Overall I’ve found that the meeting with all of these professionals in the field and having them share their experiences and their work is highly interesting and also very helpful. Instead of having this lofty ideal of professional designers that I had like a year ago before I really got to meet and talk with a few, I now feel like it has humanized these people more and trying to reach that personal palce of being a good designer does not seem as far off, it feels like now its something that I can work towards and it is attainable rather than having this image of professionals as almost deistic. Speaking to and listening to the speakers that we’ve visited and had in our classroom also opened me up to trains of thought that I had not given enough time to prior. Some of these things that I’ve had to think about were about my work environment, I started thinking about what kind of workplace would be the best fit for me in terms of its workplace culture and the type of work they produce. While I do feel like I work best with a schedule I can’t say that I would be able to work to the best of my ability if I am in a highly structured and regimented work environment. Hearing these people speak about their experiences has helped give me an overall idea about what the pros and cons are for each type of work place, from a studio, to freelancing, and creating my own business if I so desire. Speaking to them also prompted an introspective look at what I can bring to the table and how I can differentiate myself from the endless sea of designers. One of the biggest takeaways that I had was to not limit myself to one field and instead try to be diverse so I can become a capable designer who can work in different mediums and create more value for myself as a swiss army knife style designer, but at the same time I heard contrasting advice saying that I should get really good at one thing and all the other aspects of design I can hone later or I can be trained to become better at. This class is basically like the saying that learning from one teacher won’t teach you anything, having all these people educate us has allowed us to diversify our education and not be feeding off the same wellspring.
