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This past week has been a little crazy! I started the week working on getting wedding stuff organized and finalized. I spent the middle of the week working and studying. I ended the week by passing my pharmacy technician certification!
I originally graduated from South Dakota State University with a Bachelor of Pharmaceutical Sciences. I was going to school to be a pharmacist, but before I started graduate school to earn a Doctorate in Pharmacy and become a pharmacist, I decided it wasn’t me, and it did not make me happy. That is when I switched to Southeast Technical College to pursue Media Design (which I am much happier about). I worked at pharmacies as an intern in school but was changed to technician-in-training after I stopped going to pharmacy school. My in-training license was going to expire at the end of October, so I decided to take the technician certification test. Since I was in pharmacy school, the test was not too hard for me. I am still looking for a design internship, but for now, I pay the bills as a CERTIFIED pharmacy technician.

This week, in the New Media Development class, we worked on creating a prototype mobile application concept based on specific themes. The themes were health/exercise, food/beverage, nature/outdoors, and organization/time management. We are working as UX designers to make one of the themes better for people. I decided to make a better mobile app for people to refill and track their prescriptions. I currently work as a pharmacy technician, and although we have a mobile app for patients, I think it could be improved. Since I work in a pharmacy, I see the needs and issues patients face when refilling and tracking their medications.

The specific needs I will address in my app include:

• Being able to track when patients picked up their prescriptions
• How many refills are left,
• Which pharmacy did they fill at
• How many days are left of their medication
• Reminders when their medication is getting low
• Communication with the pharmacy by asking questions and putting in refill requests

Communication between patients and the pharmacy is essential as it can help answer questions and reduce the number of calls to the pharmacy. The pharmacy I work at is extremely busy, and I feel like if more patients used an app for their refill requests, it would help the workflow go a lot faster.

I created a survey with questions to see if the public would like to use an app for their prescription needs. I looked at different age groups, genders, the average number of medications taken per day, if they have issues keeping track of their medications, if they use medication tracking, how they contact the pharmacy, and what is frustrating about refilling their prescriptions at a pharmacy. I hoped to get a decent number of people to take my survey. I was stunned that 92 people had filled out my survey! I was able to get great results and many different opinions. Now, I am working on creating different user personas using the survey results.

In the past spring semester, I attended the STC Portfolio Show to see what the upper-level students had created and presented to show their skills to future employers. I talked to one of the students and learned they could create their own project and something they wanted to do for fun. One student created stickers, while another made a dust jacket for their favorite book. I started to get excited about this project. I began thinking about ideas I could come up with when we do that project this year. 

I have a six-year-old sister (seventeen-year age difference, for those wondering). For her fifth birthday, I drew her a Candy Land board with all her favorite things because she LOVED Candy Land. It was a super fun project for me. You should have seen the look on her face when I revealed the finished board. She loved it and was so happy! My dad even laminated it so it would not get ruined when she played on it. 

Since I loved creating the Candy Land board for my little sister, I started thinking about how to apply that to my future project in class. I came up with a new idea that could have a bigger user audience. I came up with South Dakota Land (Candy Land but South Dakota version). I looked online and could not find a state Candy Land game already created. I thought it could help kids learn more about South Dakota and could be expanded to other states if it was successful. I would use famous and historical landmarks for the places on the board. I already have the placements for each location picked out. I plan to get a head start on it and start working with Adobe Illustrator to make the landmarks. I am super excited about this project!

On Tuesday, I started classes for the fall semester at Southeast Technical College. It will be good to get back into the school routine again. Over the summer, I worked on wedding planning and did some projects. I made invitations, designed a wedding map in Adobe Illustrator, created a logo for an organization using Adobe Illustrator, took senior pictures, and am currently editing those senior pictures in Adobe Photoshop. September will be a busy month with school and finishing wedding planning. What I have learned from last year has helped me when I have been making my wedding invitations. Although I used The Knot website to make my wedding invitations, I still used what I learned in design classes to make it exactly how I wanted it. I used hierarchy, unity, and balance to make it look formal and unified. I won’t be adding the invitations and map to this post, though, as there are specific dates and locations. I added the logo to previous posts. This shows that you can always utilize and apply what you have learned to your everyday life!

Continuing from last week’s post, I made some adjustments to the Beresford Area Arts. The client wished for more representation of the visual arts within the design. I wanted to keep a clean look within the design and not “cheapen” the look by adding more.

With the shape of the spotlight, I decided to turn the bottom of it into a paint palette. I really like how the design turned out now! I think it is a good representation of Beresford Area Arts! I showed the client and they loved it! They decided to go with it! I asked my teacher how I should send the files and I made all the neccessary files. They asked for help on sizing for a Facebook profile picture and I made some size adjustments for them. That night, they changed their profile pictures on Facebook and gave me a shout out to let people know I designed it. They will also pay me for the design, which is exciting! My first paid gig!

Here are the finished designs! I hope you like them!

Currently, I am working independently to re-brand my hometown’s art council. Back in March, the arts counsil reached out on Facebook asking if anyone would be willing to help create a new logo and design for their 25th anniversary. Since I was very involved in the Beresford Area Arts during high school, I volunteered!

The Beresford Area Arts council board wanted a completely new look to use for their 25th year anniversay celebration this summer. They did not have a set color palette or design, so I have been coming up with everything from scratch. Beresford’s school colors are purple and white, so I wanted to use a different shad of purple to show that the Beresford Area Arts is not affiliated with the school, but still give the sense of community and support. I actually used a shade of purple that matches the theater’s stage curtains. The Beresford Area Arts include community theatre, music, and art. I did not want to highlight one aspect such as theatre in the logo and wanted to include everything. I started with a spotlight and a icrophone stand to promote the face that Beresford Area Arts gives people of the community a platform to have their talents and voices shared.

I sent the first draft to the council and received some feedback. They said they loved the design but were hoping that I could add something to embrace visual arts as well. I did explain my vision and that the microphone and spotlight were not just for theatre and music, but to have everyone a place to shine in the spotlight and let their voices be heard. They liked that but still would like visual arts represented. So now I have been working with ideas to include visuals while keeping a clean look. I will update you with the new design and feedback!

It is the beginning of the end (the end of my first year at STC that is). This week is the last week of school and finals are starting. In Web Design, we learned how to use WordPress (of course, that is how you are reading this right now), MailChimp, and now Adobe XD.

Today, we learned about UI vs UX. UI stands for ‘user interface’ and UX means ‘user experience’. UI is more designing the product and UX is designing the experience. This subject is something I have never really thought about before. I wish people who sell scissors thought about that more, because I always need a scissors to open a package of scissors.

Our teacher, Rick, told us that next year we will be making a prototype for our own app. That already makes me feel overwhelmed! He showed us the basics of Adobe XD and gave us a quick exercise to use the software. I always get a little nervous using new software, just because you don’t really know what you are doing in the beginning. When making our app, we really need to focus on UX so that it is an enjoyable and helpful experience for users. I definitely feel like I am going to forget to connect the back buttons to the homepages when we start doing more projects in the software.

Last week on April 25th, STC held their annual Portfolio Show for the students majoring in Media Design and Digital Media Production. The event was from 5-7 PM, but students were allowed to come at 4 PM to check it out before it got busy. I had a chance to attend for around thirty minutes before having to go to work. I thought it was an interesting experience and it helped me learn what was expected of me for next year when I will have to do it.

Since I am a Media Design student, I mostly only looked at other students’ work in my major. The second year students had presentation boards with images of their work, as well as packages and samples from campaigns they worked on. I was nervous to go talk to them but once I did they were really nice and gave me helpful insight for next year. I was able to look through their magazines that they created start to finish, which is both really cool and overwhelming to think about. I also learned that they get to work on a personal project such as making stickers, dust jackets, etc. I am excited to do that! Overall, I am really glad I went to learn about next year and support fellow students.

In Layout class, we are creating our own portfolios. We are using InDesign to create interactive portfolios. I am glad we are working on this project because when I have applied for internships, I have just been combining pdfs and have not been able to explain my work. I kind of have just been shooting in the dark trying to make it work, but now I know how to make a portfolio that looks clean and way more professional. In my portfolio, I included class projects made in Adobe Illustrator, business rebranding, personal projects I worked on, and some photography. In Photography, we also learned how to take headshots with different lighting, so I can include my headshot in my portfolio.

Hi! My name is Kaylen Hoffbeck and I am a Media Design student at Southeast Technical College in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. I am 23 years old, and I am from Beresford, South Dakota (around 30 miles south of Sioux Falls).

When I graduated from high school in 2019, I originally enrolled at South Dakota State University to pursue a Doctorate in Pharmacy. In 2023, I graduated with my Bachelor’s of Pharmaceutical Sciences and would have had two years left to earn my doctorate, but I realized pharmacy was not my true passion. One of the hardest decisions I have ever made was leaving the pharmacy program and pursuing my dreams of creating.

I am so thankful to have the opportunity to learn at Southeat Tech and improve my skills. I am almost done with my first year at STC working towards an Associate’s degree in Media Design. I feel like I have learned so much this past year. I appreciate the fast paced learning style to learn as much as we can in the two years we have here.

If you would like to follow me on my journey of learning Media Design, I will be posting what I have been learning, ideas, opportunities, experiences, and what is going on with my life right now!

Thank you for reading!