BIOGRAPHY

Hey! My name is Amish Sharma and I am soon to be graduating with a Bachelor of Design, majoring in Interface Design. Ever since I was a small child, I have always been interested in computers and technology! In my early years of high school, I learned how to use Photoshop in an IT class and ever since then I was hooked. I loved to play around with the adobe suite and also picked up on how to code in basic languages in high school too.

I had always thought that design was just a hobby of mine and that it is something that I can just do on the side while still focusing on another path of career. I then came to realise that nothing else interested me as much, and that I am passionate about design and how it works. That is when I knew that design is something that I want to do for my career. During my time here at Waikato, I have learned many essential skills, gained knowledge and had many opportunities that have helped me grow into the person I am today. I found that my areas of interest lie with branding, print design and app UX design. Waikato has also helped me pursue my passion for photography, which I do on the side as freelance.

Design to me is more than just creating some fancy graphics. To me, it is an art form where you can express your art style through your work. In high school I figured I would go into IT as I primarily enjoyed web development and thought that design would be a side thing for me - I soon realised that design was what I really wanted to do. Luckily for me, Waikato University has an Interface major for the Bachelor of Design so I get to enjoy the best of both worlds! This degree taught me many essential skills about web development and design in general. In the future I hope that I can find a job where I can utilize my skills and create content for companies.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

For the capstone project, two classmates and I formed a group to create one large project.This worked well for us as we were from 3 different areas of design (Communication, Interface and Media). For our project, we decided to tackle the Hakarimata Walkway. Firstly, we had to visit the site and create a brand identity, after research and trial and error we finalised a colour palette, fonts and our very lovely logo. The Hakarimata Walkway is wonderful, with great views and challenging climbs. However the signage and information about these tracks are quite outdated. The current signs show visible wear and tear and are often overlooked, there is also a lack of safety and pathway information on the tracks. During our research we found that there was no modern website detailing the track, only the official government website and old brochures. We also found that there were little to no high quality detailed images of the track.

Christian our Communication Designer had the task of redesigning and updating the old signage around the Summit/Waterworks Tracks on the Walkway. He also was tasked with creating brochures and introducing safety signage. To compliment this, I (as the Interface Designer) was tasked with creating a clean, responsive website and the main theme/design was based off the website. For the website, my main goal was to create an aesthetically pleasing website with clear, easy to read information and a small gallery with a simplistic layout showcasing the beautiful images taken by Stien.

The final addition to the group, Stien our Media Designer who was tasked with creating a beautiful photo book, a promotional video and social media to complete our Hakarimata Fall Revamp “Package”.

With this we shall be aiming to improve the environmental links with urban development as well as strengthen the economic value of the small town of Ngaruawahia by bringing in more tourism as well as encouraging those to get outside and be active with the fantastic scenic tracks we have scattered around New Zealand (this targets UN target goal 11.a from the UN goals list).