Graduate / 'to find a bigger audience' - LETTER OF INTENT FOR GRADUATE SCHOOL [3]

When I was 14, I started attending painting classes, and within the first year, I was the best student in oil and watercolour painting. Three years later, I decided that I wanted to expand my artistic abilities beyond the use of canvas and paper. That's when I got interested in graphic design and the infinite ways in which you can provide different audiences with not only a graphic, but and idea.

This last October 10th, I was the only student out of other 11 classmates to graduate with honours.

On my last semester of school I received a Mitacs Globalink scholarship to form part of the research project Strategic Design Visualization in the University of British Columbia, and thanks to this, I was able to visit the installations of the Center of Digital Media and learn more about the Masters program for which I'm applying.

This visit also served to prove further my point that just knowing the fundaments of graphic design is not enough anymore. Every single day, new channels of communication are being created, and as a designer and illustrator, I need to be able to compete with these new technologies and to be able to improve the abilities that I already have. With this in mind, I've begun to take basic HTML classes and 3D animation courses using Cinema4D, as well as video animation using Adobe After Effects to improve my graphic design abilities and learning to create paintings and drawings with digital tools instead of the traditional materials to be able to keep applying the knowledge that I already have of painting.

By entering to the Master of Digital Media, I plan not to keep improving these abilities, but also find more ways of applying them and combine both traditional and digital techniques. Digital media offers the opportunity of connecting with people all over the world; it can connect with an audience from Canada to Japan, New Zealand to Brazil and so on and on. This not only allows us to find a bigger audience, but to also achieve a more ecological result and magnify the range of understanding of the design than the traditional ways, like flyers or posters don't allow us to do.

Graduate / Center of Digital Media Letter of Intent [2]

Hello, this is my letter of intent for graduate school in the Center of Digital Media so I would appreciate if anyone could help me review it. Thank you!

By entering to the Master of Digital Media, I plan not only to keep improving my abilities as graphic designer and illustrator, but also find more ways of applying them and combine both traditional and digital techniques. Digital media offers the opportunity of connecting with people all over the world; it can connect with an audience from Canada to Japan, New Zealand to Brazil and so on and on. This not only allows us to find a bigger audience, but to also achieve a more ecological result and magnify the range of understanding of the design than the traditional ways, like flyers or posters don't allow us to do.

This master offers a more practical approach than other graduate studies and the opportunity to work along with students from different careers and learn more about their way of thinking and working, their cultures, traditions and how can I connect with them in a professional level.

I have designed for lawyers, hotels, restaurants, shopping stores, non profit organizations, universities and real estate agencies, and all of them have specific needs that need to be solved but that cannot be solved in the same way, most of them don't even need the same things, and as a graphic designer, it's part of my job to identify what my client really needs and to explain it to them that maybe what they want is a poster, but what they really need is a digital marketing campaign to gain more clients, for instance. Through all this experiences, what has helped me is that I keep searching new ways of improving my designs, either by understanding how to use new, non-conventional designing programs, learning how to use HTML code or creating illustrations with digital tools rather than traditional ones.

Over the past 4 years of my university studies, I have explored how much can graphic design influence different cultures, behaviours and ideas, and the importance of having a through research to make sure that the message that I want to convey with my design is comprehensible, and thanks to this effort I was the only student of my generation to graduate with honours and to win a Mitacs Scholarship for a designing project in the University of British Columbia.

It was also in my second year of university that I realized that the fundaments of graphic design weren't enough. Every single day, new channels of communication are being created, new careers that involve graphic design courses are formed and websites allow a person who has never studied graphic design or html programing to download a template and create their own logos and websites. Even social medias like Facebook or Twitter that posses millions of users are handled by persons that don't have the proper training communicating the strengths and opportunities their companies provide. All of this results in miscommunication errors, bad first digital impression for the potential clients, eventual neglect of the social media account when the desired results are not achieved and a bad company image in general.

This is why I need to always keep improving and gain more knowledge. By entering the Master of Digital Media, my short-term plans involve learning a new language, preferably French, create my own illustration style that mixes the traditional and digital techniques and learn new ways of designing websites. My long-term plans involve having my own office in the Launch Academy in Vancouver BC dedicated to producing Below The Line advertisement campaigns and editorial design in digital and printed formats