Due weekly on Sundays*. Responses to others’ posts due Tuesdays. *Due in two weeks, Sunday.
Week 13–14 — Assignment “Field Research & Position”
Project 3: Portfolio Project—collecting, presenting your work, and telling the story. The first part over the next two weeks—work on the assignment below: identify three job positions that are of interest. We will be working from the specifics listed and crafting a visual portfolio tailored to these. Create any refinements and variations for your 16-second motion graphic (Project 2) with sound which extends your album art system. Come meet in an individual meeting this week or next for motion design discussions. Reflect on your own work and start documenting and gathering information.
1/
Discuss:
- Research design jobs and identify three job positions that are of interest.
- Make PDFs of each job description for us to review and work from in the weeks ahead, and upload these PDFs to the drive.
- In a 400-word comment below, describe your overarching plans and goals. Describe the field as you see it and wish to enter. Describe where you did the research, who and which companies you selected. Tell us about them and about the jobs you selected. Include a links to your folder so we can respond. Note the discussion is double in length (400 words minimum).
Reply to at least two others’ by Tuesday. * Due in 2 weeks
2/
Studio:
- Refine the motion graphic for your album. Create a variation or refine a direction you began last week. Be sure that your video has the sound clip. It is a 16-seconds .mp4, with sound, and use these dimensions: 891 pixels x 891 pixels. Upload to the drive.
- Reflect on your body of art/design work and select 5–7 (five to seven) projects. Make a list of these 5–7 project works in a word document in your folder. List title of project, dimensions and format, project brief (assignment), and describe your concept, approach/process, and final solution for each.
- Choose one that you wish to revise or extend, and describe the aspects you wish to work more deeply on in the weeks ahead.
- Share a link to your Word document and to your refined 16-second motion graphic with sound (.mp4).
Links:
LinkedIn
AIGA Design Jobs
AIGA
Folder Link:
https://uncg-my.sharepoint.com/:f:/g/personal/nreastwood_uncg_edu/EmMkyyS7PqlFmOZyCzMXrwIBurR2uCNW1wjlUV54K8JNPA?e=DMXCAt
My overall goal is to do some type of work in game design whether that be doing graphic design for use in games or working on the actual mechanics and visuals of the game itself. I’m really passionate about the culture of games and the process of creating them and plan to look into an internship at a game design studio after graduation. I’m not sure that that 100% fits into exactly what we’re doing in this course so I made sure to only have a game design related job as one of the three I chose just in case. For me personally, although I do enjoy physical art and use sketching and other mediums in conjunction with a lot of my projects, I feel I’m a lot more passionate about the field of graphic design. First I looked at a bunch of general Graphic Designer jobs for various companies. The work you would do obviously varies from company to company, but overall revolved around producing designs (logos, marketing, and various other company related work) for use by the specific company. One of the specific companies I looked at and was most interested in was Nippon Design Center (NDC). Rather than making their own designs the NDC is an agency that produces simple graphic designs for other groups, events and more. I found the idea of producing a wide variety of designs for different things to be really interesting. The second job I looked at is a Creative Associate. The position is somewhat similar to a graphic designer, except that you would be producing 2D and 3D works for use in different live events (at least at the company I researched, this could definitely differ between companies as it’s sort of a broad term). From what I researched it could also include organizing and overseeing creative projects and helping to create the vision for different projects, but I’m personally much more interested in the first description which is what I found at GES. Global Experience Specialists, or GES, is a company that helps individuals or groups in creating different types of live events, whether that be a show or something else. In contrast to Graphic Design, this type of job seems to focus a lot more on creating designs and other elements that will be physically featured in events. The third and final job I researched is Gameplay Designer. I looked specifically at Epic Games as they had a large amount of job postings and seemed to be the most prevalent (at least on Indeed). The job itself primarily involves creating the mechanics and visuals of a video game. This can range from things like creating the movement systems and environment of the game to designing character models and many other things. It’s a pretty big field that doesn’t necessarily focus on a single aspect. I’ve had a bit of experience in game/ character design and have really enjoyed it so this would honestly be my dream job. I can’t say that I would want to work for Epic specifically but something in that field sounds really fun to me. I primarily did my research for these 3 jobs on Indeed, LinkedIn and AIGA, however there were some additional things that I just googled for my own personal interest about what each job entailed at other companies and things like salary and benefits.
My overarching plans and goals after graduating at the end of this year is to eventually move on to find a full-time job working in graphic design. However, I still have not been able to narrow down what I want to do specifically in the field of graphic design quite yet. I know that I have taken multiple classes over my tenure at UNCG that gave me the skills to fulfill multiple different roles that are possibilities in the job landscape. I have taken classes that focused on drawing, online apps like Adobe Illustrator, Premiere Pro, InDesign and Photoshop, website design and I even took a class that focused on the ins and outs of digital photography. I did this so that when the time comes to look for a full-time job after college that I have multiple different options and many avenues to go down so that I will not be trapped in one certain position or direction. I still want to be based out of North Carolina, so I went on Google and researched graphic design type jobs that are full time and based out of North Carolina; whether it be still in Greensboro or in somewhere like Raleigh or Charlotte. After that, I tried to look for full-time jobs that are entry level since I will most likely will be looking for these jobs right after graduating college. There were not many entry level job positions that I could find, especially in just one area; this is when I started searching outside of Greensboro and into different cities in the surrounding area. The opening job positions were at Advanced Personnel Resources Inc as a full-time associate, an entry level graphic designer at Environmental Resources Management Inc and a graphic designer at Compass Group. Compass Group is a food and facilities service out of Charlotte, Advanced Personnel Resources Inc is a temp agency based out of Greensboro and Environmental Resources Management Inc is an environmental consultant firm based out of Raleigh. All of them do seem to pay between $18 and $20 for their salary. Out of those 3 job positions that I found, I feel like the position at Advanced Personnel Resources Inc would be the best position to possibly accept. Not only is it based in Greensboro so it would alleviate the struggling to a new city but also I feel like a temp agency would yield more of an ability to find different areas to work instead of only being based in the environmental field or a food services job.