My final paper came along easier than I thought it would.
Maybe that was due to the extra motivation that came to me via procrastination. Maybe it’s a symptom of being a third year English student; by this point, you kind of have to learn how to pop out papers quickly. Either way, I knew what I wanted to say, and I hope I communicated it clearly.
I didn’t consciously go through Alex White’s book when I was making my book cover and create my design according to what I read. Instead, I designed the book cover using my common sense, and then compared it to what White wrote, and connected the two in my essay. That’s the thing about what White wrote. For the most part, we kind of know what makes a design good or not. It’s kind of obvious that space should be used wisely, your type should be legible, etc. While I did learn some things from The Elements of Graphic Design, it mostly just gave me the jargon to go along with design elements I already subconsciously knew. Not that it’s a bad thing to bring those philosophies to the front of mind and define them, but that is the bulk of what this book did for me, not teach me something brand new.