“Hey Howie, interested to join?” Yeji asked. “Sure, why not?” I readily replied. Its not the first time I worked with Yeji on a project. She seems to have a knack in identifying good learning opportunities.
A month ago, our design teacher informed us that there is a digital badge making competition for this year’s SST Tech Summit. The challenge will be to create a series of digital badges that symbolizes the digital nature of learning be it as a presenter or participant. These badges will be used to commemorate SST’s first virtual conference. The summit is pretty cool, focusing on how technology can be used to improve teaching and learning. Worth checking out: https://labschool.sst.edu.sg/home
So, back to our badge design project… we started thinking about it and came up with our initial design, which in hindsight was rather terrible. Fortunately, our design studies teacher, Mr Irfan (must have fainted when he saw our initial designs… haha!) was able to give us good advice on how to improve our designs. We were able to turn things around within the next few days.
In fact, after factoring in Mr Irfan’s recommendations, our final design looks totally different! However, it was a distinct improvement, so the hard work was worth it. The major challenge was that everyone was busy balancing their own school homework. Despite that, we managed to come together and resubmit the improved design within the span of 3 days.
A week later, I was delighted to find out that our badge design is going to be used by the participants at SST’s inaugural virtual summit. Mr Irvan even mentioned our team in his Instagram How cool is that?
To summarize, this particular win holds special meaning because it started out quite badly. Our initial designs were honestly a far cry from the final design. However, as my team mates and I were keen in design, we motivated each other to do a better job. So, even though we only had a weekend to work on the feedback from our teacher, we were committed to redoing (we literally redid entire design!) the project based on the recommendations as well as factoring additional information gleaned from researching some of the better designs out there. Eventually, my team came up with a design that we were satisfied with.
To top it off, we managed to even submit it one day before the deadline. All because we were committed to doing the hard work upfront.
My key takeaway from this project were:
Don’t need fancy software. Keynote suffices. Main thing is having a clear concept and idea behind the design.
Learn from others - researching (Google is your best friend) how some badges were designed by others so as to build upon their designs. Get the idea, not copy directly!
Simple shapes and minimal colors can bring out the eventual design. Our badge is made up of hexagons, ovals, circles, triangles and trapeziums, etc. Consistency of fonts also gives the design a professional look & feel.
I always enjoy designing stuff, and to see stuff that I worked out being used by the school is definitely a wonderful feeling. Our follow-up project is an eBook design. That one promises to be interesting too… I look forward to sharing about that soon!
So cool to see this mentioned on my teacher's Instagram page :)
Howie Chia
27 Jan 2022
💯SHEEESH LOVE THE DESIGN AND LOVED WORKING WITH U!!!!
- yeji