21 Things I’ve Learned in 21 Years By Ana Maria Alaniz Mendoza.

Even though I definitely took a more random approach to this project, I still utilized a numbered sequence that roughly goes from left to right and from top to bottom. As I was laying everything out on the page, I kept thinking my design kind of looked like those old “Eye Spy” books that I used to look at as a child. Some of the numbers are a little sneakier to find compared to others, but as a whole, they remain consistent and they all go with my theme: 21 Things I’ve Learned in 21 Years. All of the imagery is intended to complement the linguistic mode to an extent. My goal was to make the aesthetic response bright and interesting.

The composition on my page is very monotonous and a viewer will only notice repetition if they analyze the design closely. I consider each shape being numbered very repetitive, but all of the numbers also take on different styles/variations which keeps the design spontaneous. I included many textures, sizes, typography, and even some shadows in this layout because I did not want anything to look very similar. Like Lynda Barry explains, this design is alive in the way our memory is alive. One can scan this collage and have an idea about what each object might feel like.

I have used Photoshop before, but I was very limited with tools I felt confident with. The tutorials were extremely helpful and I’m pretty sure my life will never be the same now that I know about the Magic Wand Tool and the Quick Selection Tool. I definitely utilized those two the most for this project. Layer masks are fun, I did play around with them a little bit for this project and I have used them before. Grouping layers helped me stay organized; I didn’t use to care about grouping, however, this project was a lot bigger so it was 100% necessary. Designing in the digital environment is one of my favorite things to do! I love how fast things can be created with just a couple clicks of a button.