newly learned technique so it was a little bit more complicated than the rest and took a few tries. If there wasn’t a text wrap the postcard would look too separated, picture on the left, column of text on the right. Having a text wrap intertwined the picture with the text and make it all flow together as one.  The name was made in Illustrator significantly larger than the body copy text, so that it could stand out, and a gradient of purple and pink was added then copied to Indesign. The gradient color in the name is supposed to compliment the colors in the Mandala. Making the name larger and adding a gradient make it more important and stand out. Lastly a very faint yellow was put on the background of the entire post card, this was to pull hints of the yellow in the Mandala out and because the background being white was too… white.  

The postcard came out adorable… but also super professional.  It is easily something that can/will potentially be given out to potential employers and a part of resumes and portfolios.  It fully embraced what design communication is all about, thoroughly using design elements to enhance a point, or in this case a person.