Re: Getting out of your comfort zone

Do you ever find yourself doubting your design abilities? If so, what do you do to overcome them?
Yes. All the time. I don't know that there's anything I really can do, other than power through it, keep designing, and trust that time will at least help with my skill/doubts.

Have you pushed yourself out of your design comfort level?
All the time! I'm currently designing transportation agency websites for a living! It's not particularly interesting or creative and I don't have a whole lot of free rein (as opposed to the freedom I have for school projects), but it's important that I learn to design both within and without very specific constraints.

Are there any other design disciplines you want to give a try?
I semi-recently learned about illustration design. I don't know too much about it, but I remember thinking that I should've looked at other grad programs more carefully and tried for illustration design rather than just signing up for the first interesting program I saw. Har. Har.

Should I keep pushing myself to try illustrating for this project? Or should I wait to try when there is no due date involved?
Try the illustrations while also developing other approaches. On the one hand, you never know how something is going to turn out until you try it; on the other, as you say, you haven't tried it before, and we have a deadline. It would be most helpful to give the illustrations a shot (you might surprise yourself!) with a firm back-up plan or two in mind. I'd also suggest doing some casual sketches on the side, just to get used to the idea of drawing and kind of figure out (1) what direction you'd like to take with the actual illustration; (2) whether it's doable in the time we have; (3) whether it works with the design you have in mind; and (4) whether you have the courage and fortitude to stand true and tweak either or both if they don't look quite right.