The goal of this project was to further develop my iterative skills and to streamline my workflow while giving myself the freedom to explore techniques and styles.
POSTER 365
I stared this project the beginning of my junior year in college. I felt like I needed a way to better familiarize myself with the soft-wares that I use, and I believe that the best way to learn is to set a goal for yourself and to try to accomplish that goal.
The goal I set for myself was at first to take part of a design competition/ challenge called the 7 Days of Bad Fonts by @elliotisacoolguy on instagram. As the week of making a graphic every day went on I thought to myself that making something everyday is a great way to practice and hone my skills. So it was decided that I would make a poster everyday for a year and post them daily as I went along.
Rules
1. Make and post a graphic every day for a year
2. No front-loading
3. No re-occurring elements
These rules were meant to keep me honest in this endeavor. By posting the posters It made others aware of my project and alongside my internal motivation that sort of self-engineered peer pressure kept me going. As for rule number 2, I wanted to really make sure I was doing as many different things as possible over the course of this project. I wanted to make sure that my workflow was never the same day to day . Giving myself the ability to front-load posters would break the spirit of the challenge for me so I forbade it. Finally, rule 3 was added because I wanted to keep my feed visually interesting throughout the project, and not reshuffles of previous elements. This rule really sent me searching for new sources of inspiration down rabbit holes for new influences.
Challenges
The project was just as much of a time management project as it was a creative endeavor. My process got a lot quicker as I kept going. In the beginning it would take me all day to do something I could do in an hour now. I learned a lot about when you need to just call something finished even though it was tempting to keep working on it.
It was also difficult to work on days where I felt burnt out and uninspired. This challenge was one I knew that I was going to face from the outset of the project but it was also one that I couldn’t really prepare for. Some days would be really frustrating multi-hour sessions while other days would be complete 15 minutes. Needing to work those days that I had creative block really taught me how to find something in places where before I had thought there to be nothing. I turned into a more active artist after this project, looking for inspiration rather than waiting for it to strike.
Reflection
I don’t know if I would do this again. It was very draining some days but looking back I am happy that I did these posters. Due to the variety in styles and techniques used to make these posters every day I feel a lot more fleshed out in both the technical and creative sides of being a graphic artist.
⎈ Philadelphia Pennsylvania, USA