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Mentorship May 5, 2020
I'm a graphic designer who thought I knew everything about design, but I was wrong.
When I enrolled in ENTITY Academy’s Design Collective, I wasn’t sure what I was going to learn in the program.
My education in the field of graphic design before ENTITY had been pretty intense. I’m lucky enough to have learned the ins and outs of the Adobe Creative Suite. I had also spent years at my university delving into design concepts while fine-tuning my design technique.
However, it was what I learned during my first week at ENTITY Academy that made me realize there was a whole world of design I had never looked into.
User Experience (or UX) is an area of design that I had touched on briefly in my second year of college. I had no idea what it was truly about, or that I was capable of doing it. Previously, I had been led to believe that UX Design required a coding background and years of experience.
ENTITY brought in two experienced UX designers for our small design group. Chelsea Dega-Hassler, the UX lead at Omnichannel and her previous mentor, the founder of Digital Karma, Jill DeSilva, took time out of their busy schedules to teach us. They were friendly, intelligent, and cared about sharing their world with us.
I realized quickly that I could apply my graphic design background to UX within the first week. They made it clear that we didn’t need to understand coding to make a platform a better experience for users. By understanding what makes great design, you already understand the base of UX design. Dega-Hassler went on and asked us to create personas for a brand. By creating a persona, I began to understand how to make a website function better.
If you design for everyone, you end up designing for no one.”
Chelsea Dega-Hassler
Fast forward to the last week of ENTITY, DeSilva gave us the necessary tools to create a new website design using UX tools like Adobe XD. My group was able to redesign a more user-friendly platform for the cupcake chain Sprinkles and present on how this design would change their average customer’s online experience with them.
Kyle Denman, a former Project Runway winner, gave us an inspiring lesson on the basics of fashion design.
With a political science background, he made a point to talk about the importance of utilizing other passions to better your design. He specifically used his political science knowledge to understand systematic design in fashion.
He also taught us one-on-one about creating our own fashion sketches, including everything from the clothing to body types. Denman made sure that each student used a unique design style to create their pieces.
Rose Freeland, an incredibly experienced art and creative director, instructed the ENTITY Academy design program on branding. As someone very interested in creative and art direction, it was a dream to talk to her about her work.
When I explained how one day I hoped to go into her field, she replied:
“Stop telling people you aspire to be a creative director, just say you are one!”
Freeland brought us through a quick activity on branding where each person in the design program created sketches around their own personal brand. Whether it was a restaurant concept we dreamed up or our own personal logo, Freeland helped guide us.
Jeff Cain, the former MFA Director at USC, was one of our last instructors. He was adamant about getting in touch with creativity and taught us imaginative practices to help us maintain it. His preferred medium was photography, and he brought us out to the surrounding area to experience the neighborhood culture through the lens of a camera.
In only six hours of instruction with him, he aided us in creating photo collages. These collages represented not only what we saw visually in the surrounding area, but also said a lot about our own personal tastes and design.
Overall, I came out of ENTITY a more well-rounded designer. I went into the program as a graphic designer who one day aspired to do creative direction. I left more confident, more experienced, and happier about my design capabilities.
Not only have I broadened my network of designers, but I’ve also broadened my scope of what I can do with design. After these past weeks, I even want to start up painting again. I feel more creative than ever before, and am more willing to try other design practices now. I’m not scared of what other design options are out there career-wise, or my overall creative process.
