Recent Posts
Culture August 14, 2018
It's time to Photoshop ’til you drop.
Image via Unsplash.comThanks to a generous partnership between Adobe and ENTITY, I now have access to Adobe Creative Cloud for a full year. That’s right. A full year of Photoshopping myself into pictures with my favorite celebrities. I’m working on my wedding photos with Rihanna as we speak.
I’ve spent the past week getting acquainted with Adobe software. I’ve scrolled through hundreds of fonts, edited the heck out of my resume and made some pretty cool graphics. Each app has about five million different functions, so it’s safe to say I’ve barely scratched the surface of what Adobe CC has to offer.
Day one of design week was all about Photoshop. We focused on learning how to make quote cards and memes for social media. Don’t laugh—memes are super important! For a meme connoisseur like yours truly, access to Photoshop is a game-changer. Gone are the days of editing Spongebob reaction images on Mac Paint. With Photoshop by my side, my humor is top-notch.
In all seriousness, this was a crucial part of learning Adobe CC. Nowadays, it’s essential for companies to have an active online presence. This can only be accomplished through an engaging social media platform, so Photoshop is an absolute necessity.
Next, we created style guides using InDesign to develop our personal brands. Surprisingly, this required a lot of soul-searching. I had to think about who I am as a person. What do I stand for? What do I value? How do I want to be perceived both personally and professionally?
Somehow, I managed to distill the essence of my personality into an appropriate typeface. It’s Bodoni 72, in case you were wondering.
This process really drove home the importance of personal branding in the professional world. What potential employers and clients associate me with is just as important as the content I create.
I also made a personal logo using Illustrator. Actually, I made several personal logos. Who knew creating a visually appealing, memorable image that perfectly encapsulates my brand and content would be so hard? (Probably everyone.)
I consider myself a part-time professional doodler, so it’s cool knowing these applications can take my drawings to the next level.
After logos, our design team taught us how to create resumes and business cards using InDesign. I’m a broke college student — or a college student operating on a budget, if you prefer — so up until now, I’ve been using Google Docs for my resumes. It was functional but not particularly exciting to look at.
My personal resume glowed up after receiving the InDesign treatment. After several days of crash-course Adobe, I’ve compiled everything into a kick-ass portfolio.
Here’s the bottom line. The competition to secure a job post-graduation is cutthroat. Everyone is talented, and everyone has potential. Like it or not, a single glance at my resume or portfolio could mean the difference between me securing the perfect position or continuing the job search.
It’s also important to be multifaceted. I am a writer, first and foremost. That will never change. However, learning new design skills gives me a big competitive advantage. ENTITY was the perfect environment to learn this in, because startups require that you become a jack-of-all-trades.
In the professional world, I’m only as good as my work. With Adobe CC, I now have the means to produce the high-quality content that will best represent me.
