Pursuing A Degree In Digital Media Design

I grew up with the expansion of the internet and the rise of image forums. Exploring these forums, I stumbled across doctored images that I assumed were real. Whether it be a photograph of a UFO over a gas station, or a huge monster in a pond, I had to learn to stop trusting the authenticity of every Photoshopped image. Searching through forums became a game; to find which pictures were real and which were not, I had to search for the small details within an image that proved it to be unreliable. Soon, I became experienced in identifying doctored photos and was no longer fooled by fake images. I took this knowledge and put it to productive use, teaching myself how to Photoshop and manipulate photographs. Soon my fascination with creating believable

I designed with my previous game in mind: will someone be searching for the tiniest detail to see if my media is believable? How could I craft a piece of work that was so thorough in covering the small details that its audience would never question its authenticity? What interested me was not the attempt to fool anyone with the authenticity of an image, but to convey effectively an idea, a solution, or a fact. With the idea that others will be scrutinizing my work just as I scrutinized others, I have taught myself to communicate through media, and to focus very hard on the small details. So far, all this describes my intellectual and academic interests.
The Visual Studies program at Penn interests me because it is an interdisciplinary one. How design, communication, and visual media can impact various aspects of our society can only be fully explored through such an interdisciplinary approach. Penn therefore offers me the opportunity to be trained to adapt digital media design skills in a way that can be applied to many different facets of our culture. Many of the schools I have looked into have a far more narrow focus on the application of such

The functional process of design appeals to me because it can be used to solve difficult problems within a dynamic society. PennDesign believes the beauty within a work of design is not only its final polished form, but also its final outcome and impact. Using my talents and skills of design to promote social change would be meaningful as it is reflects my personal goals. For the last 4 years, my education has been strongly community-based as my high school is a progressive Quaker school. I have been taught to promote positive change through all of my work, and I feel as though the rich cultural environment Penn offers would further help develop these ideas and allow me to create social