This project went a little better than the first.

We were tasked with making a "Get Out The Vote" poster for AIGA. I was excited to do such a thing because at the time I had never been so excited about politics. So I got to work sketching and thinking of an idea. My sketches were really illustrative at the start, and this was for a reason: I love illustration but have no idea where it intersects with design. I have drawn for forever, but the line between my sketches and what I make in illustrator has always been thick. It has been my goal this year to break down that barrier, but I didn't necessarily go about it the smartest way.

I went all in on the illustrative side and left any good design principles behind. All of my favorite ideas were purely illustrative and didn't seem to lend themselves very well to a good design principles, especially in the style that I desired to create them in. And so when I tried to bring my sketches to fruition, I kept hitting a wall.

I continued to hit this wall right up until the thing was due. So in a moment of desperation, I took a hard left. I leaned away from the self-serious, chalky illustrations I was wanting to make, and leaned into a cheeky, hyper-designed poster and web banner.

The end product was cheeky and clean. It was beautiful, but I couldn't help but feel like something was lost. In John Bower's book “Introduction to 2-Dimensional Design" they spoke about letting the medium speak, and I realized I was forcing the illustrations into doing my bidding without letting them work for me. I clearly knew a little more about letting design work for me, and the end product was a beautiful representation of that.