My Zenith Project was comprised of two major parts. The first was to redesign a blog space and create 3 blogs along with one short video as content. The second part of the project was to design a charitable T-shirt company’s logo, merchandise, and package design to display and sell on my site. I chose to work on web design because I had this shell of a travel blog and I have been wanting to revamp and repurpose it for quite some time. Lately I’ve really gotten into minimalistic web spaces and I really wanted to create one myself with an aesthetic I really appreciated. I also wanted to challenge myself to write some original content because I’ve been at a creative block, which is partially why the blog died in the first place. But I was probably most excited for my t-shirt company. I drew the t-shirt design a few years back after I came back from extended travel. The designs are the world’s continents with traditional cultural patterns filling them. The mission behind the t-shirt company was to create quality content that also promotes compassion by raising money for kids in need around the world with every purchase.
My research paper was based on the relationship between social media and social activism which was a really fascinating and relevant topic. I have a huge passion for social justice and because we live in a digital age, I wanted to really see what kind of impact I can have through social media use. My blog touches on the topics of global compassion and social justice and I know–through my research and my experiences– that stories can touch people as they read from behind their device, but that it is very difficult to compel people to action. I hope that my content can inspire and encourage action in my readers, but I know that won’t always be the case.
In wordpress I bought a new theme that had very minimalist design with a focus on large images. It allowed me to get rid of the old grid-style blog post format and replace it with a collage style format. I really like that the titles only show up when a mouse goes over the blog’s feature photo. Overall I love how clean the blog looks now. It’s a much more aesthetically pleasing space which was really my goal for it. I also got to make some meaningful content along the way. I interviewed a friend and fellow artist about the ways she uses art to advocate for others and convey social issues which I had a lot of fun with. I also put together a video of 3 young ladies talking about their experiences as women. I really enjoyed being able to connect with these inspiring people along the way. It was definitely a refresher in the midst of lots of technical details.
Throughout the process I collaborated with my dad and Mr. Taylor when it came to difficulties achieving what I wanted in wordpress. I also formed a “council” of creative women to bounce ideas off of and draw help from. I think that every artist needs trusted advisors and fellow artists to trust with works in progress instead of asking opinions from any person. I met with one of them–a graphic designer named Kristi– to discuss logo design. Through my discussions with her, she helped me realize I wanted a very simplistic and perhaps geometric logo that could stand alone without the company name. I went into our meeting hoping that I would leave inspired and set on an idea, but unfortunately that wasn’t the case. It was frustrating to spend so much time on branding, but come away with so little progress. In many ways I was impatient and isolated during this branding endeavour so I wish I would have relied more on my council and involved them more in the process.
Eventually, after much deliberation, I landed on a name and logo. I wanted the brand name to be in Swahili because of the connection I have to an orphanage in Kenya. I intend to give portions of the first t-shirt sales to this organization. Eventually I chose the word “KUTOA” which means “to give” in Swahili which felt very in line with my mission. After meeting with Kristi and consulting Pinterest even more, I created a very simplistic geometric logo. For me it signifies a globe with a single string that connects different parts of the world, but because it is abstract and minimalistic, people can draw their own inferences from it.
If I could do this project again, I would have allotted myself more time or I would have scaled down my project by a little bit. I was very crunched for time and I couldn’t put in as much time as I wanted to. If I had started off with more of an idea about what things would look like, especially for the T-shirt company branding, I think I could have been more efficient. But I spent a lot of hours brainstorming and trying to draw inspiration which led to a whole lot of dead ends. Clearly, this is part of the creative process. As Ms. P says, “Designing is a journey, not an event.” I just didn’t have enough time for the journey to take so long. In the end I did pull it off which I’m really proud of.
During this web designing process, I feel that my technological literacy has improved. I am more easily able to navigate the front and back ends of WordPress and can mostly accomplish the things that I want. In addition, despite being behind, I feel that I was quite productive and never wasteful of class time. Of course, social and civic responsibility is a huge part of my project, and continues to be the main reason why I am challenging myself to do this crazy endeavor. I would say my self direction was weakest because it was really difficult to stay on top of my deadlines. Overall, I feel like I am growing and learning a whole lot in this process despite feeling rushed and overwhelmed.
In the future, I hope to use my WordPress skills to continue this website and maybe build or redesign websites for other people or organizations. I learned just how hard it is to create logos and establish branding. I hope I can do more of that in the future, because I’m really drawn to simple graphics that tell a story, but I would want to give myself way more time and space to do it. Besides those artistic skills, I will definitely carry forward my productivity. In the future, I want to prioritize steps more efficiently because I ended up working on my consumer project a lot more and got behind on creating content. In the future I want to stick to my deadlines a little better and set realistic checkpoints for myself.
Despite being a bit stressed, overall I’m super proud of myself for the work that I completed for this momentous project. The blog looks incredible, I love the stripped down, minimalistic vibe and layout I am achieved. It’s taken me a long time to simplify my continent designs, but I’m quite pleased with the final product. It’s been so awesome to work on these skills and have both a digital design and fine art project to work on.
In terms of the presentation, it was really great to get a chance to share what I’d created with all of my peers. Even though I was a little apprehensive, it felt very natural to tell the narrative of my process over the past 3 months. It was really great to receive such positive feedback and have so many people tell me they want to purchase my original shirts. I’m so glad I got to combine my loves of web design, drawing, branding design, writing, and social justice in my Zenith. It was wonderful to pick back up on some of these old creative projects and recycle them and make them new. I hope to continue refining the blog and the KUTOA brand and see them evolve even further.