critique

first draft
Originally uploaded by maggie searcy

WOW. I have survived the past two weeks. I’ll admit, at 6:00 a.m. last Wednesday when I was still awake working on one of about 500 projects, I was asking myself why I really care so much and why I am so concerned. I see people everyday who don’t have a ton of work to do or don’t care about school, but I can’t relate. It’s totally not my work ethic.

I mean, come on, I’m trying to come to terms that I can’t actually accomplish everything on my to-do list before 10:00 p.m., which yes, was the usual time I went to sleep before this semester again.

In the past 24 hours I have realized yet again why I love designing, why I am passionate about the amount of picas between the head and dek of a feature, or the about of points the thickness of a stroke is and how each detail can make a huge impact. Ah! It’s like a love language!

The math side of my brain got to me today and between 2 o’clock on Friday and 5:30 on Sunday afternoon, Lauren and I spent nearly 30 hours at VOX. Even with the infinite playlists, courtesy of Pandora and the slaphappy humor that evolved over our lack of sleep, we put all we had into this week’s feature. Oh! I am so excited to see it in print tomorrow. Before I reveal the entire thing, the picture to the left is one of the first drafts of our splash page. The feature is on the True/False film festival that is taking place in Columbia this weekend for the sixth year.

Lauren and I had a product we were proud of, but things can easily change when we begin getting inputs from other people – always a good thing, but not always something I want to hear. I had become attached to this red box that anchored the first page of the feature, but since we are limited on space, the “blank space” of my red box had to be tossed, and text had to be added.

The moral of my critique is hard work does pay off. The hours of brainstorming, learning new software techniques, and designing as a pair, was a learning experience as well as a boost of encouragement after completing this huge feature.

Of all the time I have spent on the computer, designing and creating the past week, I never got burnt-out. I wanted to stay up and make my designs better and keep executing ideas but I finally had to let myself sleep. The adrenaline rush that has come over me in the past 48 hours has put me on a high... and reassured me that I am in the right place, doing the right thing, --doing what I love.

Sometimes reassurance that you’re doing the right thing and you’re on the right track is a positive reinforcement that hard work does pay off.

And sometimes, even through all the stress that life brings, and the endless to-do lists, a lot/if any reassurance is recognized, and coming at this time in the semester, I think this is a push to remind me “why I love what I do!”