1. What did you learn?

I learned about infographics. I specifically learned what they are, why they are used, and what kinds of useful information they can provide. We learned to create maps in Illustrator using infographics.

2. What was easy?

Creating the roads and playing around with the colors and strokes was pretty easy due to having knowledge from previous labs. I am much better at tracing using the pen tool. It was a skill that I struggled with just a couple months ago, but I am much better at it now. Lab 7 taught me how to overlap lines are change their colors/sizes, so that came in handy for Project 4.

3. What was challenging?

I would say that the lab was pretty challenging as a whole. The live paint section was a nightmare for me. I struggled coloring in my areas due to the live paint tool not doing what I wanted it to do. I somehow accidentally grouped all of my roads and other pieces together, causing the live paint tool to not work correctly. It took me a while to solve the issue. Also, finding a good color palette was difficult for me to do because I could not find a color scheme that fit well, but I think the blue palette ended up working well in the end. Adding the symbols and labels was not very hard, but it took a long time to do. This project took lots of skill and patience. Although it took me a long time to finish, I am glad that I was able to learn how to work through my issues with the project and the map came out well in the end.

4. How could your submission be improved?

The labels do not fit the best with the rest of the project, but I figured it was okay how it was after a lot of trial & error. I probably could have make it look better, but I just wanted to move on to the other parts of the project since I had a lot of work to do during Finals Week. My compass and scale is a bit basic, but I did not feel too comfortable making a more complicated compass rose since my Illustrator skills still are not the best yet. I could have also just picked a different location to do the project on entirely. The town I picked is very small, so it looks kind of smooshed together. By the time I realized how difficult it would be to do the project on such a small town. I was a bit too far into the project to want to go back. Due to this, I had quite a bit of empty space. I should have filled it in a bit better, but like I said, my Illustrator skills are not so good yet so I worked with what I had.

5. How could the professor improve the assignment for the next class?

Definitely add in step-by-step videos on the Google Slides presentations of how to create elements of the project such as the compass rose, scale, areas, etc. I had to scroll through multiple class videos which complicated things a bit. I struggled a lot with the live paint, so maybe a video specifically on that would be beneficial. During the final DMAAD Club meeting, a few of us discussed this project and all of us had a hard time with the live paint tool not cooperating.

6. How might you apply your knowledge in future assignments or work scenarios?

This project gave me a much better understanding of Illustrator, so I will definitely use that for future projects. After using it so much for this project, I can finally distinguish the differences between Photoshop & Illustrator and point of what types of project each software would be better fitted for. I can use my knowledge for more complex projects in the future. I learned a ton of new skills through this project that could perhaps come in handy for future DMAAD Club designs since I wanted to branch out a bit from Photoshop. Illustrator and Figma are good options I have come to realize.

7. How did a specific reading or video inspire or help you?

All of the recorded class videos helped me a ton, as I was able to go back and see multiple maps from my classmates that helped me determine what was going wrong when I was creating my map. It also gave me a lot of inspiration because I was a bit stuck at first. The Slides presentations were useful as well since I saw multiples types of banners, compasses, and map that gave me inspiration and were useful for comparing elements of my project to past ones.