My first class at Emily Carr was everything I had hoped in a design school and more. Our first task was to bond with a random classmate and give them a gift a week later, how unorthodox right??, a far cry from what the typical Nigerian school system is and I loved it.
My randomly assigned classmate was Alex Dabecki who had already made an impression on “I’m sure” everyone in the class by his “Apple can do no wrong” comment during the introductory part of the class.
Our assignment was to get to know our partner in and out of class, provide each other with an object that signifies their design practice, and come up with a gift for your partner based on how well you have come to know them. Alex and I quickly realised that we both loved apple products and most of our conversations afterwards consisted mainly of talking about them.
When I was trying to decide what to give Alex as a gift, I was drawn to the idea of giving him a glimpse at how I had seen him over our conversations, which could equally serve as a pre-filled template of himself to do with as he deems fit.
I had learned a lot about Alex while talking to him, so I put together a collage of sorts containing everything i had learned about him, while designing the website, I created a memoji of his likeness to emphasise his love for Apple. I chose to design a website because I felt it would be a fun link he could share with his friends. While designing, I created several mobile app splash screens to be used as assets for the website and prototyped them.
The earth is filled with over 7 billion people and the experience of meeting an individual person has always been amazing to me that with how many different people there are in the world, I met this particular person and I get to learn something new about someone.
People usually forget how individual and awesome each person is, and I wanted this website to be a reminder to Alex how I see him because a fresh perspective is needed sometimes and if at any moment he forgets, he always has a reminder in the website.
I gave the gift to Alex during our next class, I was glad he noticed and liked seeing his memojis incorporated into the designs.
An unauthodox first class that helped me meet someone new, gain a gift and give one.
