I never though I’d have to make myself a logo, much less for school, but that’s what happened in this project.
This was a PGP (Personal Growth Plan) project about marketing ourselves to the world in an authentic and purposeful way. In fact our driving questions was “How might I present my passions, strengths, and learning to the world?”, and therefore this is the question I will be answering with this blog post!
I understand how this project could look very boring from the surface, but as a student who hadn’t really tried to express myself professionally before, I was actually very exited and was hoping to make/learn some things that would actually be useful for my future.
I don’t feel like I was disappointed, we started off strong with a guest speaker, Curt Scheewe, who came to talk to us about some dos and don’ts of things like marketing ourselves and job interviews, as well as where we could fit into the workforce. It was great to have him talk to us, and it got me thinking about how I was actually going to y’know, market myself.
Then we started working on our first benchmark of the project, creating a personal theme and logo, and then combing them to make a business card:
It took a lot of revisions to get it right, but I was actually very happy with the end result and I think it’s one of the most professional looking things I’ve ever made, so yeah, I was really happy with how this came out.
we continued this theme by moving on to our resumes, which were a real challenge. We made visual resumes which I had very mixed feeling about,. because while it was technically a resume, it doesn’t work well for actual use but oh well. It went though many revisions, far too many to put here, so I’ll just show you my final version:
We also did some mock interviews which were interesting, and some practice, but I don’t feel like there was very much emphasis put on them throughout the project so I didn’t put too much effort into mine, although I still think I did just fine and it was a good preview/reminder of what a job interview is like.
This was also our exhibition project, so in order to present our learning be designed and created booths, trying to simulate the general look of a job fair. I really wasn’t sure what to focus on for a while for my booth, as it was such a personal focus thing, but eventually I decided to lean into the nerdy side of my hobbies (I don’t know why I’m pretending there’s another side). Here was the draft for my booth:
On one side I had all of the stuff we made in the project on 3-d printed display stands, and then on the other some of my hobbies like speedcubing and 3-d designing. Then came the actual exhibition night.., and it went great! It was by my and my class’s best exhibition so far, and we got a lot of praise from both teachers and parents so that was awesome. I think the success can be attributed to the amount of work put in, the personal elements of the project, and just having a little more time than usual. Unfortunately I forgot to take a photo of my booth on the day 🙁
I learned a lot about myself in this project, and finished it with a lot more pride in who I was and the things that I do than I did going into it. It was a good opportunity to preview some of my potential career decisions. I think I did a very good job of creating my business card and booth, as well as being a good team member, but I could have definitely improved my resume. In future I will do some more concept ideas and ideation for graphic design projects before diving headfirst into the actual design. It would also be fun to make a design theme/moodboard for ourselves if we ever did this project again
I was actually very impressed with my exhibition group and we all worked really well together to create a great theme for our area of focus (engineering & trades), as well as making sure all the guests would have fun and be engaged.
So throughout this project we presented our passions, strengths and learning to the world by developing an image for ourselves and exhibiting our work and interests to a public audience. This was great project that I have learned a lot of great strategies for presenting myself, and just building my general confidence. Thanks so much for reading!
Leave a Reply