OUGD603 Overall Evaluation

On reflection of the module & the briefs I completed within the timeframe I am very proud of my third year work & the standard of my work throughout some of my work. Therefore this leaves me finishing with a portfolio of work that I am proud of & therefore I will be more confident while presenting it to perspective employers etc...

Although I did enjoy the independence of the year I am not 100% sure if setting my own briefs was a good option for myself as this although I feel good work has come out of them because I chose deadlines I wasn't strict enough with them to make sure I was on track.  A brief that I felt this was a key part of was my tea branding project as I believe now that I spent too long on it as this was the main present brief while completing a lot of live briefs & therefore it was very broken.

I believe that my interests have stayed within packaging & branding & I have even slight entered the world of installation on a minor scale that I enjoyed throughly. Although, I feel I have developed these two areas largely within this year & therefore my work has benefitted from it.

A strength that I feel I have developed is working with concepts. I feel like all my work has progressed throughout the year getting strong & strong & considering every aspect of the design to make sure it corresponds with the concept. I now have a basis of starting point when talking about my work which is something I never had before & I feel this is why I struggled talking about it.

Although I enjoyed the live briefs and been giving the chance of working with professionals. I feel that I took on too many live briefs & now upon reflection I wish I would have not taken part in one or two just as I believe that my own set briefs would have benefitted. On the plus side these workshops they pushed you out of your normal ways of working. Also you did get a lot of work done in a short amount of time, which really did show me about the time scales of my set working plans maybe was too long.

Time management has been quite a weakness this year & this is something I would have said that would have been a lesser thing to worry about as I thought I would be head strong & had great ideas about how to work around it at the start of the year. I feel that my time management has never suffered over the first two years and I feel this could be due to working & setting my own briefs I have been lenient with my deadlines so I can make something better. I definitely think that my briefs could have been shortened in timeframe after looking back on the work I did within one day workshops. This is something I will never do again as the last minute struggle is definitely not work the stress & the moto never do tomorrow what you can do today, is a strong ideology that I will take on board. This is due to working within a studio environment could be more stressful if I don't keep on top of my day to day plans.

Collaborations this year have been somewhat enjoyable. I feel that this is due to us all realise that this is what happens in the industry and therefore we need to be able to build the strong working ethic with other and let ego of our egos if something is better than your idea. Although i didn't work on any collabs from set briefs of myself I worked in 4 groups within the live briefs. I learnt who I liked working with & who I didn't and how to work best is to have regular meet ups with regular crits & team talks.

I feel this year my finishings & processes may have lacked. This is something I have proposed with PPP as I want to create some well finished business cards for the end of year show. Although I have considered them as part of my outcome majority of the time it would have been irrelevant to the brief. I have also had the chance to work on a larger scale this year with using paper crafting to install a crafted base for the perfume to be presented within. 

Overall I feel like I am much more confident in my own abilities and as long as I start of with a good base then it will always finish well. I am not looking forward to the next stage within design, hopefully a job & creating something for the end of year show which is very exciting as I don't know if I will be creating something of scale or packaging at this moment of time.

Evaluation

For my publication I knew that I wanted to create packaging, as this is something that has been a key focus within my work throughout the year. I felt that packaging a book would have been most appropriate as it would be easier to effectively communicate my methodology, that trough purely just packaging as this is usually the main purpose to sell a product.

I decided that the content would be how I create the packaging & the stages I go through & in whats order they process. As my practice is mainly about how the consumer interacts with the packaging and the tactile nature of the outcome.

What Have I Learned Throughout This Project?

I feel that I have learnt that stock can really improve the aesthetic of work. I rarely do editorial as such and this time I chose to use a stock that would compliment the card chosen for the packaging. This restricted my colour options the stock was a murky brown colour. Although I believe the decision to use this stock really pulled off even though I was reluctant as first due to not been able to add much colour within the layout.

What Could Be Improved?
I feel that the layout could have been improved if the dimensions of the book where slightly bigger. I always seem to work in a grid of threes, so maybe this is something I need to shake up & work out different grids to make my work more interesting.

I didn’t have long to complete this project so therefore the finishing is not 100% as good as I would like it.

I think the challenge to create the book about creating the packaging was tricky because I hadn’t actually made the packaging before creating the content of the book, I just had net design, mock-ups and stock. So therefore the proofing & amendments where unable to be added to the book, so maybe if I was to do it again I would have a better knowledge about the structure of the packaging anyway but I should start with creating the packaging.

I believe the descriptions could have been more in depth about the way I do things the way I do. Although, this was all to do with time restraints and therefore created the piece to my best ability in the time I had.

Overall

I am very pleased with the outcome of the packaging due to finishing it in a short amount of time. Although I do feel like the finishing could be more refined. I feel the publication is very personal to me especially with the stuck in stock which is very tactile like my practice. My methodology is to get a strong concept with a workable net then refine, refine, refine with the use of different stocks, finishes and tactile elements as the main focus of my practice.

Evaluation

This is was I believe to be the strongest brief of the year. This is due to really getting to know the background & brand values before starting the brief for the resort. I found myself considering every design decision to make sure this was the most appropriate outcome for the holiday resort.

What could we improve on?

I feel that I could have improved the layout of the welcome book by making the layout more relevant to the binding. The full bleed images are not fully visible due to the spine been 2 1/5 cm long. If I was to refine it I would change the layout and not the binding as I think the wooden cover is the very fitting.

I feel that I could have given more information about the egg collecting. I did do research for this as it was planned but when applied to the design I couldn’t work out how to make it work together.

Finally the typefaces not been used coherently throughout the brief, when I used Bebas on the website it became illegible and therefore I changed it to the nearest font I could find within uppercase. Due to the book already been printed the typeface within the book couldn’t be changed to match the web presence.

What did I learn?

I learnt creating a different outcome within the medium, can make all of the difference when trying to create a wow factor. The key rings and do not disturb signs really set off a professional look, working alongside the welcome book. ]

I believe by using this medium I have achieve the professional but friendly tone of voice I was aiming for.

Evaluation

Overall I was very happy with the outcome of this project & the hard work paid off. I thought our campaign was really reflective of what capital north could be. We didn’t put our main thoughts within just the poster and the logo & tried to apply our brand to most things we could thing of with the quality all round. The panel commented on the unnecessary need of the secondary shape in the background of the poster. Although, I couldn’t see this before on our recent visit to the studio he told us that is we applied the shape with the gradient to the background and had the foreground chevrons in white this would have strengthen the posters even more.

Together we created a vast amount of work, with to the time scale we had, due to not having a strong focussed concept at the beginning.

What could we improve on?

I could improve on photoshop skills although this was also something I did improve visa versa. Adam was a good benefit to the team, as we could all try and get the right aesthetic and then he would adjust it. But we all gave it a go!

I think as a group we could have definitely nailed the concept right at the beginning if we just had a little more focus. Due to us trying to create a concept to fit our design rather than the other way round.

I also think that the planning could have been more efficient as sometimes we would all go away and not know what each other is doing and complete something similar to someone else and we would just pick the best design. Although we did have a facebook group I feel at the beginning it didn’t really serve a purpose and the group only started working together as a unit in the last could of days.

I wish that we would have had a stronger concept for the interim crit as I feel this would have been a good way to have a good chat about designs, although I felt they thought that our idea was vague and therefore didn’t get excited about it.

What did I learn?

I learnt more about photoshop even thought a lot more research and tutorials can be watched to improve my skills even more on this software. I have realised that I lied working in a group with people would are not too close but close enough to express your opinions without feeling nervous about others opinions.

Also, I gained confidence in speaking to industry professionals as I feel this was something you had to do and then you realise that they aren’t as bad as you thought. I really enjoyed working with the DBA team and I think it gave me a boost of confidence when we won the competition, giving us a placement of our choice.

This was something I really enjoyed throughout the project, and helped to make the brief seem that little bit more real. We worked with Ian from Arris, and he provided us with some great help and advice, and allowed me to realised that Industry designers are people just like me. I was also able to better my technical skills involving Adobe after effects where I produced my own animation. Animation is something I would like to work with, within my design career and so having the opportunity to work on bettering these skills is always useful. Again I learnt about how to work on and apply critique especially within this project working with a large group of designers and the DBA panel. 

Evaluation

This was the second time I had worked on a pitch. Although this time it was within a small group of 4. It was hard to try and show what you wanted the book to look like without doing too much or too little for them to understand your concept. I do feel like this has given me the experience for future as this is something you have to do constantly when working within a studio.

I was very happy with the concept overall, I feel that it was reflective of the course overall. I believe it was different to what had been done before although we stuck with the identity icons.

In retrospect I believe that we should have spent a little longer to create stronger visuals as I do think our concept was rather complicated to grasp and therefore maybe have benefited in the long run.

The division of the work I believe where divided fairly especially when it came to finding a concept as I believe everyone made a worth while contribution. Although, Mel & Daisy created the typeface which was probably the biggest task of the brief. We all had our input in all aspect of the pitch & putting the presentation together.

Overall we didn’t get the Graphic Design yearbook pitch & the people in my team seemed reluctant to try and pitch for any other, when at the time I would have happily re-pitched to get another yearbook as I feel it would have been a great experience to work closely with the printers on such a large project. Looking back now I am glad that I didn’t take upon a yearbook as new groups have formed and therefore even more added workload. ­

This was the second time I had worked on a pitch. Although this time it was within a small group of 4. It was hard to try and show what you wanted the book to look like without doing too much or too little for them to understand your concept. I do feel like this has given me the experience for future as this is something you have to do constantly when working within a studio.

I was very happy with the concept overall, I feel that it was reflective of the course overall. I believe it was different to what had been done before although we stuck with the identity icons.

In retrospect I believe that we should have spent a little longer to create stronger visuals as I do think our concept was rather complicated to grasp and therefore maybe have benefited in the long run.

The division of the work I believe where divided fairly especially when it came to finding a concept as I believe everyone made a worth while contribution. Although, Mel & Daisy created the typeface which was probably the biggest task of the brief. We all had our input in all aspect of the pitch & putting the presentation together.

Overall we didn’t get the Graphic Design yearbook pitch & the people in my team seemed reluctant to try and pitch for any other, when at the time I would have happily re-pitched to get another yearbook as I feel it would have been a great experience to work closely with the printers on such a large project. Looking back now I am glad that I didn’t take upon a yearbook as new groups have formed and therefore even more added workload. ­