For my first post I’m going to talk about what it was like for me my first week here in Pullman. This was before school had even started actually I felt really thrown directly into a lot of stuff here. The day I moved into my dorm ws the day that rush started. Rush is the process of sorority and Greek life recruitment. It is every day from 6 am until 6 pm and it is absolutely emotionally, mentally and physically draining in every way. I think a lot of people hear the word sorority and think just a bunch of silly girls who want to party, but that really isn’t it. The recruitment process can feel very judgmental because rally what you are doing is getting up early to look your absolute best and then trying to sell your self as the best version of you that you can be for the 3 min convos you have with girls in every house.
After day 4 of the same convos it can start to feel like you are losing it a little, I’ll be honest in saying I wasn’t sure if it was worth it. But the most times you visit each house and you learn about their philanthropy you start to feel a sense of belonging there and the choice of where you want to spend the next 4 years becomes easy. Thats what they tell you will happen anyways. For me when it came to bid day, the night before when you have to choose between your top 2 houses where you want to find your home and sisters the choice was not easy. I had 2 houses that I was in love with and couldn’t decide between. Ultimately I chose the one that I saw my self finding my former friends in and now looking back I cannot possibly imagine my self anywhere else. They say to trust the process and now honestly I can say I agree. If you are thinking about joining a sorority I would say I 10/10 recommend it!
Logo Final Project
Staying with the theme of my blog being my sorority, I created a logo that goes with my sororities mascot. The Alpha Gamma Delta mascot is a squirrel, so I made a vector shape leaf and some acorns to represent a squirrel. I also added the AGD letters on top of the leaf. A logo is the embodiment of a brand and it incorporates visuals and colors and simple, to the point words. I enjoyed creating this image because it is something I am passionate about- my sorority. I used the color contrasting art principal of having 2 shades of green to make it look more realistic even though it has a cartoon vibe. I like that the mascot of AGD is a squirrel because we have a fun saying when we go out. We say go nuts and we call our house the nut house and I think that is cute and it’s important to be able to laugh at the fact that we have a weird mascot. Making this project I took my time creating my sketch, I made sure it was something I can actually create and wouldn’t be too hard but would still be a fun challenge. From there I made my draft to match that using a variety of tools. These are ones learned to use in the past including the paint brush tool, the eraser tool, the color fill and line segment. I made the AGD red because the colors of our chapter are red, green and buff so I felt like the red added a good contrast and represented my chapter well. I think that this logo could be used if it was made big on a billboard and also it would work if it was made small as like a sticker or keychain and that is an important aspect of a logo. After looking tat the critiques from my peers I added onto my logo by smoothing out the edges the best I could to give it a better leaf shape overall. I also added yellow words over the red since yellow is the other AGD color and I thought it really made it pop and stand out. I also gave the acorns a cartoon look with the white accents to bring it to 9life.
Logo Draft
Staying with the theme of my blog being my sorority, I created a logo that goes with my sororities mascot. The Alpha Gamma Delta mascot is a squirrel, so I made a vector shape leaf and some acorns to represent a squirrel. I also added the AGD letters on top of the leaf. A logo is the embodiment of a brand and it incorporates visuals and colors and simple, to the point words. I enjoyed creating this image because it is something I am passionate about- my sorority. I used the color contrasting art principal of having 2 shades of green to make it look more realistic even though it has a cartoon vibe. I like that the mascot of AGD is a squirrel because we have a fun saying when we go out. We say go nuts and we call our house the nut house and I think that is cute and it’s important to be able to laugh at the fact that we have a weird mascot. Making this project I took my time creating my sketch, I made sure it was something I can actually create and wouldn’t be too hard but would still be a fun challenge. From there I made my draft to match that using a variety of tools. These are ones learned to use in the past including the paint brush tool, the eraser tool, the color fill and line segment. I made the AGD red because the colors of our chapter are red, green and buff so I felt like the red added a good contrast and represented my chapter well. I think that this logo could be used if it was made big on a billboard and also it would work if it was made small as like a sticker or keychain and that is an important aspect of a logo.
Logo sketch
For my logo I want to stay with my theme so my Blog, and that is my sorority Alpha Gamma Delta.
Illustrator tutorials
Here are my finished tutorials
My final Graphic Design Project
When I started this project I wanted to do something that represented my sorority alpha gamma Delta in a positive light. There are so many bad stereotypes surrounding greek life on college campuses and I wanted to highlight some of my best memories thus far to show what its really like.
initially I gathered my images by looking at what photos I had taken my self that were fun moments my sorority sisters and I had. I put these into my image collection and started to design the layout I would use and think creatively about my final product. After I did this I created my draft and opened it up to feedback from my peers. I loved how everyone said they got the vibe I was trying to go for with the fun, energetic, bright colors since that was so important to me. I also liked how people picked up on the red being an ongoing theme throughout the whole thing and how it is incorporated in all photos. I appreciated the critiques and tried to make the edges around my friends cleaner by touching up the glitter edges. I ended up not changing the wording because I like to the point “rush AGD” is. I did not add much else because sometimes less is more and I didn’t want it to look crowded. I like it the way it is. I think that this finished project is a good reflection of what I was trying to achieve.
Graphic design feedback
After looking at all the critiques from my blog here is my self reflection.
I loved how everyone said they got the vibe I was trying to go for with the fun, energetic, bright colors since that was so important to me. I also liked how people picked up on the red being an ongoing theme throughout the whole thing and how it is incorporated in all photos. I appreciate the critiques and will try to make the edges around my friends and I touching the glitter smoother. In the future I plan on maybe adding some more pop details and maybe changing the wording to say something more creative than “Rush AGD”, even though that is the purpose I feel like I could think of something cleverer. I will continue to brainstorm and try to be inspired by the things I see all around me. I would like this to reflect AGD in the very best way possible and I will do that to the best of my ability.
Graphic Design Project
For this project I decided to create a little collage of some of my closest friends I’ve made while being here at Washington State University and in my sorority Alpha Gamma Delta. I compiled photos from all my best memories so far with these girls and hopefully it will be something I can look back and smile at in a few years. This project relates to my overall blog topic in that it surrounds my sorority and showing the real experiences I had to try to counteract the negative stereotypes about sororities and Greek life in colleges around the country. The principals that inspired me were the aspect of collage and combining photos, colors and words for a grand presentation that not only captures the pics themselves but also the essence of these photos. I feel that in mine you can feel the happiness coming from each memory in each photo.
The elements that I used in this collage were photos of my friends and a photo of myself from the first CFS (coug football Saturday) game day. Along with that I used a photo of just some sparkles that I made on an app called glitty and layered it into the background to give more of a pop to the image as a whole. I think having a bunch of photos plain is less interesting and adding some sparkle really pulled it all together. I used the magic wand tool to outline the hands faces and bodies of me and my friends and let the sparkle fill the background. I also used the text tool to add words that say “Rush AGD” to remind viewers that this is a promotional collage that represents all the fun and good that comes along with being in a sorority. I selected red to be the color of the words because AGD is bright and bold just like the color red. I used the frame tool to get all of my photos to be where I wanted them and get the right lay out. These are all photos that I have taken and had in my camera roll on my phone which made it easier because I don’t need permission to use them. I didn’t really have any problems with adobe photoshop while making this, but I did have to go back and watch some tutorials to remind myself the functions of certain tools.
Begining the graphic design process
I will be creating a piece of art through graphic design, and here are some of the photos that I would like to use. I am going to create a promo collage for my sorority.
Photoshop Tutorials
Here is what I learned on photoshop 🙂
Becoming a sister
As I have told you all, this blog is about my journey of joining a sorority and trying to see if it is different than all of the movie stereotypes and all that. I chose this as my topic because I think that people could benefit from seeing what it’s like in a sorority from the inside instead of what the media shows. What I plan on doing in uploading photos and videos from events we have and philanthropy fun-raising to show the good that goes on here. When it comes to looking forward in this class I had ideas for what I will do in unit one and two. For unit one looking at photoshop I think it would be cool to make a collage of all the things important to me and make them go with the same color scheme and make it beautiful. For unit two I have always wanted to create a a logo because my moms best friend does that for a living and make really good money, she actually created the the Jamba Juice logo. I would really like to create a logo for my moms work that maybe she could use in real life. Getting back to the topic of this blog page there were some things that made me want to write about being in a sorority. The first thing that made me want to join was just how much I loved the girls and the house, I will link the Instagram so you can go take a look for your self. Another reason that I joined my sorority was because of their philanthropy, fighting hunger is Alpha Gamma Delta’s purpose and they put on events and raise lots of money. This is a link so that you can see our home page and then read about our philanthropy if you would like. The 3rd but definitely not last reason I wanted to join a sorority in general is that it is such a great way to meet people and hopefully my forever friends and sisters. Being a part of something so big, like internationally big is so cool and it really feels like you have a place to belong on such a big campus. If you click here you can see some reason why you should join one too! Now let’s get to the weekly update. So far it has been amazing but a wild ride. Rush week almost killed me and then we went immediately into sylly week and for anyone who doesn’t know what that it, its a literal week where you go to school like normal and then party all night every night and then wake up at 8 am and do it all over again. I got super sick during this and had to stay in one night because I was coughing and had a runny nose so bad. What happens here in Pullman during sylly week is called the Pullman plague. According to teachers the whole campus gets sick and it lasts for weeks, I didn’t believe this was possible but let me tell you it is. I am finally getting over being sick but a lot of people are not yet. That is part of the problem being in a sorority, you live in a house with 200 girls and when one person gets sick, everyone does. Luckily I don’t live in yet so I stay in my dorm where hopefully it is harder to get sick. While sylly week also killed me, it was definitely one of the most weeks I’ve had. You meet so many new people every night and its your first college parties and everyone is so nice to freshman here, not like Highschool. What happens in your first few weeks of college and going out, is that your sorority signs you a “rose” and they are one year older, live in the house and they are your temporary big. Once we get initiated we will get a real big and we will become the little and it is a way to integrate new girls into the house. The first rose I had, I absolutely loved. her name is Kate and she is so sweet and kind and couldn’t wait to show me everything and take me everywhere. It was easy to start to feel like a real part of this campus and sorority when you have someone showing you everything giving you the inside scoop. I hope that at the end of this all Kate becomes my Big 🙂
Sarah's Blog 