Design personal statement example

Personal statement example

A boy of about nine stood at the second control of our orienteering club's junior course, turning his map round and round. He pointed at a patch of pale yellow and asked me if it was sand. It was open grassland. I was marshalling that morning, and I watched three more children make the same guess. That map is the reason I want to study design. It was not badly made. It followed the international symbols every orienteer learns. The problem was that the people holding it had never learned them.

I chose to redesign that beginners' map for my Design and Visual Communication project this year. I began by watching rather than drawing. Over two club mornings I noted where juniors hesitated and asked parents what had confused them. The answers were consistent. The colour for rough open ground meant nothing to newcomers, the legend was crammed into a corner, and the control circles disappeared against dense green forest. I could not change the standard symbols, because children who keep orienteering need to learn them. So I kept the conventions and added a fold-out key with small sketches beside each colour: a tree for forest, long grass for rough open, a fence post for the black line symbol. I thickened the magenta course line and moved the control descriptions onto the back so the front stayed clear.

My first sketches were too busy, and my teacher pointed out that I had drawn the key in a different style from the map itself, so the two did not feel connected. I redrew the illustrations using the map's own colour palette, which made the key look as if it belonged. I tested printed versions with a group of eight juniors on a short course around the school field. Later the club used my map for its spring beginners' event. Seeing children run off with it, rather than stand still, was the best outcome I could have hoped for, and it was a modest one: a folded sheet of A4 that made a Sunday morning slightly easier.

My weekend job has taught me about communication in a quicker, messier way. I work on the counter of a bakery, and part of my role is rewriting the chalkboard each morning. At first I wrote everything at the same size. Customers kept asking whether we had gluten-free options, although they were listed. When I grouped items by type and drew a small symbol beside the gluten-free ones, those questions became far less frequent. I also learnt that a board seen from the queue needs larger lettering than one read up close, which seems obvious only after someone has squinted at it.

Outside school and work I enjoy orienteering itself, though I am an enthusiastic middle-of-the-pack runner rather than a fast one. I also sketch buildings in a small notebook when I travel into the city, mostly to understand how façades are divided up. Reading Don Norman's The Design of Everyday Things gave me language for things I had noticed, especially his idea that a well-designed object signals how it should be used without needing instructions. My map needed a key, so it was not perfect by that standard, but the book made me think about where explanation is necessary and where design should do the work.

I want to study design because I like the point where a drawing meets a real person who is in a hurry, confused or nine years old. I am practical, patient with testing and willing to redraw something that looks fine but does not work. At university I hope to develop stronger technical skills in typography, digital tools and research methods, and to learn from people whose ideas are very different from mine.