Making every project good counts at this stage of the game. Impressing my design teachers is one of the goals of each project that i'm presented with and it drains me in more ways than one. Being a good designer requires independent critical, logical, creative, and analytical thinking. If you cannot think of designs on your own I recommend resourcing work from other good designers in books, NOT copying elements from your classmates. A girl in my design class (who also happens to be a co-worker of mine) recently tried to ruin me.
One of the big projects that my class had to work on for typography was a long extensive timeline of the activities, locations, and importance over a 5-day period. This project was probably one of the most tedious, yet ridiculously complex design problems I had to solve in the design program. I created a timeline that used a specific system of elements unique to my design and most people's timelines all looked very different from one another. Well, this girl started out with ok design ideas then fell absent for a week or so and had to catch up with the rest of the class. Having the convenience of my number locked in her cellphone, this girl texts me asking to see how my timeline looked. I was hesitant at first to show her because I tried for long hours to figure out how to design the structure of my timeline and just showing her how i did mine seemed kind of like a cheat on her part (considering i didn't have anyone else' s to look at for reference). I gave in just to be nice, and sent her a small zoomed out version of my timeline structure (small enough so she couldn't see my small details). After a few weeks of constant designing and revising my timeline, I noticed that the more she wanted to see my work; gawking at my screen in the design lab, telling me how nice my timeline looked, I noticed MY design system being copied into HER timeline! :O At first I thought that she would eventually modify it and make it her own, and she did in some parts, but its evident that she took my 24hr time structure design, my diagonal elements, my shifts, even my edges! >:-( Every time we would start working on our designs in class this girl would go around the room, look at what people were doing, come over to my computer, tell me what she did in her timeline, look at mine some more, then go back to her computer and change stuff around. Whats worse than being copied is being let down. Now, this girl i'm referencing is a generally nice person. I just think she banks on other people's ideas. The night before the timelines were due, i was scrambling to finish my timeline in the computer lab at school. I finally got my timeline printed at 12:45am, cut it to size, and brought it home to mount on black board. The only thing was....i found a HUGE error. >_< I had overlooked a detail that was critical and could not bear to show it as the final piece for my hard ass teacher to critique. So since this girl in my class is a labbie (has unlimited access to the lab), I texted her that early morning asking if she could do me a big favor and open the lab for me to reprint my corrected timeline again. NO RESPONSE. I texted her what time she will be on campus that morning. NO RESPONSE. I figured she was busy working on work or had fallen asleep and had gone to bed, so I figured I would just wait till 7:30am when I got to school. I texted her around 7:45am( knowing that she would probably reach campus around 8:30am or so because she had a morning class that day too) asking when she'll be on campus again.....NO RESPONSE. At that point I was desperate for a miracle that someone who was a labbie could open the lab and print my timeline for me. Low and behold a BFA design student had popped out of the lab and I caught her just in time! She was so nice and re-printed my timeline for me. I cut my timeline to size, got it mounted, and still had time to spare before my first class started ^_^ Although I barely slipped by with the skin of my teeth that day, I still could not believe that that girl in my class didn't answer my texts i sent her (she almost always responds to my texts). I think that either she felt like she couldn't tell me "no" she didn't want to , or she just wanted me to suffer and look bad for not being able to show anything for class. I just couldn't believe this person, someone who i had confided in since I started the design program, just tried to throw me under the bus! I walked into class with my timeline nicely mounted and peeked over to see her face; she didnt want to make eye contact with me and felt scared to be in my presence out of fear that I might have bitched at her for not helping me.
Whatever. The one thing that pains me though isnt that she stole my design concepts, it isnt so much that she ignored my plea for help, its that she gets A's on her projects from my teachers and I'm left with measly B's. =-(:::::: Life truly isn't fair.
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