1st Project - Postcard

In the first semester project of my Design Foundations course, the objective was to design a postcard that "breathed" the essence or style of my assigned category, "stationary and pens." My first thoughts were of what you do with stationary...typically you write a letter or send a postcard or card to convey emotion.

As I began designing, I thought of using different types of stationary - each a different texture - to represent a different emotion. I produced the first postcard below, however, I began to doubt it the design. It felt very juvenile and the vision in my head just didn't seem to be what I was conveying on paper. So I scrapped it...

So in my second design, I used various colors, textures, and shapes of stationary paper along with words to represent various emotions; and it "felt more designy" - but I am learning just because a design feels a certain way, does not justify the approach of doing it that way. And although the design was pretty and abstract, the biggest lesson from my crit was to choose a focus. Find an object that I felt would represent my category...especially since we are using the same category for the entire semester! Next up...BRANDING!