school assignment: we had to design a report card, which would then be sent to principals office, and whichever design he liked best would be the one they would actually use next school year. now obviously, they wanted the school's style. their fonts, their color palettes, whatever. they wanted a sleek, modern, inviting design, that would be nice to look at for the parents and students to look at when receiving their report card

we also had to make sketches. tons.. and tons.. and tons of sketches. we spent about 3 weeks (which would be maybe 8-12 hours) JUST sketching. safe to say i got bored extremely quickly. by hour 3, i was already 'looking for inspiration on pinterest'. actually, i was grinding out terraria. specifically, i was looking for the jungle temple thing. in the final two periods of sketching, right before we had to pick our favorite sketch and develop it into a full design on something, i started sketching in my own personal style... no more squares, and minimalist designs, and... you know what i mean. i ended up sketching this POV from a teacher, looking forward at a nervous student receiving their report card. i wanted it to feel judgy, almost demeaning. thats the one i ended up going with. i finished it in probably about 6 hours in total. when i showed the finished thing to my teachers for feedback, they didnt have much to say. they just asked me to start over with one of my earlier, more proper sketches. which i ended up kinda doing.. in like 20 mins. but my true design, my submission, is this. Report card.

I tried conveying how it feels like for me to be a schoolgoer. people trying to make you feel like your academic performance defines your value as a human: people like you when your grades are up, they dislike you when they aren't. what you do or achieve outside of school has little to no importance. teachers punishing you for being late or not doing work or not doing attention, as if you're an infant that needs to be kept safe from its own actions. and surrounding that, the inherent unseriousness of school as a whole... the concept that its a bunch of people sitting at a bunch of desks.. writing words down on paper. thats all it feels like we do. i go home at the end of every week realizing i have learned absolutely nothing. theres trash, cobwebs, and vandalism everywhere. but yet this is a professional institution.. whatever. so yeah i ended up putting those feelings into my design.

so while my teachers are unhappy, some classmates think im a fucking idiot for not following the instructions or whatever, i made a piece of art that i will remember and be proud of for the rest of my life. something that i feel has substance, something that expresses who i am. and thats something i would trade for a good grade any day.

"You did not incorporate or submit the feedback, which means your design has not been further improved. The graphic design is limited and lacks coherence. Some parts are aimed at the target group, but this is not clear throughout. You have demonstrated that you are proficient in Photoshop, but you did not use the right software for this assignment. The creative process is present, but not fully developed. Technical errors render the design unusable, and you only submitted a PDF, not an InDesign file. The presentation is not neat and the whole thing looks messy. You did not take the client's briefing or corporate identity into account, and your other design was not submitted, (the other design they're talking about is a bullshit one i made in 10 minutes because i needed to kill time pretty much) so it could not be assessed.

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