Summative Evaluation

Overall I have really enjoyed this module, especially the ability to work with clients and have a background experience of how things really work within the industry. I personally choose a series of projects according to my own interests & abilities but I also completed briefs, which had deliverables, which I haven’t had a chance to try yet within the course. Most of my work I have created reflects my emerging creative interests & ambitions within graphic design. The module has really benefitted my time management due to the different ways of working within quick turnaround briefs and longer development briefs.

The most challenging part of the module was right at the beginning of the module, when we had the chance to do anything we wanted. This freedom really struck me and I found it hard to decide on a brief for first project. I think what didn’t help mainly was the lack of inspiration I received from most of the released briefs on D&AD & YCN. Most of the D&AD briefs where not based about design but more animation and technology.

I also found it hard to mold my mindset to designing for the client rather than for my own desire. I found it really hard to start the development of the beauty salon logo, as her inspiration for her interior of her salon was very clinical and sharp. Whereas, my vision for typical beauty salons, are classy & calming, this made it hard to get myself in my clients’ mindset. But I soon came round by adding some of my own touch within some ideas and also giving some examples that she was expressing to me. This way of working worked in my favour as she went for my twist of incorporating the classiness and sharpness together.

I found that I concentrated on my live brief work more than my competition briefs, I think this was purely due to my interest within the D&AD competition as this choice of brief was to try something different, which I found wasn’t a good choice overall. I also think that I felt I had to impress my client, the face-to-face meetings where very daunting and I felt sick everytime, I took them more development incase they didn’t like etc… I do feel I had a very light view of the client relationship overall, due to them liking everything I did and therefore little needing to be changing every meeting. I feel the regular meetings when working with clients make the design decisions easier & therefore quicker, as they would choose the designs they preferred although, when working on competition briefs, this process tends to take longer due to you having to go on your won design decision in which you think they are asking for from the brief.

One thing I have learnt is to make sure you submit for competition brief well in advance. The experience I had with the D&AD website was will I will remember. I will definitely not make this mistake again. I told my collaborative partner about my experience with submitting for D&AD and suggested we submit 2-3 days before the day of the deadline of YCN. She agreed and we made sure that this something that we planned towards, although the YCN website was much easier to follow I am still glad that we decided to follow on with this wise decision.

I believe that I have developed many skills within this module; developing a strong concept, presenting work to clients, effective communication with work colleagues & finally design board layout with a deeper knowledge of realistic mocking up. I can now see how much presenting your work really effects your delivering of the final design. Taking lots of photos of each deliverable, that has been either well crafted will set yourself, for good feedback from clients. I now feel even more confident using Photoshop now as I used lighting effects to make the mock-ups look more realistic when using own photography for placement of finals. I have realised that just taking time to play around with the programme before the placement will allow myself time to develop with trial & error. I was very pleased with my bottle label mock-up for Purdey’s overall, which was something I was very worried about at the start of the brief.

Overall, I think the wedding invitations was personally my favourite brief. It allowed me to go back to my crafting side and adding different medias and making them work together as a set. This is what started my lettering and I really enjoyed the ability to be able to stylish lettering and allow them to work as a set with each other. I am very pleased with the outcome of this project and I will be helping with the process of making these over summer.

One brief I completed that I wasn’t too happy about the outcome was Secret7, I thought this would be a good chance to get another quick turnaround brief under my belt. But this backfired, as it took longer than expected and the outcome was not how I had envisioned it within my head. This was disappointing but I submitted it anyway, it didn’t get shortlisted which wasn’t to my surprise but I do feel that I have now realised to do more in depth research before starting to design even if it is just for a short brief as this will save you more time within the long run.

I am extremely proud of our concept on the collaborative brief, I do believe that we did work strongly as a team and that we both considered each others opinions. We would try each others suggestions, even if was reluctantly at times.  There was a time when we both wasn’t as interested in the brief as we was initially, I think this was due to the difficulty of the design decisions due to us wanting to use the primary colours of the Morrisons brand but also believing this was effecting our event branding, making it look cheap. After a critique we has Sam had a brain wave of using a pattern as the background rather than white of yellow, from this stage on we both became very determined to create the best outcome we possibly could as we both agreed that we didn’t want to let the concept that we both thought was the selling point of our final outcome.

Overall, I do believe that I have developed my awareness of the industry within this module. I do wish I did as many briefs as I possibly could. Although, I do think that some of the briefs I have completed could have been pushed further. I have created a range of designs with a variety of responses, all of which I gave a good amount of time and gave great consideration for the result. I now feel confident enough to hand my business card out to possible clients, & ask them to contact me if they would be interesting in me completing any work for them, this is a great turning point for myself as I really didn’t believe in my work before. Is has definitely been my favourite module that I have complete on the course so far due to that true to life experience, the chance to work on a brief that is set for you, rather than completing a brief you have written for yourself.

End of Module Evaluation

1.  What skills have you developed through this module and how effectively do you think you have applied them?

I have developed many skills throughout this module starting with, my conceptual skills as I have had to consider what is achievable and how I could go about proposing ideas. I have developed my skills to fit the brief. The target audience had to be key for the design and this was something that I always struggled within the past.

I took the opportunity to work with my crafting skills within this module due to the ability of finding your own clients. I think this created the difficulty of presenting the work to its full potential when the work can’t be produced, therefore mocking up the proposed idea, so that you justify the work without the real thing in front of you.

I feel I have also, developed my design boards due to me struggling at the beginning not to write in first person, although with a little practice this has become a natural way to work and the layout of the boards have been second nature, clean & precise.

2. What approaches to/methods of design production have you developed and how have they informed your design development process?

I have used the method of crafting with paper to create my wedding invitations, this gave me lots more ways to give my client what they wanted so that I impressed them with my proposals. I think my craft skills have informed my design development, as I know this is something I enjoy and trial & error is the perfect method for this.

Design production has informed me a lot throughout this project as I have had to consider cost and materials and how feasible a project could be. Developing knowledge on different print processes and production has also informed that the more effort you put into doing more craft based and practical work, the better your project.

The design production also relied on external print sources so I had to become more informed about how things should be sent off to print properly, due to the aspect of been restricted due to the bulk print and the budget of my client. This is a skill I have also developed, as contacting professionals was a fear of mine but I have overcome this within this module.

3. What strengths can you identify in your work and how have/will you capitalise on these?

I can identify my strength of crafting, this has really added the special touch to the wedding invitations in which allowed me to answer the brief fully to my clients need of creating a wow factor. My crafting skills have always been good but I haven’t work within them fully in any of my modules so far. This is definitely something I am going to continue.

I also feel the ability to develop my own lettering allowed me to use elaborate fonts without the need of licenses etc… Although, the certain style I have achieved used largely throughout this module. I do class this as a strength as this is something I have developed to a high quality within this module, but I also need to expand into different styles etc…

4. What weaknesses can you identify in your work and how will you address these in the future?

The weakness within my work is definitely blogging, I say this everytime but I get so involved within my design & development of my work. My blog definitely suffers as I forget to screenshot my development and also then leave it till the last minute and then forget what I actually did. This is something I need to definitely before the start of my third year. 

5. Identify five things that you will do differently next time and what do you expect to gain from doing these?

1.     I will make sure that I blog on time, before I can develop on my design I need to make sure I analysis my changes. This is easily rectified as long as I do remember to break off, as when I get into the flow I seem to forget about everything.

2.     I will make sure that I charge people for my services, as some people have taken my skills for granted due to them asking for multiple things without the thought of time and most it will cost to create this.

3.     I am going to make sure that I chose briefs that I like to do rather than to extend my skill set as this will just back fire on yourself.

4.     Next time I will finish projects well before the deadline so I have time to polish the design boards and the pitching process, as at times within this brief I have been rushed and scared about the meeting of deadlines which has never happened before.

5.     My time management, I think towards the middle of the module my management of my briefs was much more under control and manageable. At the start I was trailing my feet I think mainly due to the sureness of the brief and how to attack it, firstly by rewriting the brief.

Attendance - 5
Punctuality - 5
Motivation - 4
Commitment - 4
Quantity of work produced - 4
Quality of work produced - 4
Contribution to the group - 4

Project Report

For some reason the type has kerned funny on the issuu document, this is not the case on the PDF document on my CD.

Morrisons Individual Collaboration Design Boards

These are my individual boards for our collaboration that we did for YCN Morrisons brief:

Purdey's Design Boards

These are the design boards that I submitted to D&AD for my submission of Purdey's:

Quick Turnaround Briefs Design Boards

I have compressed all my quick turnaround briefs into one PDF as these are all just one board each:

Morrisons Submission Design Boards

These are the boards we submitted to YCN for our colaboration brief of Morrisons:

Wedding Invitation Design Boards

These are my design boards for my wedding invitations I made:

Elegant Avenue Design Boards

These are my design boards for my Branding for the beauty salon.

Overall, I am very happy with the outcome of this brief. It was really challenging for me at first as she asked for something that I wasn't envisioning. This was totally different to the way I normally worked. And the decisions wasn't down to me and I had to design towards someone elses envision. I have found that I have learnt the most effect ways to communicate with your clients, initially we meet in person to talk about her ideas in person. But then I sent her work through email she lives quite far from myself. I think this worked well, but I do wish that we would have met up more in person along the brief as I couldn't see her real expressions and her body language about the design.

Final Design Board

Final Photography

I wasn't 100% happy with this film poster, although I found the film very hard to work with. It didn't have any crucial main part and the storyline was pretty straight line & boring.  I did think that the poster did fit with the film and the brief. I also didn't want to spend too long on this as this is what the tutors told us. I think I mainly don't like it because this is not the way I usually like to work.

Wedding Brief Photo Shoot.

This again was suppose to be photographed at the same time but the girl who was suppose to be doing it let me down therefore me having to have a go myself. I wasn't happy about this as this was for my design boards & the project report although, this had to be done to make sure I was on track with my project management. I am very happy with these to say I did them, I think that the use of the straw and the confetti really added effect and I am glad I purchased these.

These needed to be photographed due to the crafting skills and therefore can not show the visual quality with computerising and mock-ups.

Elegant Avenue Photo Shoot

I did a photoshoot to photograph the final outcome of my work. This was for my project book & design boards. Here is all the work below... I am not 100% happy with the photographing, I was suppose to be having someone to photograph my work who specialises in photography, but they told me they could do it last minute.

I then enhanced them on photoshop as I thought that these were very dark and not very good lighting, I know that this will not make them look amazing as if the photo was good to start with then you shouldn't need to use photoshop. Although, they are not doing themselves justice at the moment so this needs to be done:

Experimenting with poster Layout

I decided to experiment with the restricted colour palette and the layout of the poster. I did this just to make sure that the layout I had developed was the right choice. I placed all these on the same art board and compared and contrasted them in which I found that my original layout was the best layout which was the best balanced and easy on the eye.

Alternative Movie Poster Development

I have decided to go with the idea of the monopoly board, I want to play on the idea of Marvin Gardens and Atlantic Avenue as this is another place they visit within the film. Therefore traveling around the board.


 

Then I started tracing the board over as I didn't know how to draw the GO TO JAIL MAN etc...

Then the next think I chose to do is the water works which separates Marvin Gardens and Atlantic Avenue. I wanted the board to look as much as like the monopoly board as possible so people could relate to this. This why I didn't want to put my own twist on the board, as I wanted the recognition.

Here is the final outline of the board. I didn't want an overhead view as this would create a flat boring view. I wanted the board to have the important parts only so they can make the connection.

I want to put the title in a sans serif font, as I feel this matches the storyline better, as the storyline is very straight forward and very balanced within gender.

I wanted to start to add colour, I chose this mustard colour as this is the colour of the band within the board on the section which is a big part of the storyline.

This is the process I slowly added colour within the poster. I have kept the black outlines and filled in the colour where appropriate. I kept the other band on the monopoly board so no attention was attracted. I have placed the hotel on Marvin Gardens as this is where they are wanting to build their hotel within the options.

When I looked at other film posters I realised that normally the second names are more prominent than the first names as these are the ones that are known more. Also I found that they attract the film production team which is presenting the scenes.

Cakewalk Bakers Logo Competition

This was a last minute competition I decided to enter. This was on 99designs, the brief was to design a logo for a bakers. I was instantly drawn by it when I read the title due to the name been cake.

This is my interpretation of the brief:

 I started by drawing a cupcake on illustrator as I just presumed that a bakers would do cupcakes....

 I created the script font to join up the vector and the name together, so it looked like the icing flowing. The colours she wanted was tiffany blue but I also thought that pink would have looked good too so therefore I created this one.

After reading the brief a second time, I realised it mentioned the wrapping up of every cake with a present bow. So I decided this would make the business unique and therefore should be incorporated within the logo.

After I had posted these on the website I realised that in the comments she had added that they don't do cupcakes, which I was upset about as I was quite proud of this design so I decided not to lose all the time I had just put into the basis of the logo and change the vector image to a cake.

I also decide to change the white to cream as this was another pointer I had missed. This is a lesson to be learnt as I wasted a lot of time on developing a logo that wouldn't have even considered.