As a senior, creating a thesis/capstone project was always something I knew was coming and at first I looked forward to it. It is a project seniors work on for an entire year. I am a graphic design major. Typically, thesis projects from art students involve displaying your art on a wall or curating a room. I saw the previous seniors work so hard on their projects, and when the time came to
start working on mine, I froze. I didn’t know what to do.
I came up with my first idea based on a pre-existing project I already made. The project that I made was an app to help people workout and dance from home, which was inspired by being a dancer myself. Although, I wanted to expand on the pre-existing idea by creating dance apparel. But my professor challenged me to create something completely brand new. My professor told me that thesis projects are about adding something brand new to your portfolio and you can’t do that if you are only expanding on an existing project you created.
The second idea I had was to create an app that would help connect people together, specifically adoptees. This idea was inspired by a long-term friendship of mine that I strongly felt shaped my identity. Although, originally I didn’t want to create a project involving UI/UX design because I feel like I’m better at other areas of graphic design. Despite the project involving UI/UX design, I was heavily considering the idea because I felt like it was a strong idea and I don’t have many projects involving UI/UX design in my portfolio. UI/UX design is the layout design of an app or website, simply just the design process without coding or engineering. But at the time, I had a fallout with the friend that inspired the idea so I scrapped the idea because I didn’t want to make a project that was inspired by someone I wasn’t friends with anymore (Update: We are friends again!).
My third idea was to create a magazine. Over the summer, I took a GFS course with Arcadia University where students get to travel to Ireland and make art at The Burren College of Art. While I was at the Burren College of Art, I enjoyed the process of making a magazine about the Burren area. This led me to wanting to make a magazine for the thesis exhibition. The only thing left was deciding what to make the magazine about. I started off with my interest in fashion and reading magazines like Vogue. Although, I didn’t want to be exactly like Vogue and I wanted the magazine to have something new to say. I was trying to find a way to fuse my interests together into one cohesive project. With my interests in fashion and dance, I was thinking about brands like Nike, Adias, and Alo. I started thinking about fashion and sustainability, which made me realize this is what I wanted my project to focus on.
Figuring out what I wanted my project to be about was daunting and a long process, but ultimately I am really happy with what I decided to do. It took me a couple of tries to brainstorm ideas, but once I focused on what I’m interested in, it helped me find my way.
Featured Image by McKinsey on RawPixel
