Let them eat cake!

I am not going to lie, when I first read the criteria for the postcard assignment, I was a bit threatened and overwhelmed. I felt that way because I was unsure how I would go about describing who I am visually to an audience. After this long and hectic semester of my Senior year, I got so caught up with the chaos of the semester that I really did not know who and what I was anymore.

Trying to figure out who I am, who Kristy Hakes is, was a very hard thing to do. I am not the same person I was at the start of the semester nor am I the same person that I was three weeks ago. After doing some internal soul searching on who I am, what I want people to know about me, what I want and what I want others to know about me, I was able to dig out what I felt described me the most visually.

The assignment is an essential exercise in design communication because in order to help another company or business get their message and point of view cross, you need to be able to express your own self by doing the same. Basically, if you cannot express yourself and get your own point across, how on earth are you going to be able to get someone else's message and point communicated? It's almost impossible.

I wanted to use colors that I believe express who I am as a person. I used the soft pink and white striped background because it is my favorite background that I use for my phone, iPad, and computer. I feel as though it describes my personality because it is not hard on the eyes, it is subtle and equally collected, which I like to believe I present myself that way to others. I present myself to others in that way visually by the way that I dress, the accessories I wear and the makeup I wear to express my true self. Also, I present myself that way by my mannerisms, my spirit and my personality.

With the soft striped colors of baby pink and white, I wanted to go with a very chic and sophisticated vibe and layout for my postcard. I used a gold antique frame to border my body text in my post card because I am a fan of anything shabby chic that reminds me of the Victorian Era or of Marie Antoinette. I also have many antique frames as decorations throughout my house.

I chose the font Peach Sundress for my name on my postcard. I wanted to find a font that would represent me if a font were able to represent a person. It was simple, feminine, and elegant. Also, I love writing in cursive and I appreciate cursive writing. As soon as I saw the font, I immediately knew that it was the font I wanted to use to represent myself. I then used the font Hey Pretty Girl for the body of my post card. I wanted to still express a feminine and chic font, but I wanted to make sure I chose a font that did all of that and was still legible for viewers to read and understand.

I used InDesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop to put together my postcard. I used Photoshop to resize and edit my background and bio picture and change them to a higher resolution. I also used Photoshop to create vector images out of my bio picture and my gold border frame. I used Illustrator to create the dot above the I in my name, Kristy, because Hey Pretty Girl did not have a dot above the I and I did not like the way that it looked without a dot there. Also, I tried to create another border in Illustrator to place in InDeisgn for my postcard but I felt that it took away from the overall composure of the postcard. I felt that the dot was the final touch that I needed to express myself visually.

I used InDesign to compile all of my different files into one final postcard. I placed all of my vector images, my background, and the text together. In InDesign, I was able to format my body text to wrap around my bio picture so my body text would not be cut off from the image. In InDesign I was able to make one cohesive piece that would visually communicate myself to others that do not know me personally or for people such as fellow classmates, professors, and future employers that would like to get to know me on a personal level.