Collage

When creating my collage, I first went through the magazine looking for colors that stood out to me. I didn't really focus on images, and therefore ended up with a large variety of pictures to choose from. I cut up large images and even kept a few pages relatively whole, then put them randomly on the page. After I was done I noticed that the images were displayed in a linear pattern and that I had a lot of blues and oranges, which are opposites on the color wheel.

Affinity Maps

For this map, I chose to do an affinity map and use possible vacation destinations as my topic. I used the temperature and expense as the two contrasting points. I was trying to map out different areas that I would like to travel to and see where they clustered on the map. I encountered some issues when trying to decide what places fell under what weather categories, since they all obviously vary during different times of the year. I solved this by deciding to use the present time for temperature scales. My AHA! moment came when I saw that the lower, right hand corner of the map was almost completely empty. It is obviously more difficult to travel to warmer places for very little money. I learned that though it was on the more expensive side, a lot of the destinations I wanted to go to were in the top right corner, which was warm and more expensive. This was the section I chose to focus in on in my zoomed in shot.

Mind Maps

Mind Map #1:
For my first map, I decided to use stress as my center image and main problem to fix. I decided that since I have so much going on this semester and seem to be letting stress take over, it would be a good idea to pinpoint what is causing it and how to solve the problem. I attempted to draw a brain as the center image because this is where stress builds when you let your mind become swamped with too many things. From this central image, I branched off with sub topics like school, money, grad school, and extra curricular activities because I know these are some main things contributing to my mental overload. I encountered a bit of an issue when coming up with these subtopics and what about each was causing me stress. Though stress may be an issue, it is sometimes hard to pinpoint exactly what is causing the feelings. My AHA! moment was when I was working on the subtopic of grad school, because though I hadn’t even given it much thought as of late, I could feel anxiety building as I wrote the different branches on paper.

Mind Map #2:
For the second map, I decided to focus on grad school after I discovered this was clearly something on the back of my mind that deserved some extra attention. I used a book as the center of my map because it represented furthering my education. I broke down this focus into issues like major, application, school, and other options. A problem I came across was how to distinguish between certain topics that played factors in multiple subtopics. I solved this by making bullets with specific questions so those general issues were made more specific on the map and in my mind. My AHA! moment on this map came when I noticed that a common theme in all of my questions dealt with traveling and working or studying abroad. Though I knew this was something I was interested in, I saw that I incorporated it in my plans no matter what, whether they were going to graduate school or even being able to apply my major abroad after graduation.