Weekly Journal Blog

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Week 1 [29 July 2020]

RKL Digital-Media Professional Experience first class session on Wednesday, 29th July 2020.

This class will help students to gain experience professionally during their studying in order to find their career path, handle freelance projects and be able to start their own business in future.

As the first step, we as students need to know our personality and be able to spot and list down our weaknesses and strengths. I did a Big 5 and (Truity 2020) a 16 personalities test (16 Personalities) online and here are the results:

Big 5 Test


16 Personalities Test

Weaknesses:

As for my weaknesses and my strenghts I have done a quick study and reading on how to spot your weaknesses and managed to spot some of mine:

  • Being Lazy
  • Being Slow
  • Overthinking
  • Looking for shortcuts rather than finding a proper way
  • Doing less documentation
  • No good drawing skills
  • Weakness in animation
  • Weakness in 3D modelling and design
  • Test anxiety

Sterngths

  • UX design
  • Web design Design
  • Coding (HTML5/CSS, JS and PHP)
  • Looking for shortcuts
  • Playing games
  • Time management
  • Open for learning
  • Looking for solutions
  • Knowledge / experise in gaming, sports (football) and IT - other than just in design
  • Multitasking

Playing games, cartoons and comics in my childhood led me to become a designer and developer. As I'm usually for looking for solutions that simply and quickly can be designed and served, I was interested in web & interface design since this could provide solutiuons thorugh digital media. As I am not good at drawing on papers, I was alrways interested to draw and do my designs on computer. I'm very interested in 3d modelling and animation but am not good at implemetning it. As the digital media and web/interface are tied up with coding, I have learnt coding and am not bad at it. I can handle multiple projects at the same time since have work exprience in digital agncies and companies.

Which Pathway Should I Go?

To find out my proper career path, I am listing my area of expertise:

  • Graphic Design
  • User-experience (UX & UI) design
  • Web design & development
  • Game design & development

I have experience in graphic design, especially in UX and web design. But I'm also interested in Game Design. So, by showcasing my experiences and my past work to my lecturer in Week 2, I will be deciding which career path I should prepare my CV for.

My Works

We are also required to show our previous design works to our lecturer in the next class. I have done design works for my clients as well as for school's assignments. Most of them are available at my Behance profile at behance.net/schah



References:

  • Truity 2020, The Big Five Personality Test [online] Medium. Available at:  <https://www.truity.com/test/big-five-personality-test>  [Accessed 1 August 2020].
  • 16 Personalities 2020, Free Personality Test. Available at:  <https://www.16personalities.com/free-personality-test>  [Accessed 1 August 2020].
  • Jessica Murray, 2017, How to identify your weaknesses (and turn them into strengths) Available at:  <https://debut.careers/insight/how-to-identify-your-weaknesses-and-turn-them-into-strengths/>  [Accessed 2 August 2020].
  • Adrian Klaphaak, CPCC, 10 Feb 2020, wikiHow [online] Available at: https://www.wikihow.com/Identify-Your-Strengths [Accessed 3 August 2020].


Week 2 [5 August 2020]


On 6th of August, we have gone through on how to choose our career path and preapration of our CV and online portfolio. Our lecturer talked about the available career paths that we need to choose. These paths are generally devided into three mthods:

  • Working for a design studio (Agency)
  • Working for an in-house brand or company
  • Working for ourselves (Freelance)

She explained how each path works, their pro and cons as well as the benefits and disavantages. She suggested us to analyse ourselve based on the information of each path and what we would like to do and then choose a path, so we can prepare ourselves for the path we want to pick up.

Which Path Should I Choose?

I would go for working for an Agency as well as working as a freelancer. So my plan is to prepare my CV and portfolio in a way that it tailored for applying jobs in agencies and represeting me as a freelancer (Sarah Robinson).

What Job Title Should I Go For?

As discussed with my lecturer and considering my experience, I would choose "DIGITAL DESIGNER" title for my CV and would prepare my portfolio for that. Hence, I will need to have my works to represent abilities such as:

  • Design for social media
  • Animation and motion design
  • UX design
  • Interaction design
  • Print design

Self-branding

Before preparing my CV and portdolio, I need to design my logo and branding items, which I have done it before, but I will need to tweak it and have a better concept and rationale for it. Here are the things I will need to highlight and consider for the general concept of my brand (My logo):

  • Digital designer
  • Solving issues
  • Abilities to do any type of design
  • Ability to do code and design
  • My flexibility
  • My leadership and management

References

  • Sarah Robinson, Contena, Full-Time Job vs. Freelancing: The Pros and Cons, Available on: https://blog.contena.co/full-time-job-vs-freelancing-pros-and-cons/ [Accessed on 8 Aug 2020]
  • My Logo, Schah, Schah Website, Available on: https://schah.live/ [Accessed on 8 Aug 2020]


Week 3 [12 August 2020]

Working on self-branding, I have redesigned my current logo to make it more minimal, digital and gaming. Check out my progress here to see how I sketched out and did a revamp of existing logo.

As for my resume / CV and based on week 3's lecture I have modified my current CV which can be seen here. My current CV covering almost all required points mentioned in the lecture.

My current cover letter is also almost covering the required points, but I need to modify it a bit with the help of my lecturer.
  • Opening statement/ Introduction
  • Explaination (Why am I applying for the job, my skills etc.)
  • Conclusion

Next, I need to finalize my Logo, CV and cover letter, then come up with art direction for my online portfolio.



Week 4 [19 AUgust 2020]

As for the work placement, we are required to do work for a company for 10 working days (5 weeks) to expereince the actual working culture in the market. We are referred to Modern Essential company which needs some digital designer who can design daily/weekly ads for their online advertising campain on their social media channels.

As I am already doing some part time (freelance) design jobs, I suggested my lecturer to do my freelance works as for the work replacement so my works would be more relevant to what I'm planning to do in future. My lecturer agrred with that and I will carry on with this for the next 5 weeks (from Week 5 to 10).

From the student perspective, high quality placements can bring a range of benefits and positive impacts. There is strong evidence to suggest that placements and work experience are extremely valuable to students, both in terms of their academic performance and their employability skills (Wilson 2018). During my workplacement, I would look forward to seeing how my skills and abilities would work in reality and how I could improve them. I will also try to learn how to communicate with my clients to deliver my ideas for solving their problems.

References

  • [1] Wilson, 2018, Review of university-business collaboration, p.37 [Book]
  • My Logo, Schah, Schah Website, Available on: https://schah.live/ [Accessed on 8 Aug 2020]


Week 5 to 9 [Workplacement]

I have managed to do two different projects with two different clients during my workplacement period. One of them is a game developer company (EA - Electronic Arts) which needs freelance designer to work on their in-game graphics by photo editing and manpuliation. This job is particulary focused on their football gaming franchise, FIFA game. I applied for this job online on their website and after passing some tests and doing some assignments I was selected to take a position at EA.

The other job is a design job for a Singaporean hearing aid company for revamping their branding - including logo and stationary design. The company is located in Singapore. I got the job by showing interest on freelance jobs posted at Behance and received an offer email by the company manager.

A full report has been written about my role, my works I have done, skills I learnt, challenges and issues I faced and the overall outcome at my Workplacement page.

Here is the general outcome of my workplacement experience:

  • Experiencing and taking repsonsibilites as a digital designer which allowed me to go through the process of what a digital design job has.
  • Learning new skills in order to achieve the quality based on the client's need and their market's standard.
  • Thinking critically to overcome barries and challenges during the work.
  • Learning how to communicate with clients from different industries and cultures.


Week 10 [30 October 2020]

Carrying on designing my Portfolio I have learned the following points regarding this topic from the lecture today:

  • My portfolio is the most important tool to find a job.
  • It is also improtant for networking and make connections with people in the industry.
  • To plan my portfolio I need to know which career pathway I'm going to and who is my target audience.
  • What type of portfolio I want to have (Print, online / interactive).

So, I'm planning my portfolio for full-time employment as well as freelance side jobs. My career path way is to be a digital designer (focused on user-experience design). My portfolio should be available as an interactive website.

The progress and analysis of my portfolio is available here.

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