Year 3 Design Practice: December 2011

Wednesday 14 December 2011

OUGD301 Evaluation

This module has been tough but definitely most enjoyable. I've really enjoyed being able to focus on our own subject interests and areas of design, and I think this has also had an effect on improving the standard of my work.

I think the amount of work produced seemed extremely challenging at times but really worth while. I think i've probably produced more work this module than the whole of last year put together which for me is really satisfying. I think the amount of effort put in to try and achieve this has helped to lead to an instant increase in the standard of my work and I feel really happy with all my outcomes. They are all something i'm pleased to add to my portfolio which is an aim I had right from the start of this year. I wanted to be producing a more professional standard of work and I think having this mind set gave me the motivation to keep on working in the aim of improving.

At the start of the module when I had decided on my 4 briefs, my initial aim was to complete one before starting the next so I could have my mind focused on one thing at a time. However we were advised not to do this and have all the briefs on the go. In some ways this was useful, if one brief came to a standstill I would always have another to move on to and it was good in the sense you could take a break from one brief and do something different with another one. However I did find a downside to this. I feel with brief two 'body shop' brief, I got bored of working on it and felt it never properly came to an end. I think this is probably due to not having a set aim from the start as to what I wanted to produce as well as spending so long on it. When we start final major project I will make sure I am more focused from the start with things such as deliverables and also setting myself small deadlines which I found helped me out a lot towards the end of this module. I started to set myself day to day deadlines which helped me to keep on top of things and always have something to aim for which was a big motivation.

Brief 1 - 'Chop Chop'
I think this was possibly my favourite brief i've done so far. I was really excited to start it and I just generally had more motivation with what I was producing for it. Although one of my final prints didn't turn out as well as expected I still feel generally happy with the final outcomes and feel it's quite a strong piece I can add to my portfolio.

Brief 2 - The Body Shop WInter Collection
I enjoyed this brief to start off with but I feel that I never really set myself a target with it and thats why I ended up getting bored and not really managing to finishing it to the standard I would have liked. I think if i had been more specific with setting my own deadline for this I could have got it completed and out the way rather than going back to it every so often because I needed to not because I wanted to.

Brief 3 - ASDA 'Necessities'
I wasn't sure how much I would actually enjoy this brief as I think re-designing something that already exists is quite difficult and can have many limitations. I think making the decision to do this as a collaboration was a good idea as it doubled the amount of ideas and options to a brief which I thought might not initially have had many available. I believe me and Ellis worked really well together, even though it's not always advisable to work with friends I feel this benefitted us as we had no problems with expressing our opinions and pushing each other to get the work completed. I feel we split the brief really equally yet have still managed to come out with products which can easily stand alone.

Brief 4 - M&S
I feel with this brief I could have got a lot more out of it if I had given myself the time. I feel I dragged some of the others out a bit too long and didn't leave myself enough time to complete this brief as thorough as I would have liked. I am actually really happy with the outcomes I have produced as I feel they would reach the M&S target audience well. I just feel I could have expanded on it and put a bit more consideration into my idea. With this brief being a YCN competition I can still go back and add to it in my own time before submitting it as the deadline for this is not until march.

I think one thing i've found out from this module is that I definitely made the right decision in having packaging design as my main focus. There was a point where I was worried I was focusing too much on it but I soon realised that whilst i'm on the course I should take the chance to really focus on what I want to do now and this will also hopefully benefit my future. I feel that attempting briefs just to add elements to my portfolio is not a good enough reason to be doing something. I figured this out when I originally set out to do a typeface brief but kept putting it off because it wasn't actually something I wanted to do and so I felt I wouldn't get anything useful out of it. Designing for packaging is what I will continue to focus on however I do want to remember not to neglect other areas of design which I felt I slightly did over this module. Certain things like promotional material for the packaging I had in each brief, I felt I pushed to one side, when really they could have helped out my range of deliverables a lot more if I put that but more focus in.