OUGD406//STAMP IT EVALUATION:

What skills have you developed through this brief and how effectively do you think you have applied them? What approaches to/methods of design production have you developed and how have they informed your design development process?
-Working on this brief has really helped me to try and successfully deliver/communicate an important message.  This was a brief in particular where the message had to be clear and concise because it involved important issues and the format was to such a small scale.  At first when trying to design my final set of stamps I was finding it hard to try and fit as much image and text on because I was aware the type might not be legible when coming to print.  I feel in this brief, doing research was essential to aid my final designs as my stamps were based on facts about recycling.
What strengths can you identify in your work and how have/will you capitalise on these? 

I think, at first, I found it hard to work on such a small scale, obviously I designed the stamp on a bigger scale but you constantly had to think about how much you could put on the design because when scaling it down it could go wrong.  I found once I printed out a size tester the design still managed to work, i was quite surprised with how much information I could fit on a small stamp.  I found the research I'd done to be useful, this was a brief I found research to be essential as I knew very little on the topic before hand.  I think the stamps worked as a group because the style and imagery were consistent along with the facts that hopefully engaged the audience.
What weaknesses can you identify in your work and how will you address these in the future? 
I struggled to get the actual design started, I'd done a few design sheets to generate ideas and came up with quite a few basic ones which I could picture, however, when trying to design them on illustrator it didn't work or look the way I wanted to at all.  This is down to me not having a clear understanding of the programmes, it can be frustrating, visually having these ideas in your head and knowing what you want your designs to look like but being restricted because of the lack of skill and experience.  I also spent too much time researching things that then became slightly irrelevant to my final designs.
Identify things that you will do differently next time and what do you expect to gain from doing these? 
-Not leave the final design so late on, this should be something I start to develop half way through the brief, not towards the end
-Explore different aspects of illustrator/photoshop to try new and interesting designs
-Pay attention to the brief in detail, read it until it is completely clear and know exactly what is expected.