2017: My Year in Design

I wrote a menu with a variety of goals for myself in 2017. At the time, I liked the idea of having many things from which to choose to accomplish. As the year progressed, the amount of goals felt daunting—even though I never set out to accomplish all of them. It’s nice to have options but I think next year I want to focus on one or two big goals per category.

2017: My Year in Design

2017 Design goals

The list below is the original list I wrote in 2016. I crossed off items throughout 2017 as I decided I no longer wanted to work on them.

• Become a deft coder. 
  • I marked this off but I still need more work. I am nowhere near “deft”. I did, however, become fluent in HTML 5 and CSS 3, learn how to create a responsive website with my own CSS framework (and launched a site at work that I designed this way), and learn some basic PHP and Java.
• Fix p5 sketches
• Self-publish a design book.
• Redesign blog and portfolio, coding a theme from scratch.
• Learn a new design technique each month. 
  • Although I don’t think I learned a new technique each month, I learned several throughout the year that probably averaged out to be one a month. This year I worked on my illustration and lettering skills through classes on SkillShare and tutorials online.
• Become a better typographer. 
  • I marked this as “done” but typography (like coding) is something that always needs improved upon.
• Get involved with the local design community. 
  • I checked this off by default since I work for the College of Design and a lot of our constituents that I work with are heavily involved with the local design community. I would like to try to attend more events next year.
• Add new designs to the wedding invite shop.

What I designed in 2017

• I coded my first fully responsive website for work with a custom CSS framework that I built. It’s far from perfect (or even great), but it was a great start.
• I took a bunch of SkillShare classes and learned design techniques (including some Illustrator techniques that helped me become a much faster illustrator).
  
• I added 3 new designs to my wedding invitation shop and designed a friend’s wedding invitation.
  
• I re-read Brighurst’s typography book.
• I designed a few Book to LPs. I would like to do more of these but they are time consuming due to figuring out the playlists that go with each book.
  

Even though I didn’t finish all the goals I set, I think 2017 was a pretty good year for design.