The first question presented in the provided reflection prompt is an easy one to answer. What did I like most about my project? Simply put, I love the Grateful Dead, and the opportunity to submit a project for a class that revolved around me listening to and dissecting Dead tracks was definitely a highlight of my senior year of college.
While I had originally planned to create a physical, tangible CD with liner notes, I ultimately had to come to terms with the fact that I just simply have the time or resources to do something of that magnitude. Instead of trying to create something that would ultimately fall short of my original intention, I did what I thought was the next best thing. Create and interactive, digital copy of my album, song annotations and specially made commemorative Rolling Stone magazine cover.
My work was definitely most successful in the conceptuality of the piece. Listeners (and readers for this matter) will be able to open the provided PDF, access the digital album, and listen to the music while reading along with the annotations. As far as ineffectiveness goes within my project, I wish I could’ve followed through with my original idea of making a physical copy of the album like I originally planned to. With that being said, though, with the overall theme of the class being writing in digital environments, I think creating a digitally-accessed album was very fitting.
The in-class peer reviews and also time spent going over the project details with Dr. King certainly aided in developing my thoughts and gave me a better understanding of where I wanted to take the project. By speaking with others, I was able to see things from other people’s perspectives, and since this album is something that would be made public, it was helpful to see what others wanted to get out of the project.
I created the piece using a variety of digital content creating platforms like Microsoft Word, Adobe InDesign and Adobe Photoshop. I would say I spent the most amount of time behind the artistic portion of this project, but the written annotations also took hours of careful listening and consideration. For the most part though, the technologies I utilized the most was Photoshop, which let me create all the visuals used throughout.
As far as the work I put into this project compared to others—I’ll be honest—senior year isn’t necessarily the toughest academic year of one’s life. With that being said, I was able to devote a lot of time to this project, especially in the art. All art is originally made with only very few elements existing before they were put into my piece. Having ample time to complete this project and work on the art meant I could painstakingly look over each detail until it was to the best possible thing I could create with only minimal Photoshop experience and knowledge.
By working on this project, I was able to combine three things I am very passionate about. Music, art and writing. By fusing all three of those subjects into one and then adding the Grateful Dead flair made for a very enjoyable project to work on.