10/19

what

I presented my idea for the classes final project today. My idea was to setup a community billboard or a free wall for the public to use as it wishes. The idea seemed great in my head and I became pretty pumped about the presentation thinking that the class would really grasp onto it like I had. My nerves started to catch up with me right before class and perhaps that had an affect on how I presented the idea. I feel like I rushed some of the slides and didn’t really articulate some underlying points that might have pushed the idea farther.

Of course the rest of the class also presented their ideas. Some of the projects really felt good to me while others seemed slightly under whelming. While I really wanted my project to be chosen, I was also looking forward to seeing others ideas and being blown away. An important aspect that I think was overlooked was that we have a small time frame and budget so the projects should be crafted to get the most out of those constraints that we could.

so what

The reason for the presentations was to practice public speaking and presenting projects to clients. This was n aspect of the class I was surprised by but found it to be great. While in many of our classes we learn to critique and present our work to each other, we have never really focused on convincing a client of our ideas and the reasons behind them. The group project will allow us to work together with a large group of people with different skill sets for a common project.

now what

A large portion of the professional world will be presenting ideas and proposals to clients. Amazing design won’t get you that far if you can’t talk about your work and explain conceptual reasoning to men in suits. We will now go forward with our group project and will hopefully learn how to deal with each other. I could probably learn something because I often find myself in situations where I like to work alone and I know that the real world is not like this. Even if I am the only designer working in house, I still have to report to people and apply others ideas to the work.