Blog #27: Senior Project Reflection

(1) Positive Statement

What are you most proud of in your 2-Hour Presentation and/or your senior project? Why?

I kept the audience engaged and involved throughout the presentation, making it more of a conversation to keep them interested. My activities also seemed very effective and tied in with my answers, and also lead to a better understanding of my answers. My keynote was also very nice - it is one thing I can say with absolute certainty was good about my presentation.

(2) Questions to Consider

a.     What assessment would you give yourself on your 2-Hour Presentation (self-assessment)? Why?

AE. I explained the yearbook in terms that everyone could understand, and gave everyone a good idea of theme and consistency that engaged them and made them understand the concepts. The theme activity I used for my 2-hour is an activity that has been done in the past with new yearbook staffers, but never has it been so successful as when it was paired as an activity to my presentation.

b.     What assessment would you give yourself on your overall senior project (self-assessment)? Why?

AE in theory, because I have over 400 hours for my independent components and my interviews were very solid, as well as my research, but probably a P/P+ because I turned in a few things late.

(3) What worked for you in your senior project?

The independent component. I was the best way that I could have possibly learned about my topic.

(4) What didn’t work for you in your senior project?

It was extremely difficult to focus on anything else but senior project, and due to scheduling it was also very difficult to get Editor-in-Chiefs from other schools for my interviews without being late. For my third interview, I had to scrap the people I wanted to interview twice before finally getting Cynthia Schroeder.

(5) Finding Value

I now know that I can do a solid keynote, and that my analogies generally get across to my audience (in the presentation.) I also know that I actually can present for an hour and a half, and that I can facilitate and execute (well) a 128 page publication, and also manage all of the ins and outs within it - staff management, organization, improving structure, brainstorming, and theme and visual execution.

Blog #26: 2-hour rough draft

Link.

Blog #25: Service Learning

Literal:

Log of hours

Blog #24: Independent Component 2

Log of hours

Pictures: 

The pictures above are pictures of what I had to do. The listography, which I had to keep up - this is the completed version, with everything checked off. Normally it says things like, "Headline too high, shift down 2 picas please?" "Proofread KiF copy, has mistakes" "Alignment on Roeder's senior ad" "and "1 blurb needed - waiting on Tyra Crump." The lists are, at the beginning of the deadline, about four times as long as the ones above, and things continually get added and subtracted from them over the course of the deadline. The next picture is a picture of the photo library - you can see how it is organized and just how many pictures we need to go through each time we do a spread. The third picture is how the design folder looks. Each deadline has 16 spreads, or 32 pages in it, which we arrange in the design folder. The last picture is a photo of the ladder. I decide what goes in the book. These are the spreads that made the final cut. (More to come)


Literal:
(a) I, Elissa Fultz, affirm that I completed my independent component which represents 30 hours of work."
(b) I have completed the yearbook, a 128 page volume (complete with cover and endsheets) that I oversaw.


Interpretive:
I ran an elective, and spent over 20 hours a week on the yearbook outside of elective. The pictures will show you how much I did exactly, but I: read over copy, proofread, sorted photos, checked over designs, discussed with photographers and junior designers, discussed with the yearbook adviser, met with kids outside of class, kept up the listography (basically the giant list of what needs to be done), and checked over everything before uploads.


Applied:
I learned a lot during the process - what makes good design, writing, and photos, shortcuts you can take, the most efficient way to do certain things like check alignment on spreads, import pictures, skim through copy, and suchlike. I learned how to deal with people. How to get respect from colleagues and people who work under you, how to give constructive criticism without making people hate you, how to teach. I learned that good design is in the details, that everything requires perfection in order to make the end product beautiful (which is not always healthy). And, in the end, I think we made the most beautiful book we ever had.

Blog #23: Helping 2013

Who did you interview: Jazmin Morales

What day and time: April 26 at 12:40 PM.

1)  What ideas do you have for your senior project and why?

"Something medical related. I'm not exactly sure, maybe a specialty. I want to do something medical because that's what I want to do when I graduate. It’d be a good starting point."

Me: That sounds good, there's several people doing medical senior projects in my class (I gave her some names), but it can be really hard to find service learning.

She replied that she had already found her service learning, which lead into the next question.

2)  What do you plan to do to complete the 10 hours of service learning?

"I asked my doctor, so I’m thinking of volunteering in their office. I volunteer at a hospital, so I can go in and see patients and stuff."

Me: It's good that you already found it, a lot of people have a hard time with it because you generally have to apply for volunteer work, like, a year in advance or something ridiculous.

3)  What do you hope to see or expect to see when watching the class of 2012 present their two-hour presentations?

"I hope to see the format they do, and how they divide their time. I want to know what to expect when I have to present. Thirty minutes of presenting, and then three activities. And activities that aren’t too boring, and won’t make the audience fall asleep."

Me: Definitely look for the structure. It's pretty straightforward (I explained the structure), but it's good to see how different people handle it. Some people use speaker notes, some people use notecards. It's also good to see how people decorate their rooms.

4) What questions do you have about senior project?

"Do we get the 10 hours approved before we go into summer? And how much time do you spend in the presentation on different things? What were the most challenging things for you?"

Me: I don't know about the ten hours, that's new this year. For the presentation, they break it down into different parts (explained the time requirements for answers and such, as well as activities). The hardest part for me was definitely finding interviews. Also, science faire can be kinda tough. For you, you can probably come up with a procedure fairly easily, but it'll be harder to actually carry out the experiment. So, watch out for that. Especially if you want to go for county faire, you should start during the summer. Some people at county have been doing their projects for like, two years, and in collaboration with universities and stuff.

Blog #22: Answer #3

My third answer for my essential question, what is the most important factor in creating an award-winning yearbook, is also, I believe, my best answer: a strong, defined, relevant theme. This has been stressed through multiple sources. For example, in the article Power by Design, the author, Rick Poynor, talks about how graphic designers overestimate their job. Designers think that they must make the design stand out, when in reality, you should let the theme or message speak, and everything else come afterwards. Better by Design, by Ann Akers and Paul Ender, talks mostly about the marriage of all of the elements in a yearbook through design - and the underlying factor is always the theme. The photography must go with the theme. The copy and the voice must whisper the theme throughout the book. The design of the book must illuminate the theme. The theme is what ties the entire book together. Both my second and third interviews also agree - Mimi Orth, my service learning, says that you must know your school, know your audience, and sell your yearbook to them through a relevant and theme. Cynthia Schroeder also stressed knowing your theme, and keeping it in sight throughout the book. In her words, "[Theme is] what determines what the design is gonna be, the voice, the copy, colors, the coverage. It really determines everything in the book and, you know, what separates the more amateur looking books from the professional, award winning books is the concept."

Blog #20: Room Creativity

1) How do you plan on addressing the room creativity expectation?

A few classmates and I are all investing in the black tarp/canvas thing that past presentations have used to cover up the current room decorations. In addition, I plan on hanging many of the spreads and copy drafts, simply to show the amount of drafts staffers and designers go through.

2) What activity ideas do you have for answers 1 and 2?

My first answer, consistency, will probably find its way in through a series of spreads, where an inconsistency in voice and design should be identified. For my second answer, staff management, I'm planning on making a little game based on a staff scenario, where a situation is given and each table is presented a set of options. Each table will pick their option and hold it up. Once everyone has chosen an answer, the reaction to each answer will be explained, and an additional scenario will be given. This is to show the unpredictability of working with such a large-scale staff on such a detail-oriented task.