Worst Job Ever Final Critique-Einarsen

The title of the project I have been working on for the past 5 weeks is called Worst Job Ever: Quilombo. I titled this project "Quilombo," because it is a Spanish word defining a hectic and chaotic situation. The project was broken up into three different styled designs: geometric, integrative, and deconstructive. Through Illustrator, personal photography, and a sound wave application, I was able to create 3 designs expressing my "worst job ever." My worst job ever was working as an English teach to Spanish student in Seville, Spain. It was a voluntary job that I took hoping that it would be a great learning experience, fun, and easy. I was wrong. The students, pictured in my deconstructive design, consistently made it very difficult to enjoy. By throwing things across the room, standing on the desks, and laughing at the extreme language barrier, the voluntary position was far from easy.

The main images and objects I chose to portray my experience at Colegio Claret are sound waves, pencils, chalkboards, the word “quilombo”, and a photo of the students. I decided to include sound waves in my integrative design. I designed it this way because it was a constant response to my wish that the students would “sit down.” I used an app on my phone that recorded my voice stating “Sit Down.” The juxtaposed photo is a recording of kids laughing. The students laughing at me were a very popular response to my commands. I made the background of my command black to express a dark, more serious statement. The response is in white, creating a lighthearted response. My geometric design includes pictures of pencils, strips of a chalkboard, and the word “QUILOMBO” filling space within the grid. I chose a grid approach to my geometric design because I thought it resembled the grid of a calendar. This design is created to reflect the activities that were meant to teach the students English, but resulted in a complete mess, or “quilombo.” My final design is the deconstructed picture of the students. This design is supposed to portray a group of students with various individual characteristics. I decided to blur the photo to create a dramatic effect of how I felt teaching the students. Although they were young and difficult to get mad at, I forgot some of their names because of their dominant and distracting personalities.  I described each student in English, but typed “La Clase de 2016.” I did this because I saw each of them in the mind of a first language English speaker, even though they created a class of Spanish students.

Throughout creating the 3 approaches: integrative, geometric, and deconstructive, I maintained a mindset containing the word “noise.” I produced three loud designs reflecting the approach of a loud setting and job. The colors remained subtle; representing the uniforms the students wore. The irony behind a “uniforms” created a classroom with the personality of  “organized chaos.” Graphic Designer, Tate Linden stated “Design is an opportunity to continue telling the story, not just to sum everything up.” As Linden stated, my three designs are a continuance of my worst job ever. I will never be able to describe the actual chaotic experience at Colegio Claret.