1.What skills have you developed through this module and how effectively do you think you have applied them?
I think this module really helped me to gain an understanding of an aspect of graphic design I hardly knew anything about before. Its helped me to gain a more professional understanding of the subject and introduced new topics within graphics that will be used in the future. I know have quite a good understanding of colour theory, something I'd never been taught before, experimenting with different coloured objects and photography helped me to grasp the understanding of hue, complimentary colours, warm/cold colours etc. Another thing that I've learnt about on this module is type and grid, I'd never even realised that magazine and newspaper layouts stuck to a certain criteria when designing a spread. This was something I enjoyed doing, recreating the double page spread, however, I didn't feel as confident as I should of when laying out the grid for my final design as I'd missed both type and grid lessons and so didn't have as deeper understanding of type and grid as I would of liked. With this in mind I looked on moodle, went through the seminars notes and did some further research in order for me to be able to finish the type and grid task. I know have a better understanding of measuring type.
2. What approaches to/methods of design production have you developed and how have they informed your design development process?
Using the grid format to help me create my double page spread was something I found to be useful, also drawing up some thumbnails for initial design ideas, I think, helped to vision where I would like to lay out certain type and image before actually creating the spread digitally. The understanding of colour theory.
3. What strengths can you identify in your work and how have/will you capitalise on these?
I think my photography for the 'what is a line' brief was quite strong, I think it worked well considering it was for interRail and they'd been taken on interRail, if i would of had more time I would of liked to of made a small booklet (maybe hotdog format) with more information about interRail. I also thought the colour theory investigation went quite well. The initial lessons at the start of the year really interested me in colour theory and how colours can have such impacts on other colours, bringing the objects in and making a life size colour circle was an interesting and helpful way to get a basic idea about the colour wheel. Also being introduced to pantone for the first time, which made me realise how professional you have to be with those type of things when working for a company. I don't think my work was as strong in this module as the previous, as all the things I'd learnt in this were completely new to me, also the nature of the module allows you a lot of time to for independent working because they're are now weekly deadlines, which made me estimate more time than I actually had for some area of the module.
4. What weaknesses can you identify in your work and how will you address these in the future?
Time management- in this module I found it easy to loose track of time which sometimes made the final outcome of some of the projects disappointing. i wasn't happy with my thumbnail drawings, i would of liked more time to go over them, but once i'd found the layout I wanted i created the double page spread and then found it hard to go back and generate more layout designs having already made the final piece. I quite liked the idea for my hotdog booklet, but wanted to take it a bit further, because of time I didn't get to explore it as much as I wanted to. Also only after printing did I realise that some of the words had been slightly cropped but after printing 10 copies it was too expensive and time consuming to go back and print again. Type and grid- I understand the basics but because I missed it I will go back and look at it even more. I had a lot of ideas for what I wanted my 'what is a line' poster to look like but because I'm not very advanced on photoshop I found any ideas I had to hard to actually execute, I will try to use photoshop more in order to become better at it.
5. Identify five things that you will do differently next time and what do you expect to gain from doing these?
1.Managing time better, this is something I need to learn from, and will make a big effort to do so in the future. This will generally help my practice, giving me more time to spend on designing the final solution and allowing me to make changes to it if I'm not happy with it.
2.Design sheets, I don't realise how much these help create ideas and just give you a general starting point for a brief.
3.Research- I think this module has probably taught me the most so far in terms of the principles of design, however, I feel with a bit more research I'd be able to further my understanding of type, type and grid, colour theory etc.
4.Ideas- I want to be able to come up with ideas quicker in order to try out a bit more development work, I quite liked my posters for 'what is a line' but I wanted to take it further and because I'd spent so much time trying to figure out an idea.
5.try different techniques, I want to start using different facilities in order to create my work, like screen printing, letter press etc.
6.How would you grade yourself on the following areas:
(please indicate using an ‘x’)
| |||||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | |
| Attendance | x | ||||
| Punctuality | x | ||||
| Motivation | x | ||||
| Commitment | x | ||||
| Quantity of work produced | x | ||||
| Quality of work produced | x | ||||
| Contribution to the group | x | ||||
| The evaluation of your work is an important part of the assessment criteria and represents a percentage of the overall grade. It is essential that you give yourself enough time to complete your written evaluation fully and with appropriate depth and level of self-reflection. If you have any questions relating to the self evaluation process speak to a member of staff as soon as possible. | |||||
