Me, My Bujo and I

For my infographic poster design assignment that reflects something about myself.

Originally, I was going to use all my artwork throughout my years of drawing as my data so I could reuse the icons for my blog here, but it was time-consuming to record and organise every drawing I created. I had a bunch of other ideas, but honestly, I don't even know myself as some concepts were too dark and too personal to share publicly.

One day, I found my old bujos (bullet journals) from 2021-2023 with small drawings I drew in the calendar boxes that record my strongest or favourite memory out of the events that happened on that specific day — due to my ADHD of finding images visually stimulating and easier to understand than my own writing.

My teacher preferred my bujo concept because it's more personal after she saw the drawings from my bullet journals, except she thought the topic was my gratitude while I have it based on my memories. She's not completely wrong tho. All my days recorded in my bujos was a side hobby I tried out and I'm thankful for my past me.

With my teacher's suggestion, I went along and drew my minimum 10 icons in traditional to replicate my calendar boxes. Unfortunately, I did the rest digitally with Photoshop to represent my preference for drawing digital art, except I made it look traditional for this project.

During the process, I allow my followers to vote for their best purple and brown icons.

The purple icon represents my fixation for scifell (fictional skeletons), and the votes on the final purple icon are overwhelmingly high by 93% out of the remaining 7% for a skull with heart eye sockets. The reason for the poll is that I was afraid to show my drawings of Sci and Edge in my final poster design and my presentation. In the end, I built the courage to keep my favourite and most-voted icon drawing except I didn't mention "scifell" during my presentation and wrote "I ♡ 💀" in my poster design. My teacher tried not the question or push me to explain any further about my obsession for scifell — with the excuse of saying my guilty pleasure and obsession for skeletons — as she helped me by suggesting other minor changes before my final design.

As for the brown icon, it was between two versions of my dog, Mochi with coloured backgrounds. I used the most-voted close-up version of my dog as my final icon design. When I showed my pre-final poster design, my teacher suggested changing the word "Mochi" to "My Dog". I took her suggestion and changed the icon to represent my animal connections category as I also used to have a common yabby pet named Godzilla and don't want to exclude it from my records.

The rest of the icons are mostly self-explanatory, but here's the list of my 10 categories:

• My scifell fixiation/I ♡ 💀 (Purple)
• Entries involve drawings of Sci and/or Edge, other skeletons or based on the unlimited scifell-related concepts I came up with. It's purple based on UnderDespair and it was the last colour remaining.
• Gaming (Blue)
• It doesn't include watching LPs (Let's Plays) games on YouTube. It's mainly games I played on my New Nintendo 3DS XL and Nintendo DSi XL, but I added a PS3 controller in the icon for diversity. It's blue based on my old DS consoles with blue cover designs.
• Reading (Cyan)
• Days I was reading books, novels, articles, news, and even comic books. It's cyan based on the first colour I started recording in my bujo.
• Food (Green)
• Days I ate something yummy and it also included drinks I drank, which I combined with "Food" regardless. It's green based on reminding me to be healthy and take care of my health not to forget to eat or skip meals.
• Collecting (Yellow)
• Originally named "It's mine!" or "Misc." but changed it after my teacher's suggestion to "My Stuff". Basically recording days of any item I purchased, kept or owned, like the Monokuma figure. It's yellow based on money and wealth.
• Creating (Orange)
• Days I draw either on traditional, digital, or even writing UnderDespair and oneshots. It's orange based on the closest colour to the desk I often draw on at home.
• Entertainment (Red)
• Originally wanted "Music" and "Watching" TV shows and movies separately, but I combined them all into one. It's red based on the colour of YouTube and Persona 5's theme, but mainly because of Persona Q2.
• Human Connections (Pink)
• Days I mostly interacted with people, whether I was with my family, friends or even my psychologist. It's pink based on my worst colour (unless it's blood) as I don't like social interactions very much.
• Animal Connections (Brown)
• Days I mostly interacted with my pets. It's brown based on my dog's collar she used to often wear.
• Sick (Black)
• On days I wasn't feeling well, scribbled in black pen and the only icon in monochrome. I had a blank white border for empty entries, but I didn't keep it.

At first, I was against my teacher's idea of using colours as I prefer in my vision to have everything in monochrome (except rainbow pukes), besides overthinking the possibility of colour blindness. Eventually, I agreed after organising from Time before Category because it was visually unpleasing to see (as above) in chronological order.

I also went along with my teacher's suggestion after showing me one of the previous student's posters with boxed icons as inspiration and changing it to Category before Time instead. Thanks to her, I was able to enlarge my icons to group them by quantity as well and reorganise them by colour — as a part of me has a thing for organising my clothes, pencils, books and other things by colour over other aspects of myself who cares more on productivity.

Lastly, I used a free mockup image online and followed the website's terms and conditions to make my final poster design look more official and professional to reuse in my portfolio.

All the icons were hand-drawn, scanned and colour-edited by me.

All the fonts used in my poster are public domain or free with the exception some of the words were written by me on my graphic tablet. The paper background and ink splatter assets were found online that are available and safe to be used commercially.

In the end, the overall poster design is original and made by me as part of my college assignment with the help of my teacher, Phoebe (Thank you!).

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As much as I love the final design of my assignment project, it's not for sale or commercial use! You're free to use my infographic poster as inspiration for educational purposes or your own spinoff! I'm keeping my original copy for my personal use after completing my (overdue) assignment in design thinking.

Even though I hate and struggle with public speech, I was happy that I was told by my classmate how engaged and enveloped she was in my design process journey during my presentation.

Little did anyone know, all the images I used in this post are all part of my pages and slides from my presentation that I completed on the night before — and in the morning of — presentation day on 15th May, 2024 (Wednesday) while working on it in a hotel for 2 nights. I found myself being more productive in doing all my work in the hotel due to how close it is to my college and saved all the hours of travel to and from home into just a 15-minute walk. It saved a lot of time I might do it again with after classes if I have enough money to save for the rest of my college weeks as it's an expensive investment I spend due to an emergency overload of stress from college — which I suggested myself to have a different scenery away from my disorganised room.