Reflection of First Term

I feel that this term was quite challenging, as it was quite a big step up from last year. I feel that at the start of the year I underestimated the amount the course demanded of me and my marks reflect this however I have improved greatly throughout the term putting in more effort as the course progressed. I felt that the first results I received were a bit of a wake up call although I am reassured that they will only contribute to a small percentage of my final grade.

 

I have started the most resent unit (website) in a very organized manner meeting deadlines the course set as well as my own. I have been putting in more effort and coming in to university more frequently on non-timetabled days, this has allowed me to stay on track. Also I think that I have started develop more tangible ideas and settle on them fast allowing me to spend more time on other areas in the unit.

 

I am looking forward to carrying on with the current unit and hopefully improving on my current mark. Although my first grade was quite disappointing I should improve this with the website unit.

11.12.08

Over the past week I felt that it had important for me to get back on my website work as that has taken the back foot recently. I have explored the type I want to use with my name (I’m just using Blake as it looks better written than my full name) and other designs using my name to create an identity/ logo. I’ve chosen to use a type called Bank Gothic, It’s an all-uppercase font but I think this works well with my name… I doubt I will use that for the rest, as it’s not a very good body type. Also I have incorporated ‘Graphic design’ into it and I think that it works well.

Today I have used my ‘Logo’ to develop a website style which works well with this. One of the idea’s which I quite like - ‘frames’ the main content of my page while being quite neutral to show off my work, Reflects the red in the logo But not to over powering as I shouldn’t be competing with my work. As I want to create a simple easy to navigate site and I feel that the idea I am progressing at the minute could work well with this.

Visual Communication in Context 2 - Results

Today I received my results for Visual Communication in context 2, at first I was quite shocked with my grade as I only received 41. On one of the project I was expecting a low mark as I was disappointed with my final outcomes, but I thought that the other ones would have pulled this mark up. Although after reading the comments and going back over the work I submitted I felt that this mark probably reflected the work. I found the feedback very helpful as the comments explained how I could have improved each submission.

 

As I had expected the comments from my greeting cards were not that positive. I found this project particularly frustrating as I kept jumping between ideas to try please the feedback I received in the crits. In the end I should have just improved on my first idea rather than submitting cards I was not happy with. However my best feedback was from the last project (animal packaging), this was one of my favorite units and I put the most effort into this one and I think that my comments reflected that.

 

I want to massively improve my final grade, as I want to keep my options open for 3^rd year. To do this I will tackle this website unit in the same way I approached the animal one. To do this I need to spend more time and put more effort into each area of the Learning objectives. I will also come into university a lot more out of tutor hours as I found that on the last unit

that was helpful. I have quite a short attention span and I’m less likely to get distracted on campus.

Tutorial with Michael Ryan 2

Last night we got together and started bouncing ideas off each other while going through passed adverts as inspiration, so that we would have something new to show Michael today. We all agreed that our strongest idea was to use sexual innuendo, which would create a fun, lighthearted approach to our poster campaign, while appealing to our age range.

Michael Ryan was very pleased with our idea and he said that it had the possibility to be a winning entry which very encouraging and massively motivated us to develop this idea further, his advise was to start thinking of possible ideas which demonstrate this and also taglines as they would bean important part of the poster.  

I felt very happy about how the tutorial went.. cant wait to continue with this idea! 

Tutorial with Michael Ryan

 

Today Robert, Ben and I had another tutorial; this was with Michael Ryan about the competition brief that we had chosen and how we plan to develop it.

After going over the brief with him and explaining our approach, we showed him the research we had done and how we had developed from the last tutorial with Neil. We had found that the most successful adverts were fun/ humorous/ lighthearted. We also explained our initial ideas… going with the 99p etc but he agreed that this would the obvious way to tackle this brief.

Although we should include the price on the poster we shouldn’t make the entire poster about it!

For the remainder of the day we familiarized ourselves with current trends aiming at students and started brainstorming ways, which allowed us to tackle this brief in a fun, humorous approach.

Hopefully we will have got some more ideas to discuss with Michael tomorrow.

Competition brief....Tutorial

Today myself, Robert and Ben had a tutorial with Neil about the live brief that we have chosen. For this we took along some previous work Mainly: Gathered a greater knowledge of PJ smoothies and there main competitors Such as Innocent (a more up market, popular brand).

Our next steps are really to come up with a concept to work from. We have broken the brief down into what we think is their main selling point, which is their price of only 99p. We were pondering this idea of using fruit and having it interacting with the bottle.

The feedback we got was mainly to try stay away from the obvious concepts (interacting fruit), and to further research the target audience. The brief states that their main audience is 16-25, mainly students “who don’t have the time to eat fruit!” (right!). From this we gathered that we should carry out further research into other products being advertised to the same audience and the ways they approach this.

Our aim is to have lots of research to show Michael Ryan when he comes in to help out with this brief.  

28.11.08

Today we had a mini demonstration to familiarise ourselves with Flash, this was a big help as I had recently been doing a abc in dreamweaver so that was still fresh in my mind but I haven’t used flash for almost a year now; and there are some things I need to learn about creating a website in flash apposed to a simple animation, this will help me decide on which programme I should use to build mine.

For the rest of the day I was researching into other portfolio based websites I liked and in particular the website the previous year had done. I felt that the ones, which worked best, were the simplest ones. This helped the user to navigate easily and also I felt that it showed their work off better.

Another way of presenting the gallery is using lightbox, this is a easy to use peace of text u add to the html and it presents the images in a really professional way. 

Starting Competition Brief....

Over the last week I have been looking through the Competition briefs, as I want to carry out a few of them before the end of the year. I have decided to carry out my first brief in a group with Ben, Rob and Chris. We met up and read through the briefs and researching into them for a while before deciding to undertake a 'D and AD' brief, then went with pj’s smoothy one. I thought that it would be beneficial for me to do my first live brief in a group so I can see what is involved in the Competition briefs (also I don’t want to fall behind in this project as I think it will be very time consuming as it is something I have never done before) and then I think that I will start some more later on my own (maybe over the Christmas period or nearer the end of this brief).

27th November

 

This morning I was briefed on my new project which I have been excited about starting since I first found out about it last year. I am looking forward to having an online portfolio as it will defiantly prove to be a huge benefit and could result in me getting a job through it. I also would like to find out how enjoyable I find the process, as it is something I could look to focus in ether for further education or as a career. 

After reading through the unit hand out i need to conceder: 

why people use the internet

how they will be able to find my site...links through facebook etc

i need to crate an 'identity' that reflects who i am and what i do.

another very important thing it to make the site user friendly/ easy to navigate around 

20th November -Evaluation

I felt that this unit has been my favourite unit to date this is because I enjoyed learning what is involved in designing packaging and also how best to present it to the client. It has allowed me to look at nets and how best to create them and scale them down to create mock ups. I think that this project has broadened my possibility’s with what I could do after the course as I found designing packaging very stimulating. I also felt that my time management on this project was better than it has been on other projects, which I hope to continue through to the following projects. And I again look forward to what the next project offers as I again have never created a website and would like to apply some of the new skills I have been learning in Dreamweaver and put them into practise.

19th November

The past week has been very busy getting all the sketchbooks totally finished, but the main thing was the greeting cards which ended up taking longer than I expected as I originally wanted to gold leaf some type but was told that it would be hard for me to do that to such a small area but I resolved that by using a spot varnish to make that area stand out. After I was happy with that I decided to go back to the animal unit to develop the method of securing the two sections of the boxes appropriately I also made another mock up to demonstrate this. The next thing was to finish the a3 design sheets. The night before I felt that it was important to demonstrate how my box design could be adapted to suite a female audience as well even though I was aiming my boy for men.  I felt that this worked very well and I really liked both the boxes and was very pleased with how I tacked this unit.

14th November

Today I had the final critique which again I thought went well although as I have now decided that the wetsuit pouch doesn’t really add anything to the overall box I felt that it would just be an added cost which was unnecessary, due to this (and the top section of my mock up being to big) the top part would not securely stay on which held a range of problems. I think that this could easily be resolved by adding a flap but I will look into this over the next week this will also allow me to finish the set of greeting cards to a suitable standard. 

7th November

Today’s critique went very well which I was obviously very pleased with especially after my last critique! The critique has helped me to clarify my next steps; clarify the material I will use on the box and then start on the visual side of the design. I can now work on the content of the graphics I could use on the box over the weekend, my first thought are to go back through some water sports magazines although they would probably be vector based. 

6th November

I have been really enjoying this unit so far and I am pleased with the way I am working on this unit as I have got a concept and an audience to aim at, also I have a ruff idea of the format of the box. I have been looking at media I could include and an idea I am trying to develop at the minute is to create a reusable pouch out of wetsuit material to echo the water sports side of animal while being sustainable/ recyclable. I am working with. I am on top of this project and liking where it’s going I feel that tomorrows critique should be helpful in with helping me to push this idea further. 

30th October

Today I was briefed on the packaging project, which is for a Animal watch. We were split into groups and were told to go off and carry out all the general research and present it back to Neil and Clair at the end of the day to get the ball rolling in this project and then I can start developing my individual project from where I left off.  

We started off in the library as a group to discuss/research possibility of who to aim at, possible concepts and styles etc. Once we were all on the same page we split into two further groups and had different things to research.  After lunch we joined back up to present to each other our findings. Then finally researched in more depth together before creating presentation boards with the information on.  We then presented it in a professional manner to Neil and Clair.

I found today to be extremely helpful as it means that now I have a starting point with all the general research done and I now have a starting point to develop on my own. Also i thought that having the presentation in the way that we did in a professional manner helped be to get a better understanding of what happens with presenting ideas to a client. I’m exited about creating packaging, as it is something that I have never done before and I am looking forward to developing new skills, also I look forward to creating it in the style for a ‘extreme’ sports company such as Animal.

29th October

As I had the weekend free of work I felt that it was important that I should carry out a large amount of research and then try to develop a set of six cards which reflect team GB more and which do not rely on the use of their existing logo so much. I had a couple of ideas to run with one was to use the motto and create a type based outcome but I wanted to do a more visual design as my last poster was solely type based.  For this I used the colours of the rings to strongly signify the Olympic ‘s but without relying on the logo.

Since Monday I started to develop this idea and started trying to create a sense of movement with the colour. I also started to include type but I’m not happy with the style of it yet, but I think that the content is working well. I am happy with leaving the cards not as I don’t want to fall behind in the new project I am being briefed on tomorrow, I have got the visual side of the cards up to a standard I am happy to leave them at and the other content I want to include  to hand and I can go back after the next project as I will have a week after the final crit to go back over work.

24th October

Last night as i was trying to create a set of six with the figure as a silo-wet and improve the layouts. After the first one i thought that it was not going to work but after incorporating the rings it helped to define the figure, i stuck with this and created the full set of six in this way. After the full set was done there was one card in particular which i did not like as it just looked like a blob so i retraced another athlete from a book i got out of the library- which worked a lot better as a silo-wet, then i decided to work on another card to get some perspective into it using the rings. i still was not 100% happy with the set - felt that it looked quite unprofessional although it was 4:30 in the morning so i decided to call it a night and get some sleep. 

For the critique i was feeling very frustrated as there was a lot more i could do to it but i had to present a set i was not happy with and try to defend them. Not surprisingly the feedback i got back was not very good and Sally suggested that i went back to the target audience and carry out more relevant research before developing a set. I agreed and i sort of knew that, that is what i needed to do yesterday but i didn't have the time to complete it for today (hence the rushed outcomes). I now know what i need to do and i am happy that i have the weekend to create something and come in on monday to discuss it with Neil, Sally or Clare.

23rd October

When i got in today i went straight to the library to get on with some development in my sketchbook, i had already got six outcomes and thought that i should just wait to the critique and develop them after i had received feed back. I spoke to Neil about them and he pointed out that on a couple of them there were some sketches witch looked a bit dodgy. This is the work i showed in the critique:

I main problems raised, were again what Neil brought up, this was very demoralizing as i spent ages tracing and then rendering them on illustrator although it was a fair point and following the critique it started annoying me more and i felt that that it was important to change. The general feedback in the critique was that i should change the drawings to silo-wets, also try to incorporate the rings throughout the set. All in all not the best critique i've had!

Although the critique was quite demoralizing i received large amounts of helpful feedback and there is a lot i Can get on with, the only annoying thing is that i got out the critique at five and i will need to show a set of six cards for tomorrow morning so i think it will be a late night!

 

20th October

Today was the DreamWeaver introduction which i was excited about as this was software i have wanted to learn for a while. Last year while i was on a work placement one of the designers gave me a quick tutorial of the difference between using a program like DreamWeaver apposed to a HTML based program, and that DreamWeaver is more of a visual way of creating a website. This was the only insight into DreamWeaver i've had up until now 

Today was more about learning the basics as it was our first workshop. We learned stuff like how to save an image for the web, the size it has to be, what format to use when etc. Also about the layout of the page with columns, Adding links to websites and other information.  It was really interesting today although i think it will quite tricky to learn how to use the program properly as it is all new to me and i have nothing to compare it to.

17th October

When we went in today we had another guest to brief us on a live project for a bar in town. The brief sounds very stimulating and it is open enough to do as much as I can do the only thing is that this brief is very short and the client wants it turned around in two weeks, which would normally be fine its just I have this other greeting cards brief on at the same time, although doing this would reflect the schedule of a designer in the industry. I’m going to keep an open mind about attempting this brief as i think it would be an easy brief for me to get motivated about it although I just do not want the quality of my greeting cards to suffer. I’m going to see how much I get done over the weekend and how time consuming they are to develop and then make my decision; I would rather have a very high quality peace of work for my portfolio that I am proud of than two sets of work which are ok!

The rest of the day I was trying to develop my card to have a purpose rather than just a nice blank card, as this would strengthen my overall outcome. After a discussion with Clare she suggested looking into a card for a gift voucher for a sports shop (obviously still nearer the Olympics time) which I thought was a very strong concept as most cards you get with gift vouchers are normally very poorly done, if they come with one at all!  I also spoke to her about media and introducing some to my cards but we came to the conclusion that they probably will not need any. I am now thinking to just look at different printing variations and I might introduce a glossiness to a section of them. 

16th October

At the start of the day I went off with a small group to discuss our ideas with Neil. I had researched into the Olympics and I wanted to design a card, which would be on sale around the 2012 period, I was still not sure about what theme of the card I should do, so I decided that it should be blank. I got some very good feedback, which I was pleased about; firstly that everyone could see this idea going ahead also when I showed the designer’s work I had been looking at and the style I was aiming to pull off. Everyone agreed that it could work very well in the modern illustrative way. I also got a lot of things to research to help push my idea along both Clare and Neil suggested a few people to research into which I found very helpful.

After the tutorial I just got on with researching into the designers etc that I was referred before going of to the library to find a book called Romantik. I want to approach this brief in the same way Clare would if it was for a client so I will not start the development until I have sufficient research.   

After lunch I went off for a critique with Sally about my posters, the critique was slightly different than normal as we were not going to present our posters, Sally had not been in while we were developing our posters so she was unaware of the messages our posters were trying to get across. Which meant that she could let us know if our posters worked and how well they get the message to a realistic audience. The feedback I got was very similar to the other critique (the rips were unnecessary; simplify it.) although she did say that it gets the message across well. I found today very helpful especially the critiques as I felt that I got a lot from them, also I found that today was one of my most productive days in University, and I feel that I right on schedule with the progression of this project and I am getting very excited to where this project is going.

10th October-Greeting Cards

Today we were briefed on a new project – Greeting Cards. It quite existed as we had a guest lecturer to brief us (Clare) and also showed us her work that was very helpful because she designs greeting cards and could share her development process with us. Clare’s work was mainly illustrative but also had a large amount of media included.  After her talk I found it quite hard to settle on a theme because after looking through her work I want to do something which will allow me to involve freehand illustration and I also would like to include some sort of media as I haven’t done anything like that for a while. In the second half of the day I was able to talk to Clare about my ideas and that I was finding it hard to come up with a concept that will allow me to include what I wanted to do. Her advice was to take my time and look through a large amount of illustrations, texture, patterns etc or anything that I can get inspiration from, she also suggested looking through a card shop and recommended one in the centre of town called ‘Scribbler’ as they had a large number of cards which push many boundaries about what is acceptable.  After gathering some materials and research for inspiration I decided to go to the card shop she suggested. I was very surprised with the range of cards Scribbler had from Childs cards to adult ones and some which were very shocking, but it showed how there really aren’t any boundaries to this project as long as it’s a greeting card that meets the brief.

Although I don’t have a idea yet of what I want to do I don’t mind yet as I will go through all the inspiration I collected today and I don’t think that it will be hard to get motivated for this project as I cant wait to get settled on a idea so I can get on with this project. 

Critique

 

As I felt that my last poster was too busy and I didn’t like the yellow background against the rips I thought that it was important to carry on developing the poster. This was the poster I showed in the critique. I used a darker brown as the background as I felt that it was simple enough to allow the rip and the message to stand out. The feedback I got was that the poster did not rely need the rip in it and would probably work better as just the black background and type (like my first one I did!). SIMPLE CAN WORK! I was happy that they agreed that my first style poster worked better and showed me that I should be more confident with showing a piece of work which is very simple as it can work well.  I will now go back to my initial poster and refine the layout as it would have to be perfect if there will just be type. I am now existed to go back and refine my other poster as I think it could work very well.

9th October

Since Monday I have been developing this poster, I started off with this poster although I really liked it I felt that it was to early to settle on it, and I thought that it might have been a bit to simple to show at the critique.

 I wanted to develop another poster, which would have more to it, so I went back and looked at the tag line and I decided to develop a poster around the tag line I designed a abstract poster with ‘one in five adults in the UK is illiterate’, although I felt that ‘what’s the po

int in this poster if people cant read it?’ worked better, so I decided to reflect that tagline and put a rip in the middle of the abstract poster reveling the other tag line. I liked the way that it looked as if someone had ripped the original poster because it was useless to illiterate people, although it did look a bit to busy. Also I felt that because I used a yellow background the white rips blended in and it lost the impact.  

 

6th October

Over the weekend, while I was trying to move my idea forward I found that the more I was developing it the more the tagline (you can’t get aids from a hug) became less clever and I thought that it was kind of patronising and I don’t want my post to be miss red. I decided that I would research into some other social issues and gave myself a deadline that if I couldn’t think of anything better than this by Sunday night I would stay with this and not look back as I need at least three full days to develop a strong poster.

I then looked into illiteracy and I found that one in five adults in the UK is illiterate, I thought that this was a very good starting point to base a poster around, I personally had overlooked the social problem of people being illiterate and after disguising this with my housemates we agreed that this was an overlooked social issue. Along with the fact that one in five people is illiterate I think this could make a very strong campaign.

On Sunday I decided to go round Chris’s house to discuss this new idea with him as he obviously new the brief and I felt that this could help me with deciding what to do. He also agreed that this could make a stronger outcome, which I was pleased to hear, as I was getting more existed about this project which meant that I would be more motivated and therefore I would create a much stronger outcome.

I decided to go in today so that I could discuss my new idea with Neil to make sure that I was on the right track. When I got in just started to further research into this new idea, as it was the one I wanted to go ahead with. However Neil was busy with the first years so I decided to go home about lunchtime, although I didn’t mind to much as we were told at the start of the year that we should be more independent and I was confident enough with my new idea to go head and stick with it. I found today very productive as I went into university early it meant that I was up and getting on with it.  I continued developing this idea when I got back home and I have now decided that I will probably do something typographical. So far I have come up with the main context ‘What’s the point in this poster if people can’t read it?’ which I think is a very strong tagline as I could do something quite symbol and grab the audience with one glance. I have also started to do some thumb nails and layouts, I am very happy with how this brief is moving along.

 

 

3rd October

Today was more about getting on with your idea so I just started researching into HIV/aids. I found quite I lot of relevant information, I then started to look through other designers campaigns on aids/HIV. I saw that almost all of the posters surrounding aids are portraying messages that say to stay away from people with aids and not to interact with them, as it is easy to be passed on. This was when I decided to research into ways you can catch HIV.

I then thought about creating a poster to generate awareness for the other side of the argument, which is often overlooked. I was thinking to look at sufferers of HIV/Aids and (probably children born into it) and make people aware of the fact that they are being unfairly treated differently. This then developed into a tag line ‘you can’t get aids’ from a hug’, I then spent the rest of the day developing and researching in the library. 

2nd October

 Today we were briefed on our first project look again think again. I was excited to get back into creative thinking and the process of designing again. After we were briefed on the project were told to split into groups and generate some ideas-brain storm etc. I found this a good way to get started as we could bounce ideas off each other and get a wider range of ideas faster. I then went off to the library to decide on an idea to develop.  I decided to go with a social issue as I thought it would be more stimulating and I could create a better outcome. I decided to go with the idea of creating a poster for a issue which is in the media quite a lot (Aids/HIV) and advertise that often ‘hope’ is overlooked and try to create an uplifting poster.

At the end of the day we had a critique in small groups with Neil. I had a possible idea which was to look at making a collage of dark images of sufferers of aids/HIV maybe broaden it to poverty and then overlay lighter brighter images which spells out hope; the feedback I got was that the idea to advertise in a ‘happier’ approach to something which is often done in a depressing style was nice, although using the word ‘hope’ could mislead the audience as there is a large amount of ignorance surrounding Aids/HIV. Neil said that there had been some research which showed that a large number of people believed there was a cure, which meant that using ‘Hope’ could be very misleading.  I should now concentrate on research and not try and get ahead of myself and try to think of visualisations yet. I found this way of critiquing work in a small group was a very good way of doing it as it was more of a discussion and I found it easy to concentrate and as I have quite a short attention span I sometimes find myself getting distracted in larger groups.

Aims

- To consolidate skills in planning and time management.

- To encourage critical reflection and self-evaluation.

- To contextualise my learning in preparation for employment or level three study.

Introduction

As part of my second year studies i will be keeping a blog of my progression throughout the year.

Over the sumer break i did not get the opportunity to to do  any further work experience within the design industry as i was working long hours throughout the holidays. this also meant that i did not have the chance to do any design work for clients.  Towards the end of the holiday i did however get back onto illustrator to refresh my memory, i also bought a book on photoshop (How To Cheat on Photoshop) which i found incredibly interesting, it also came with a dvd which i followed some tutorials proving how complex the program is which i will try to explore further throughout the year.