Creating a Book That Guides People Joining Math Competitions

Math competitions are events where students compete against each other and themselves in a test of mathematical knowledge and skills. From my own experience participating in math competitions, I know how hard it can be, especially for first timers, which also hinders many people from joining in the first place. I wanted to encourage people to join math competitions and guide those participating in math competitions using my interest and skills in graphic design to create a book that guides people joining math competitions. My goal statement is to design and create a book that guides people joining math competitions. This goal is highly challenging for me because even though I have some experience participating in math competitions, I don’t know every trick in the book. Thus, I would need to conduct research from a variety of sources to make sure that my book is helpful and achieve the goal. Apart from that, my graphic design skills are still quite limited, especially in illustrating. Since I wanted to make the book as aesthetically pleasing and coherent as possible, I would need to improve on my skills first to be able to achieve the goal. The design aspect is also challenging because I wanted to make use of recent graphic design trends, which would require extra research.

Global Context

The Global Context most relevant to my Personal Project is Identities and Relationships. I chose this global context because my book talks about math competitions, which are related to Identities and Relationships. The math competition experience allows individuals to explore their own strengths and weaknesses, and lets them develop their knowledge, thinking skills, and self-management skills. Participating in math competitions also allows people to make new connections and strengthen their relationships with others, which I discuss in my book.

Product

My final product is a book titled “Math Competitions: The Complete Guide” that serves as a guide to math competitions and people joining them. I chose to make a book because I also wanted to use my graphic design skills to create an interesting book design that incorporates recent graphic design trends. I began my book by explaining what the definition of a math competition is. Then, I explained the benefits one might get by joining a math competition, which includes better math skills, connecting with others, personal growth, and university, in order to convince more people to join. After that, I also briefly explained how to join a math competition. The most important information that I wanted to include in the book was how to prepare, which included study tips as well as advice regarding how to prepare mentally. Equally important were tips for participants when taking the competition itself, because this was the part of the book that actually guided people joining, which was part of my goal. After that, I also decided to include information regarding what to do after the competition, including how to deal with the results because I know from firsthand experience how hard it is to deal with failure. In total, the book has 98 pages with more than 7000 words. When designing the book, I started by researching recent graphic design trends as it is part of my goal. After researching, I chose to implement five modern trends in the design, which were the use of geometric shapes because I thought it would fit the theme of math, the use of gradients just because I thought they looked good, serif font and outline font to add some spice to the text itself, and a monochrome color scheme to keep the book legible. In terms of font, I chose to use Poppins in size 10 for the body text and headers because I wanted a clean Sans-Serif font, and after I chose Playfair Display for the titles after searching for good fonts to pair with Poppins. I also chose to size the fonts according to the golden ratio because the golden ratio is also related to math. In terms of color, even though the color scheme might look black and white, I actually used a dark grey color called Jet, not black, to make the design more unique. I kept the body text design simple to make it easy to read, while including my own illustrations and using outline fonts for the headers. Meanwhile, I was able to be more creative in designing the chapter titles and book cover, using gradients in the background, large titles in serif font, and big geometric shapes. The cover of each title uses a shape that corresponds to the chapter number, so chapter one has a circle as it has one side, chapter two has a hollow circle with 2 sides, chapter three has a triangle with 3 sides, and so on. I also used some of the shapes to create math competition related objects, such as a medal in chapter two using the hollow circle, and a pencil in chapter five using the pentagon. I also chose to make the chapter titles span across two pages so that it would connect across the pages once printed.

Open the Personal Project Product Below

Reflection

This whole journey has been a great experience for me. Looking back, things didn’t go exactly as planned, and at times there were problems that I had to overcome, such as having to switch from Photoshop to Google Docs midway through as I mentioned previously, or doing countless design revisions before deciding on a final design. The process has also put quite a toll on me, from sleepless nights to panic attacks, which thankfully happened early on and not at the last minute, and resulted in motivation to keep working. However, even though I think that overall I developed all of my ATL skills through this project, I particularly developed my thinking skills as I solved problems as mentioned previously, had to think creatively to create and design my book, and transferred previous knowledge and experiences into my project. I think that my product will also be beneficial to its readers and teach them not only about math competitions, but I think that the information can also be applied to other aspects in life, such as self-management, stress-management, and overcoming challenges. In the end, I think that apart from exceeding my goals, my product also ties into the global context, Identities and Relationships, through the content of the book. In my book, I write about how math competitions can lead to self improvement in many different aspects, as well as how it can strengthen relationships with other people, as well as how it has done so in my experience. The project also allowed me to learn more about Identities and Relationships as I formed relationships with others involved like my supervisor and my interviewees, and I explored my own identity, strengths, and weaknesses.

IB Learner Reflection

The IB learner profiles that I developed the most in this project were being a thinker and being a communicator. I had to learn to be a good thinker because of the nature of the project itself, which required me to think to come up with the content of my book, and also to be able to come up with a creative design. I also think that I became a good thinker because of the problems I had to solve during the process, which required me to think my way through to be able to overcome them. The nature of the project itself also required me to become a good communicator, through the use of words and design in order to convey information effectively to the readers of my book. I also developed my communication skills in my research by conducting interviews and also with my supervisor.