OUGD502 - A Design Strategy: Collaborative Year Review

Today while reviewing my years worth of work, I discussed it with Charlie as she was doing the same, in preparation for our individual presentations. We discussed how we had progressed from the beginning of the year and how we were as designers today.

What we thought would be quite a good task is to redo the second task we were set in writing out the negatives and positives of each others design practice. It would give us a view of how we have progressed in terms of how someone else sees it rather than ourselves, and we had done each others lists at the beginning of the year so it would be good to see how each other thought we had progressed.

Charlie's list for me at the beginning of the year:

Charlie's list for me now:

Comparing the two of them, there is quite a difference in both of the sections. There are a couple which are still in the columns, but overall there is a difference in both my positives and negatives. While I disagree with one or two, I do think that overall these are quite in line with how I see myself as a designer and the positives and negatives I see in my own practice.

I think it's great that my work ethic is obvious to someone else other than myself. I have always felt that I work really hard because of my love for the subject, but for someone else to see it is great. I have also worked really hard on my presentation this year, so it's good to see that being recognised as a positive to my work.

In terms of the negatives, I do agree with them, apart from the design sheets one. I am very hard on my work and always think about how I could have improved it or changed something to make the brief work better, but I don't necessarily see that as a negative because it's just me trying to better myself as a designer. I agree that I don't variate my methods of production, but that's because I enjoy designing for digital printing and the process of this or web, much more than a hand rendered printing media like screen printing. I see this as more of a hobby than a serious printing method for my professional work. I think that this is down to the fact I'm a complete perfectionist and it won't do if it's slightly wrong, which is something that I find common in hand rendered printing.

Overall I think that this process has been good to do and has given me an outside view to how I am as a designer to others. It has also given me an insight into the areas that I need to work on and experiment a bit more with, as well as what I should keep at and continue to work on.