OUGD406 EVALUATION

1. What skills have you developed through this module and how effectively do you think you have applied them?
I feel in this module I have developed my design skills /practice massively in comparison to OUGD403, just with designing on software I feel I have improved visually, comparing my rain posters or 'its your choice' to the proverbally yours or the type face I created in the first module looks as though I've made some progress.  I also feel due to the 'Stamp it' brief i have been able to communicate a serious issue/topic through design.  This was something that needed to be addressed by doing research and trying to fit an informative and educational message that looked visually appealing on to a stamp.  I think the 'Com is a Virus' brief helped me to work more successfully as a team and taught a new approach to communicating through design.
2. What approaches to/ methods of design production have you developed and how have they informed your design development process?
The 'Com is a Virus' brief was something I felt helped to use design in an effective way, it was more about getting the message out there and then about the design.  This module has shown me I am more confident on Illustrator than I was at the very start.  I can produce work on their quicker than I could do at the beginning and feel more at ease using it.
3. What strengths can you identify in your work and how have/will you capitalise on these?
In this module I thought my rain posters turned out better than expected in the end.  I liked that I could use some of my photography to design some of my work.  Using photography in graphic design is something I've wanted to do and always been interested in but my lack of photoshop skills lets me down on this.  I didn't think my stamps would turn out well at all, I think there are design aspects of the stamps I would change but I feel like I delivered the message and designed on a small scale which I thought would of been difficult to do.

4. What weaknesses can you identify in your work and how will you address these in the future?
I think the communication is a virus was something that we had a few difficulties with at first because we kept changing our ideas and started with the designing a bit later than we should of to get our message out there.  I think in the end it worked out well and the message was sent out successfully.  One thing that I think let me down with the module was the 'Its your choice' brief, it took me ages to come up with something I wanted to do and to think of something I'd like to do to improve the final outcome.  Because of this lack of time it obviously effected my final piece.  I really liked the idea of looking at Swahili proverbs and was excited to look into it further.  However when I started designing and things didn't go the way I wanted I'd ran out of time to take things further and felt like i didn't do the best I could of done with it.  This is about time management and trying to juggle various briefs at once which is something I need to improve on for next year.
5. Identify 5 things that you will do differently next time and what do you expect to gain from doing these?
-Give myself more time for designing, I always spend too long thinking of an idea and don't leave myself long enough to experiment with different techniques or improve on the final outcome.
-I need to work more on my annotation of blogging.  I feel like I could explain my thought process better as I go along.
-I will balance my time and briefs more effectively- all about time management 
-Think ahead, book print slots in advance, laser cutting/screen printing/ book binding etc. all before I realise its too late to actually use any of these techniques for a brief.
-Be more prepared for crits to get good feedback to enable me to carry out my ideas to the best possible solution.
6. How would you grade yourself on the following areas:

Attendance: 3

Punctuality: 4

Motivation: 3

Commitment: 4

Quantity of work produced: 3

Quality of work produced: 3

Contribution to the group: 4

OUGD406//IT'S YOUR CHOICE//FINAL PRINTS

I do think the final designs look better now they've been printed:

OUGD406//IT'S YOUR CHOICE//FINALS

For this project I wanted to look into proverbs and look at them from a completely different angle, taking a different approach, I thought looking at them in another language would enable me to do this.  I like looking and researching into the Swahili proverbs, I found them interesting and found it interesting to compare and contrast proverbs from England/Europe.  In terms of the final outcome, I imagined it would turn out differently.  I think I made the choice to steer away from anything to do with my one original proverb and turn it into a look at proverbs in general.  I feel I could of executed the final outcome better but got stuck half way through the brief and ultimately ran out of time to further it.  I wanted to show a bit more of the culture and way of life through the final posters.  I left the designing too late to change or come up with a new concept if I didn't think the first idea was successful.

OUGD406//IT'S YOUR CHOICE//DEVELOPMENT & IDEAS

I was looking through photos that I took that I could use to relate to some of the proverbs, matching meaning with image, I played around with a couple of things and made these two postcards, I like the idea but I;d like to do it a bit more effectively, maybe a book of photograph postcards of swahili proverbs, however I didn't have good enough quality photos and it was hard matching proverbs with things in the photograph:

OUGD406//IT'S YOUR CHOICE//DEVELOPMENT

I started looking at illustrations by Sarah Markes and looking at photographs that I'd taken that I could use  for illustrations myself:
PHOTOS:

I started doing some drawings on illustrator using some of these photographs:

deciding what type face would work best:

I don't like any of the designs I'd tried to recreate in a Sarah Markes style, I just don't think they look very well done and I can't figure out how to place the images on the page.  I do like the images of the palm trees, which I think I'm going to carry on and try developing into some kind of pattern for a poster. 

OUGD406//IT'S YOUR CHOICE//DESIGN SHEETS

DESIGN SHEETS:

DandAD//DESIGN IS ABOUT DOING//PRINTED POSTERS OUGD406

FINAL PRINTED POSTERS:

DandAD//DESIGN IS ABOUT DOING//EDITED POSTERS OUGD406

I decided to change my three posters for the rain brief for module submission because I didn't like any of my final original designs, these are the three designs I'm happier about:  I decided to keep one of the image ideas from the first design of posters and played around with the fonts:

THREE FINAL POSTERS:

OUGD406//STAMP IT! //FINAL STAMPS EDITED

After the crit my feedback was:

+Visually look better if the number '1' was wrote as 'one' rather than the number, distracts from the image too much

+Royal Mail stamp, not visually appealing to have a dustbin on the stamp

+Change the last fact about '60% per cent of rubbish...' so it is similar to the other facts to show a running consistency

These were my original stamps:

                                                                                                              This is a basic image of an old iPod I  created on      

                                                                                                               Illustrator for my final design on my last stamp:

These are my final stamps taking the feedback into account.

I think a similar fact and image on the last stamp definitely makes the stamps work better as a set:

OUGD406//IT'S YOUR CHOICE//INITIAL IDEA

BRIEF

Select a brief, task, response or product that you have completed as part of the programme and improve on it. What will choose & why? How will you improve it and for what reason? Review all the work, tasks and workshops that you have been involved in since september and identify an opportunity to revisit something that you wish you had more time to complete, could change the decisions that you made or should have researched / developed more thoroughly. You can only select from briefs that you have completed and not those that are currently under development. Background / Considerations What we are asking you to do is simple - that doesn't make it easy. This brief is offering you the benefit of Hind-sight, a second chance or another attempt. It is a lifeline to revisit and rescue a good idea from a lack of time, a bad decision in an otherwise promising body of work or an opportunity to take an concept / idea / or product further. How will you make the most of this opportunity. We are not asking you to just re do a brief. Whatever you choose should act as starting point that offers you the chance to develop a substantial exploration of an problem, idea, concept, process. Can you extend your initial ideas into a range of products, a deeper investigation of context / function / format or review your response to a group project.

The brief that I want to go back and visit is the THREE POSTERS/PROVERBALLY YOURS:
What are you going to do?
I want to look at the proverbally yours brief, and think about how I can change the outcomes or specific elements to something I want to take further.  I want to create something, not entirely sure what format yet, based on proverbs in general rather than the one specific one we we're given for our three posters.  Proverbs were something that interested me, what they literally mean and how they can be perceived.  This is why Id quite like to focus on Swahili proverbs.  I think this would be a new and interesting approach to the brief, its something that I'm interested in and depending on how successful my final outcome is I think it would work well.  At first I thought there was a possibility that I could have moved too far away from the original brief but Ive taken the main starting point from it and just extended it in a different direction.  I didn't just want to re-do the brief, I wanted to look at it from a completely different angle and I think choosing a language and a culture that is so different from our own would be really interesting.  Not only will I come across proverbs/quotes/sayings that relate to everyone in the same way no matter what language, I'll also come across things that will differ completely because of the big contrast between the culture and lifestyle between a continent like Africa in comparison to Europe.  I still haven't thought about what the final outcome could be possibly a hotdog book of Swahili proverbs or a poster.  I plan to write the proverbs in Swahili for visual aspects but obviously have the english translation. Im slightly concerned that this has travelled in too much of a different direction, in that visually you wouldn't be able to make much link between the two briefs, however I think even though the point of link between the two briefs is isn't completely obvious both briefs focus heavily on the most important part which is proverbs.
Why will you?
Because I think it would be an interesting and unusual approach and something Im interested in that i want to try
How will you improve it?
I think this outcome will progress massively from the three posters I did at the start of the year because those three posters needed a lot of improving.