Blog #1

I have had exposure to designing digital documents that integrate words and images mostly through classes I’ve taken while at ODU. I took Digital Writing last fall and part of our curriculum was maintaining a word press blog throughout the semester. I have also made many different kinds of digital portfolios in various english classes over the last few years. Most of those portfolios were on Adobe express/ cloud. I have also made other types of digital medias with Adobe such as videos and graphics.

Additionally, last fall I interned as a technical writer for a company called LightGrid that specializes in It and contracts their software and services to government agencies such as NASA and the Department of Defense. During this internship I had many tasks, including formatting and designing documents, creating digital training courses for the employees, and assisting on formatting and editing the proposal contracts. The company did not have special software and I had freedom to try different things to achieve my tasks. I had a company laptop with Microsoft Office Suite and used Excel, Powerpoint, and Word. I found it very difficult to format documents with this software and it was quite frustrating. I especially struggled with maintaining consistency across all pages in a document, which is not allowed in this kind of work. The standards are very specific for any kind of government contracting and I woud struggle to make the software cooperate with my needs.

I hope that this class will teach me more about digital design, especially when it comes to formatting as I know this will benefit me greatly in my career. I also hope to become more familiar with various software platforms and obtain new skills to assist in these goals. My only concerns would be that I am not the most tech savvy person and find it difficult to achieve my end goals when creating digital media. I am also a bit of a perfectionist so that can make it harder for me to accept limitations in this type of work.