OUGD103 Evaluation

Collection 100 feels like a long time ago. I fell like alot has changed since then with myself and my work. I have learnt alot this module and that all started because I had two weeks of my life where all I did was get up think eat breathe work and go to bed. Sometimes all I need is one nice visual to make me have a jolt of inspiration and ambition. That was during the Don't Panic:Vogue brief. Even if it is hard to see that from what was produced I feel as though I have moved on with my mentality so much this module. . As horrendous as it sounds my family moto is, "if you want something to happen, make it happen". I might have said that before but I feel like I out that in practice this module-unfortunately mainly mentally. From the start of this module i have felt relatively on top of my work but at the same time I think I have felt really claustrophobic in myself. I have so many throw away ideas (most stupid and impossible) that I want to put into practice.
Sometimes I feel a bit harassed in the way that I spend alot of times doing things that I dont get more out of than doing something for independent development. I think when I have to tick boxes of things that may help other people develop-my enthusiasm is dropped. I shouldn't let this effect me and concentrate on the time ahead when I can tailor these development exercises to just keeping the ones that work for me.

I am looking forward to the time where these development skills come naturally to me. Arthur and I were discussing this and how then we can concentrate on visuals a lot more. We spend a lot of time producing work for crit criteria. I want this to come naturally so crits are something that are dropped in and worked around, rather than something to work to. Saying that, I feel like my sense of time management is alot better. I see people, especially on other courses leaving things to the last minute. The secret is mini deadlines to set yourself. It always has been and that is something I intend to intensify next year.

Next year. A scary two words. I do feel a little daunted. I want to step up the game and mature my work alot. I do find that sometimes my work doesn't come out how I want it to look. I get scared that I have immature tastes and ambitions. I need ot channel this along with my more flamboyant ideas that I dont put into practice into realistic and professional looking work. Ambitions for next year would definitely involve becoming more industry aware. I mentioned this in my one to one feedback with Amber. Contacts are something I am desperate to get my hands on. I need to push myself to do so. I also want to become more honest with myself with my strong and weak points. I want to intestify my strong points and work them up to a more professional standard. I think that the quantity of work I produce has improved but I intend to raise the bar even higher. I really want to do this right. I will make a conscious effort to get out there and try and get my head around what precisely I am good at and what is expected from me.

My taste has grown so much in this module and year. Some things I see on my blog shock me in a way. A year ago it was all the same sort of stuff. I hope I have matured in that sense. I want to keep this going as Im not there yet. I need to link my dp and dc better too. I need to look at the bigger picture. Get on with html and flash. It's time to produce something delicious.

Type and Grid : In Design Evaluation

I would just like to say I am gutted it was only a three week programe! I was oblivious to this until week four... but at least I know how much I enjoyed it. I really did I thought it was great. If I could magically make myself amazing at one thing it would be layout. Its everything. I think you could have the nicest work in the world but if it is not recorded prooperly you might aswell have not bothered. I am still in this group of learning people unfortunately. Definitely evidential from my most recent work. I spent so long faffing around with weather I should use black blocks, hating the second picture (i still do) and cringing over my typeface of 'Apple Garamond Light'. I think I could spend forever and a day on layout and lov every second of it. My thumbnails weren't particularly strong as yet again I find it really hard to document my thought processes. This must get better although at the moment I am more worried in this case that I am disappointed with what I came out with. It looked nicer in the early days. I just want to become more knowledgeable of typefaces. I want to use them properly and compliment the typeface rather than send it on the wrong holiday. Next year that is what I will do. As far as my research went for Indesign brief I thoroughly enjoyed it. There is nothing better than seeing it in front of you but I did find myself finding some real nice stuff without the price of holding it in front of you. I would love to pursue it although I dont really understand how I can be so enthusiastic and determined about wanting to be more flamboyant in the media I use but at the same time want to become so precise and tailored in the work I produce. I am a walking contradiction and hopefully all will become clear next year.

In design

Jack

My questions naturally focused upon Jacks past and future involving his past and current ambitions in life. Because of this I decided to bring in a autobiography feel. I wanted ti to be personal and intriguing by adding in the unusual quotation. For a while I was happy with it. But after re reading the brief and finding out I needed a second image. Oh no. I dropped the more intricate text layout and settled for less. I dont like the typeface. " It looked nice on screen" but then large it was horrible. Next time I will trial with printing better.

Type and Grid : Geometry article

What can I say... The thumbnails were a lot more interesting. I hope you can tell I dont like this. I think it has potential but no I dont like it at all. I think, I know with more Indesign fiddling around I will feel more confident to think outside the box, or in the box in this case. I wish I had gone ahead with the more intricate thumbnails. NEXT TIME.

This one shows the original article. VOGUE July 2009
I chose merely because it was cluttered. If I blurred my eye there was no negative space. Also it had the word geometry in the title...

Speaking from Experience

Evaluation

The problem I identified. interesting question. I started this project with the brainstorm of my difficulties in the first year. I thought about blogging and how I have learnt to blog little more often, but I would have liked to have known that earlier on. I then started to think about using 'an apple a day keeps the doctor away' lines and thought about 'An apple a day keeps Fred away', or something along those lines. i thought that this would become to personal and it wasn't what i wanted to produce despite admiring that style of design so much. However, the idea I found most interesting was the fact that my room is so over cluttered with things I have collected that inspires me. However, this then might not be the case with all first years. I know that already from the sight of my flat mates' rooms or seem particularly orderly. i then decided to run with this concept and turn it around to that fact that maybe some people are too bland with the attitude to inspiration and research. i conducted some research with the existing first years (the closest possible resource) and found that 80.5% of the first year students refer straight to the internet and search engines when given a brief and seeking inspiration. My problem then became; First year student rely too much on search engines when researching and seeking inspiration. Research becomes robotic and their awareness of inspiration already around them is ignored.

Another interesting aspect to my research showed that there was a fraction of people who answered that they refer to books as their main source of reaction and research to a brief. After some though this offered me a few roads to take with my problem. I could start to campaign to use the library more, however by doing this I loose my original excitement for the project as it would no longer involve bringing in collection and hauding of things that inspire us. I could also branch down to encouraging people to get off the search engines and use their eyes and hands. This is where I clicked. The introduction to search engines. I had defined my problem after a long debate. Visions started to happen at last!

When researching initially for multiple designs I fell involve all over again with the 1950s style of advertising. however I think the time has come and gone. I don't think they can be produced nicely again whilst not involving some sort of contradiction (personal opinion). However, when it came to thinking about the collecting and anti internet research concept my mind opened a little to a more 3-D publicity stunt way of working. I started to research in magazines and blogs of different medias involving food and books and clutter, right up my street. This allowed me to brainstorm into a range of products. A very important sentence in the brief. This was avery important and most useful part of the project. I took this part and married it to the search engine idea flash and let it start rolling. I think what could have bee more useful is if I had researched into art gallery/publicity stunt exhibitions. This really interests me and I think it would be a really strong and appropriate thing to do for the project as in the first week I felt something had to have been thrown in my face for me to see it as so many things were going through my mind in that first stage.

The crits have proved themselves alot this project. I found myself really looking forward to them. Especially during this project I suffered alot of indecisiveness. That never happens. Im actually quite disappointed in the way that I spent so long pottering around on brain diagrams to try and sort out what was going on in there. I was so stuck on my magpie collecting idea that I found myself spending about two week trying to decided which way to go whilst only brainstorming ideas for both of them and not making a decision and starting visuals earlier.

I would say that I would learn from it indefinitely but I think I knew I was doing wrong at the time. I thought that was one of my strengths but obviously not. I have definatley started to twist the key in the door of mixed media. I really want to try and be more flamboyant in the range of products I come up with and media in which I present them. Perhaps I can inject this feeling into my ppd presentation coming up. I also think the mistake I dont normally make is whacking out some visuals early on in the project. My attitude was different in this project. I dont like long briefs I dont think but by producing visuals earlier I feel like I have done alot more with my time and sulk less. Work at college not at home, definitely. I would also like to try and be less paper based in my work and development. Mind charts really help me but I want to learn to be more digital. I dont have a problem with blogging I rather enjoy it I just find it hard to present work that I have done purely for myself and have to explain what is going on in my head whilst I am trying to solve something. I know I hate long briefs, which is terrible considering what is going to happen soon. I need to learn how to like them and use them properly.

Range of products

My stunt for the first day

I intend to set this up in the first year studio on the first day. There are two screen each with a different keyboard. The first I have removed the keys that spell google. The second I have re-arranged the letters to spell "There are other ways to research you know.."

The second keyboard.

Lots of adjectives

I am.

Determined

Critical

Tolerant

Confident

My approach to life.

Direct

Confident

Critical

Decisive

Impulsive

I want to be.

Organised

Ambitious

Honest

Decisive

Commited

Punctual

Entertaining

Informed

In others I looks for.

Honesty

Ambition

Commitment

Creativity

Focus

Humour

Objectivity

Ten things I have learned.

I hate working with lots of people with opposite tastes.

Illustrator

Nearly Indesign

Printing

Punctuality (improvement)

Research criteria

Some strengths and Weaknesses in housekeeping

Family/home time is amazing

Contacts are everything

I still don't like alcohol

Ten things I want to learn.

Indesign better

Typefaces-recognise them atleast

Who and where do I need to know to get stuck in to the industry?

How/Where do I start to get where I want to be?

Be more nerdy with layout

Honestly what am I good at?

How to develop nice old film

more video technique

My ambitions as a Designer.

Creative

Ambitious

Effective

Expressive

Perceptive

I want my work to.

Persuade

Seduce

Attract

Entertain

Inform

Educate

I associate my work with the words.

Idea

Concept

Context

Research

Message

Image

I have developed my skills in.

Type

Video

Concept building

Composition

Print

Research

Problem Solving

Colour

I need to develop my skills in.

Type

Video

Composition

Colour

Print

I am interested in developing my skills in.

Typography

Photography

Print

Motion Graphics

Advertising

deaf crit

feed me

Communication is a Virus

Collaborative

Evalutaion

With polly's designs

To start with I was so glad I got to work with Polly. It worked really well as we both had the same ambitions or others that we could learn off of each other. However at the same time we still had existing 'styles' or tastes that were fairly similar and tastes that we could incorporate. This enabled us to have the right balance of doing something that both of us liked but still to try and break out of our comfort zone.

To start with we decided to pick a concept we both could see alot of playful interest in whilst still trying to see into vision of possible different media fitting in with the concept. By choosing children as our target audience we were able to continue our taste for humorous and light hearted Graphic Design but we enabled ourselves to think of media which would be a challenge and contemporary. We both offered drawing as one of our design skills. This could have been a potential problem but due to our similar ambitions we decided to go away ad mock up a few initial ideas of how we interpreted the project to look like and presented them in our first crit. From this Polly's drawings came out to be stranger which I was equally happy with as this allowed me to concentrate on reaching out to trying mixed media by this stage involving a website.

I felt really comfortable in this project as there was a sense of trust and understanding between us. We both wanted to work hard and be there for each other so this made experimenting with web design easier. I conjured up some mock up backings to compare with Polly's first drawings to see if the alot y worked and from there the ball was officially rolling. I think that the webpages were a but safe and I had alot more vision that what shows. I really admired the Roald Dahl webpage which involved moving image and sound. I wish I had pushed myself harder to learn about such things. If i have learnt anything from this projec I should have taken the words of John and understand that someone somewhere knows how its done and can show you. Anything is possible even moving image alice. We both had specific roles but at the same time felt comfortable to fluctuate between each others. Our decisions were always without argue which was interesting. I genuinely didn't have any problems working with Polly I really enjoyed it. I hope this was the same for her.

Polly Project:virus

Feedback [week two]

After discussing with Polly we felt our main issues that need to be furthered were the advertisement of the website (brand), the step further to manufacture the objects we had proposed to shown digitally, and finally the extras, i.e.. tags, labels etc.

Our first reaction was a definite agreement with the fact that we need to promote awareness of the company so we immediately decided to go about producing cards to place in shops, which could double up (appearance wise) as tags too. Regarding the manufacture of the tshirt, this is where budget could become an issue. However, a little more research and we may as well finish with a sting.

Project Polly:virus

Feed back [week one]

don't panic it's a bit of a self evaluation:VOGUE

On reflection straight away I wish I had put up the full circle design, contrary to what had been said in my final crit. I do like the one I chose (second merged larger text behind image rather than each letter having a circle), but I think it worked better as a ''nice" poster to go on a students wall. Hmm maybe I am wrong. However, I do feel as though in this project I have forced myself to become more up to date with another style of Graphic Design. p o l i s h e d. I tend to stick in my comfort zone and draw onto the beige paper over and over. Yes, I did use the beige paper but it genuinely complemented the text as image rather than choosing it in auto pilot. I think this style needs more work for sure but I feel pretty satisfied with myself for trying something a bit different (on a personal level).

I found it hard to research for this brief as from the start, despite being a dedicated reader of VOGUE mag, I really wanted to stay away from the fashion stereotyped topic that would roll of the tongue when brainstorming VOGUE. So, I decided to use my words, forecast, cycle, francais, season and repetition and open the newest and dearest edition of Vogue with these in mind. I tried to connect with the feeling of repetition especially as it is a strong view of mine that fashion is a massive circle of trend with some fork outs that will fizzle away or repeat themselves again. Finding these five words really helped my researching. A new take was taken on my findings from the start which was a really healthy thing to be happening. Good stuff.

I do however think that I haven't been the bravest of the brave. I am still very much in my comfort zone as far as technique goes despite making an effort with style of image. What with being given the What is a Line? brief recently I intend to channel my mistake from this brief into that. Try something new Alice for heavens sake.

VOGUE: deadline big ol Friday crit with 6 others... main points are

sign up crit with Carey and Amber

PLANBATMAN

Work hard, not so much play hard

week beginning 22nd February

week beginning 1st March

Book not much of a fair

proposal

proposal feedback