Hi, my name is Sydney Dixon, and I am a Junior studying Graphic Design at East Carolina University. Throughout my life, I have seen art in advertisements on television and billboards, the architecture of the old buildings in the downtown district of my small hometown of Tarboro, NC, and the complex and unique designs within nature. I have always been attracted to art and the idea that a person can use art as a means to communicate a message or an emotion. My interest in art grew during years of taking art classes during high school, my life-long hobby of photography, and my current pursuit of learning all I can about graphic design. Art’s ability to influence or inspire people is powerful. My interest in pursuing a career in the design field is motivated by my belief that art is a compelling influencer for causing change and positive action.
Art has always been an influential tool and can be a powerful means of communication that alters our ways of thinking. I believe that graphic design specifically is a useful artistic tool for virtual and visual communication to society. Graphic designers typically design advertisements for TV, billboards, and signs, create logos, and design websites, book covers, and magazine layouts among other things. This type of communication is appealing because of its high visibility in today’s society. For example, many people identify companies by their logos. When creating the logos for my projects featured in my portfolio, my goal was to create logos that emphasize the purpose of and the feelings that can be attained through the projects. For example, I created the Bloom trademark using a friendly script typeface, calm natural colors, and a sprout icon to illustrate Bloom’s goal to encourage users to grow and maintain healthy habits. In response to these projects in my graphic design classes, packaging and brand design is what I find the most attractive. Exploring different colors, typefaces, and organization styles to emphasize the appeal of a product to customers while also including its practical information through the design of its package solely is interesting to me. For instance, I created the Clock-Out beer brand above to encourage hard workers to choose this beer as a means to reward themselves after a long day at work and to remember they are free to spend time relaxing after hours. This power of graphic design to influence viewers is a valuable source to help implement ideas or messages to society.
The reason a career in graphic design is so appealing to me is its ability to visually communicate ideas and messages for clients, and hopefully in the future, it will give me the opportunity to further work on projects that spread positive and effective messages in small and big ways.
