Document Design

Summary: I created this brochure as a project for my Desktop Publishing course. During this course, I worked on projects in Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign and learned about the basic principles of document design. The purpose of this assignment was to gain experience working in Adobe InDesign and to create an informational brochure over a topic of our choice. For this assignment, I chose to create a brochure that showcased the Rhetoric and Professional Writing program at the University of Cincinnati. This project showcases some of the design skills that I have built throughout the Desktop Publishing course and is an example of my style of writing for marketing materials. Additionally, I wanted to show more details about what I am learning through my program, so this document also serves the purpose of illustrating the skills that I am gaining throughout my degree on the Rhetoric and Professional Writing track. 

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Reflection: I really enjoyed the process of designing this document. I think that it is incredibly gratifying to sit with a designed document and work with it until every element is perfected and displayed as concisely as possible. In addition, I found the process of doing a deeper dive into what my program is about to be a rewarding experience as it has helped me better articulate the skills that I am currently building. Before taking this course, I had no experience working in the Adobe Suite. After working on several projects through Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign, I have much more confidence working in these programs and have found them useful in my academic, professional, and personal life. The process of creating this document propelled me to grow my writing and design skills and helped me to gain a well-rounded experience working in the Adobe Suite. 

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Click on the button to view a downloadable version of my RPW Brochure or view the PDF file to the right. 

Summary: I created this infographic for my Introduction to Professional Writing course. This assignment entailed selecting a specific topic to research and create an infographic for. I chose to research about the benefits of reading for fun as an adult because reading is a big passion of mine, and I have found that a lot of content that promotes reading is geared towards children or adolescents. This assignment helped me grow my skills in research, synthesis, and document design. Since infographics are becoming increasingly popular for content created for public consumption, this assignment gave me an opportunity to learn more about and practice the craft of creating infographics. I chose to include this project in my ePortfolio to show how I would go about researching and designing an infographic for public use. 

 

Reflection: This assignment gave me the opportunity to create a designed document over a topic that is intriguing to me. The process of creating this assignment was intriguing because it incorporated both research and design. I also found the practice of narrowing down my textual content to be challenging but really rewarding in helping me create an infographic that is digestible and aesthetically interesting to look at. Infographics are prevalent in nearly every industry's communication, so it was a very useful and enjoyable skill to build.

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Click on the button to view a downloadable version of my Infographic or view the PDF file to the right. 

Summary: I created this design for the Drug and Poison Information Center to help update and add variation to their outreach materials. The poison control center gives out materials such as magnets, stickers, and phone cases to raise awareness of their services and their phone number. The center has been using the same designs for the past few years. When they were ordering their next shipment of materials, they reached out to me to see if I would be interested in creating a design that would go on a magnet or sticker to be passed out at schools, conferences, or other outreach events. I created several rough draft designs for this project, and eventually came up with a "smart phone" design that was chosen to move forward with. I created this design using Adobe Illustrator. I chose to include this document in my ePortfolio because I wanted to show my proficiency with the Adobe Suite and my design capabilities overall. The poison control center ended up using this design for their new magnets and ordered 10,000 magnets in this design for public distribution.

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Reflection: I predominately work with text pieces, so it was both intimidating and exciting to create a document that was almost entirely design based. I am fairly new to design compared to my writing background, but I have absolutely loved learning and creating projects with the Adobe Suite and other design software such as Canva and Piktochart. This project taught me about working on a design project with a client. The process of creating this smart phone design was incredibly valuable to me because it helped me to gain more experience and confidence in my design skills in Adobe Illustrator and it provided me with an opportunity to design something that will be able to actually be used and seen. 

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Click on the button to view a downloadable version of my smartphone magnet design or view the image to the right. 

Summary: I created this flyer as a part of my position as a Peer Career Coach at the University of Cincinnati’s Bearcat Promise Career Studio. For this flyer, my supervisor asked me to create a simple resource that could be distributed to students who need extra help with grammar for their resume writing. Specifically, we work with many students whose first language is not English, which was why my supervisor introduced this idea. For this project, I wanted to create a clear flyer that was consistent with the Bearcat Promise Career Studio’s past design choices, so I chose to insert the official career studio logo and use a simple, relevant design. 

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Reflection: Although most of my position as a Peer Career Coach does not involve writing or document design, I feel proud that I am entrusted with projects such as this one when the need arises. I have enjoyed being able to use my skills that I have built through my Rhetoric and Professional Writing coursework to positively benefit my employer. This project helped me to gain experience working with a company with a defined brand and style and gave me an example of how to accommodate my design choices to fit within the larger image of an organization. I also gained an opportunity to write for an educational setting rather than a scientific or public health setting.

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Click on the button to view a downloadable version of my 8 Grammar Tips for Resume Writing resource sheet or view the PDF file to the right.