Full transparency: my experience with Photoshop was not the smoothest. It took me a while to get the hang of the tools and how to utilize them in the most efficient ways. The only Adobe platform I had experience with was InDesign, and I needed quite a bit of experimenting to get good at using Photoshop. I wouldn’t say I’m a professional when it comes to Photoshop, but the direct mailing assignment definitely helped me get better!
Stakeholders and the Design Process
An essential part of the design process is being able to understand your stakeholders. In my Photoshop experience, my specific stakeholders for this assignment were “Softball Sophia” and “Coach Collins”. My two target groups that I was creating direct mailing handouts for were aspiring high school athletes and involved high school coaches. I tried to craft my designs in ways that would appeal the most to these two target groups. The front of the handouts was where my main focus was because I knew that would be what really caught their eye.
“Coach Collins” Design:
For this handout, I worked a lot on the different colors and shading. I had to experiment a lot with the different Photoshop tools to help me create the right shading behind the words and even the right shading of grey for the background. I probably went through 10 different designs before this one. I also spent A LOT of my time looking through the OU Branding website to make sure I was following the right guidelines in terms of fonts and colors to make the handout look like it really came from OU. Experimenting with the different tools of Photoshop and taking the advice from my professor about what could elevate my design is what took it to the next level.
“Softball Sophia” Design:
On “Softball Sophia’s” handout, I focused more on the phrase I used and the image I used. The previous handout is where I put a lot of my focus into the smaller details like a drop shadow and spacing, whereas this design made me focus on simpler aspects. I wanted to choose an image that would speak to high school athletes. It may sound cheesy, but I wanted them to picture themselves as the player on the front of the card. I also focused on using a phrase (paired with the standard OU font) that was calling for strong leaders and ambitious students who would resonate with wanting to be successful.
My Advice As A Newly Seasoned Photoshopper
Photoshop can be a bit overwhelming and hard to grasp (it definitely was for me), but I think it is important to take the extra steps and watch the videos they provide or even just asking for help from your peers. It is a hard platform to navigate with no direction so there is no shame in asking for help or watching a few tutorials to make yourself familiar. I know I still have a lot to learn on Photoshop, but asking for help and taking the advice from my professor and peers on my designs was extremely helpful. I also want to point out the importance of taking your time when using the platform and trying things out before settling on a design just because it was the only thing you could figure out how to do (I did this at first…). Photoshop can be so useful and such a great design tool the more you know how to utilize it.