This project had such a strong impact on my development as a designer. I had no prior experience of creating a brand from scratch when I was approached with this opportunity. I have been an artist in various mediums my whole life, but I had only just recently stepped into my graphic design minor. I had one design course under my belt when I started working on the project, so there were so many things that I did not even know that I did not know yet. Thankfully, the people that I worked for were very gracious and gave me time to figure out how to create a successful brand for them. 

The project ended up lasting longer than either my employer or I had expected, but we were eventually able to get it done. This was a big step for me because it was my first time making money from any form of art that I created. It meant a lot that MILKWEED decided to take a risk by allowing me to work on capturing their vision for their company. This made me realize that I enjoy the branding aspects of design because they allow me to use my creativity in unique ways. 

I developed several skills over the course of this project. I learned how to properly create a design brief that allows me to say what my time is worth confidently. MILKWEED was so gracious to me because I sent them an initial design brief with pricing, and they told me that I should be charging higher and worked with me to adjust my rates. I learned to see the value in the work that I do because of that, and I now have a better grasp of the value of my time. 

Through this project, I also got more comfortable using digital illustration as an art form. Before this, I had messed around with some digital art, but I had never made anything that I would be proud of. This project forced me to use a lot of software that I had limited knowledge of. I used a combination of Procreate, Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign to create the final designs for my client. I have now become far more comfortable in each of these systems and use them frequently in tandem with each other to create the designs and illustrations that I want to make for the projects I work on. 

Looking back with the knowledge I have now, there are ways that I would have approached this design system differently. That should be expected with any new endeavor, but the most important aspect is just to force yourself to do the work and learn as you go. While there are things I would change, I am still incredibly proud of the designs that I created for this company. 

This project also forced me to develop myself as a thinker. I have always enjoyed finding ways to use words to create imagery. (Maybe this comes from my years of watching Word World as a young child.) I wanted to do something like that for MILKWEED that would be eye-catching and force people to take notice because everything from the color palette to the design style was meant to be in your face in ways that made the brand stand out from other real estate companies. I came up with the design for MILKWEED to be inside a Monarch Caterpillar as a fun secondary logo, and the client loved it so much that it was the design we kept coming back to whenever we were working on the rest of the brand. They eventually wanted me to do the same thing for a Monarch Butterfly, and this gave me another opportunity to force myself to figure out how to use the word to create an illustrative logo. 

The other main source of my development as a thinker was in the critique sessions that I had with MILKWEED. There were elements of the design that we clashed on slightly, so I had to learn how to navigate those conflicts as well. We never had any major disagreements, but I had to make adjustments based on their feedback. There were also things that they wanted to change about our contract after we had started, and we had to renegotiate those differences as well.