OUGD503 - Module Evaluation

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

The main skill that I have developed through this module is my ability to take a brief and deconstruct it to find out exactly what needs to be done, whether the client is asking for it or not. I have found that this has been an essential part to my practice during the course of the module and has aided me in creating some outcomes which I can be proud of as I know they are good solutions to the brief.

Another skill I have developed through this module is my ability to take briefs from different areas of design and apply my skills to them. Initially when starting this module I was quite unsure about how far my skills could be applied and in which fields of design, however I have found that I have adapted myself quite well to a lot of different briefs.

I have also used this module as a basis of improving my Illustrator drawing skills. While I am confident in my use of software, drawing images in Illustrator is something I tended to avoid in the first year. In the second year I felt this is the time where I must address this and get over the fear I had of the skill.

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

I have particularly found the studio sessions helpful in opening my eyes to the way in which to respond to a brief. While it all seems pretty standard things being discussed, saying them really put it in my mind and has helped me when I have received a brief and started designing a solution for it.

This has definitely helped me in my approach to the larger competition briefs as initially these seemed quite daunting and had a lot of elements to work out and around. However after deconstructing the briefs it made them much easier to follow and come up with a concept.

This module has also shown me that I don't need to spend a huge amount of my time on a brief which has only a small outcome. Time management has been key throughout this module as there are deadlines for each brief, so working around how much time was left and deciding how much time to spend on each brief has massively improved my designing for each brief as I am working to the time restraints and not taking as long or little as I want to.

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

The main strength I have is in my ability to quickly turn drawn initial ideas into digital versions. This has always been the case, but this module has really helped me develop this skill because of the time scales of each brief. I intend to take this forward and continually develop the quality of this initial design work so that by the end of a brief I have a piece of design which I am very happy with.

Another strength I have in my work is my ability to come up with an idea and then quickly think about how this could be spread across a large range of media. This has helped me immensely because I know the minute I can't think of how it would span over a variety of media, it is not the idea to take forward. This skill also helps me as I am constantly developing these distribution methods along with the development of the brief.

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

I still think my weakness is in my Illustrator drawn work. While I do feel I have improved, I know I still have a long way to go to feel truly confident in this area of design, and I do think that my inexperience shows in some of my design work. To try counter this I have kept some designs simple where I would have liked to be a bit more complex, and I do think that this is a shame and has deterred my progress in this area. However as I know this, I will start to try respond to briefs in a way in which I can include this skill and try develop it to a good standard.

Another weakness is in a couple of the smaller briefs. I do feel that there was a point half way through the module where I got a bit lazy, and the design work shows that. This is obviously not good for my practice or for my portfolio as it shows some work which clearly hasn't had a lot of time spent on it. To address this I will be stopping myself from jumping from initial ideas straight to the computer, to try and develop them first and get a good concept built up.

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

1. Find another large brief - I thoroughly enjoyed doing the Domino's brief and do regret not choosing another larger campaign brief to do. While I enjoy small briefs, I do get much more enjoyment out of developing an idea over a number of weeks and strengthening it as I go along.
2. Design for a wider range of briefs - Something I do regret through this module is not looking around a bit more for some other kinds of briefs. I did have an editorial brief which I never got round to, and very much regret now. By doing a wider range of briefs it develops my skills in a variety of areas and makes me a much more confident designer.
3. Work more conceptually - While a few of the briefs are built up on concepts, the others are missing the concept element to the designs. Building up a concept is beneficial to creating good design and I will continue to develop my skill in this area.
4. Work with photography - While I did do a couple of briefs where I experimented with photographic images, I didn't do many. I regret this now as the whole module seems to be based on vector designs and not a large variety of work.
5. Design for another media aside from digital - something which I haven't done through this module at all is design for another media apart from digital. While I understand this is obviously a fundamental part to design, I do feel I have missed out by not designing something by hand or for a manual process.

OUGD503 - Summative Evaluation

When I initially started on this module I was quite apprehensive and nervous about the outcomes that were required in the fact that this module is built up on competition/live briefs and not university driven briefs. I have never been one to show my work off in a very public way like these competitions so I knew it was going to be a challenge for me to adapt to this kind of working environment.

I quickly found that the quicker I threw myself into the briefs the easier it was for me to adapt to the idea of displaying the work on a public level. To overcome this fear I had, I threw myself into a small live brief almost immediately as I knew I would otherwise keep procrastinating to avoid the situation. I found that doing this benefited me greatly for the rest of the module as I was able to focus more on my design ideas for the brief instead of what other people would think of my work.

Through this module I wanted to push myself to do a variety of briefs as I had the feedom to do whatever I chose. I also wanted to design to various levels of outcomes, from very quick logo briefs to longer developmental briefs. I felt that this was the perfect module to get out as much as I put in for the briefs chosen. I do think I have achieved this and created outcomes to large variety of briefs.

Something I wanted to do was take on a large brief that was based around the idea of creating a campaign as this is something that I had an interest in. I decided that my main individual brief was the ideal brief to use to fulfil this as a campaign has a lot of elements to consider and a lot of developmental work needed to be successful.

I chose the Domino’s brief as my main  individual brief as this was the brief I felt would best suit my ability as a designer. It is a brand I am familiar with and the brief was something that excited me as the brand is known for its witty tone of voice. I thought that this brief was one where I could enjoy myself and have fun with the designs as there was not really much limit to what I could do within the restrictions set by Domino’s. I found that this brief was challenging and made me push my design skills to come up with solutions that fitted the Domino’s brand as well as were visually interesting.

This module has definitely been the one which has helped me develop as a designer as the situations in which I am designing have been real life situations with clients and reasons behind the designs. Doing these briefs has given me a good insight into the kind of work that is out there and the kind of variety of outcomes that are possible. 

I have also found that this module has been the one which has helped me with time management and organisation. With the briefs having deadlines that must be stuck to, I have been able to adapt myself and my designing into a routine which means I have maximum time at the end to develop the initial ideas and come up with an outcome that is pushing myself as a designer but also answers the brief.

While I have enjoyed the briefs I have fulfilled, I do feel that there are a couple of the smaller ones which are lacking in professionalism and time spent on them. I do think that halfway through the module I did get a bit lazy in terms of how much effort I put into a couple of these smaller briefs because I was concentrating on my main brief, however I have learnt from these and realise my mistakes in taking on these briefs and trying to design for them when I did not really have much intention of spending a lot of time on them.

Working in a collaboration has been the biggest surprise for me on this module. Previously I have not liked working in a collaboration and have not particularly found that the outcomes of those outcomes have been successful, however I found that working in a one on one collaboration has been successful and is something I now feel confident in doing. I was nervous about this brief initially as I am someone who likes to do quite a lot of work, and I did not want to be with someone who would take advantage of that and not do much themselves. Luckily I found that the partnership worked well and the balancing of the workload made it easier for me to focus on the elements that I find the most interesting and skills I wanted to achieve during this brief.

Overall I have enjoyed this module immensely and do feel it has been my most successful module in the amount that it has taught me, from conceptual design through to non-design related skills such as time keeping and organisation of work. I have found that this module has helped shape me as a designer and has given me the confidence to move forward with live briefs or competition briefs where my work will be public. I also feel the structure of the module has aided me in my development as a designer as it has been quite free in what briefs I fulfil, meaning I have been making my own decisions on the kind of work I have been creating.

OUGD503 - After Crit Progress Review

After the final crit for this module, and everything that was discussed in that, I decided that it would be best to review all the work I had done for the module at this point to see if there were any gaps or issues in the work I had done in each brief and for the module as a whole.

At this point, my two large briefs, Domino's & Oasis, are at the point where they need to be submitted in a few days so huge changes can not be made on them. On review of these, I decided that the Domino's brief was completely at the point for submission and didn't need anymore work on. However when it came to the Oasis brief, both Daisy and I had read the feedback given and agreed that there were a few issues that needed addressing, mainly in the way our response has been executed and put together. While we have done what the brief asked and answered each outcome, there is not really an overlying concept behind the work, which is definitely something we need to address to tie it all together and make it much stronger.

The main focus of my review is on my individual briefs. In reviewing these, I looked back at what I initially set out to achieve in this module, and what I wrote in my interim evaluation in January.

Overall there is a sense that I have fulfilled everything I wanted to get out of this module and everything I wanted to do in this module.

Things I have achieved in this module so far:

• Improved presentation skills
• Improved quality of work
• Improved conceptual ideas & carrying them through
• Submitting to live briefs confidently
• Good time management
• Creative compromise
• Experience working on a real brief for a real cause (not just a university driven brief)
• Win a cash prize
• Improved portfolio
• Improved quantity of work
• Worked on briefs which I wouldn't have necessarily done before/areas of design I had not have much experience in before
• Experience working with a client and their vision

I do feel that I have done a lot of work for this module and have thrown myself into as many live briefs as I could find and had an interest in. However, what comes with that is that I do have a sense that some of the work I have created for this module, for the smaller briefs, has not necessarily been to the best of my ability, and that is a bit disappointing to me as a designer. I wanted to create work which pushed me as a designer throughout the whole module, and while I do think some of the work has achieved this, there is some work that hasn't.

Some of this that can be put down to the clients brief or vision. I have found it hard with some of the briefs to create visually good work when their idea of a good design is not my idea of a good design. However I don't think that this is an excuse for some of the work I have created as some of it has been lazy and not had a lot of time spent on it. At this point I would say that at least three of the briefs are not up to par and don't have enough developmental work or good work in general.

These three are:

• Tigerprint Christmas Cards
• Charlie & Reed, Charlie's Foodshop
• Harry's Bar & Grill

I also feel that while I enjoyed the 'Object Marketing' brief I skipped a lot of developmental work because I got one idea and went straight into it without taking a step back and planning it all out. I think that this has been the underlying issue with the other three briefs above. I got one idea and then stuck with it, making the brief very quick and easy without thinking what else I could do and how else I could approach my response.

At this point I think that there is not much point trying to reinvent my response to the Tigerprint brief as I never saw this as a brief to focus my development on. It was more of a fun brief to do and play around with. The response I am particularly disappointed in is the Charlie's Foodshop brief, as I feel I did not create a very good response at all and did it very quickly without much thought. There doesn't seem to be much design in it. I feel like I just put some words in a hiarachy and put it in a box. This is a brief that I would like to revisit and create a response that is a bit more visually interesting and has a running concept through it.

Something I have also noticed is that there is quite a lack in image work throughout my responses to briefs too, which is disappointing to me as this is something that I wanted to experiment with and improve my skills with during this module. While I have worked with images in Glacier Coffee, Tigerprint & Secret 7", I feel that this is because the briefs required image work and not because I decided to include it myself. I would like to use this and incorporate this into the reinvention of the Charlie & Reed brief.

It was also mentioned in peer feedback that I hadn't done any work with photographic images. While I did experiment with this in Secret 7", the final design was vector based. With this in mind I would like to find a brief which does incorporate the use of photographic images in some way.

It was also said that I had a lot of small briefs which were quick, and didn't have many which were a bit larger. I would like to address this and find a brief where I can be a bit more developmental and create a larger amount of work. I have found that the majority of the large briefs are now finished or very close to the deadlines so it would be unrealistic to attempt to do one of these. In hindsight I do think I should have created a response to one of the Starpack packaging awards briefs. These were briefs which needed a lot of work and had good prizes for winning, and I do think I should have taken advantage of this while I had the chance. I will try find a couple of briefs that I can use as larger briefs and create a larger response to.

While I have a fair few logo design briefs, I do feel that I could definitely find another one which I can develop and create a very strong response to, and create a whole brand identity behind it. This is definitely something I want to explore, and to create an outcome which I am proud of. Another type of brief that I haven't had much experience with is creating an App or Website. I am not so confident in my ability to create something commercially viable for a client in this area, but the only way to get confident in this is to find a brief and respond to it. 

With all of this in mind, the next step I will take is to find a couple of potential briefs addressing these issues I have, and to reinvent the Charlie & Reed brief.

OUGD503 - Studio Brief 1/2 Final Crit

Today was the final crit for both the studio briefs 1 & 2. For this we needed to bring along boards of every brief I had done up to this point.

I took my 10 final Domino's boards, the 11 final Oasis boards and my 9 small briefs.

The first part of the brief was to present our collaboration boards and spend half an hour walking around and criting other peoples boards.

Overall the feedback on our collaboration was good, but a lot of comments were made on the fact that  we had quite a lot of boards and could do with condensing them down. Comments were also made on the fact that the images were very bold so more white space on the boards might be a good idea.

Daisy and I discussed the comments made and agreed that we would need to make changes to our boards as they were not yet professional looking or showed off the images as well as they could.

The second part of the crit was on our individual boards. In pairs we went around the table and looked over everything each person had and filled in a peer review form, stating the strengths and suggestions for the following sections:

• Presentation
• Project Management
• Have you answered the brief?
• Any other comments

My feedback:

Overall the feedback I received was positive. There were a few good suggestions pointed out to me. One was that in my smaller briefs I had been working in vectors for all of them and hadn't really worked with photography or any other kind of media. This was something that I hadn't really realised until it was commented on until now so if I have time I will try find a brief which will work with other media.

Another comment was made that I didn't really have any substantial briefs apart from my two main ones, Domino's & Oasis. Although I agree with this, a couple of the smaller briefs have been larger than I have put across in the boards, so this is something I want to work on and represent my work in a much more fair view of what has gone into the designs. With this in mind, I am intending to find a brief that does need a bit more of a development stage to it and a bit more experimentation. A comment was made on the fact that I had gone by the briefs and not really 'broken' them, however I do feel I did this to an extend with my response to the Domino's brief. While I did create a campaign to advertise the deal, the angle I took for it wasn't the typical angle advertisements take.

OUGD503 - Studio Brief 2: Session 4/Crit

For today's crit I made five design boards for Daisy and I showing the brief and our responses.

An immediate issue with these boards was that we were told the feedback was going to purely be on the boards and not the actual work. I had designed these boards to display the content, not to be final submission boards so immediately knew the feedback we got wouldn't be brilliant, especially because they were being reviewed by people who knew nothing about the brief and our response.

Feedback:

Overall the feedback wasn't too great, and this was expected. However a few of the comments on the second sheet were a little harsh and a bit unintelligent. One comment says we need to give more information on the scale and format of advertisements, but there is a clear situational image of an advertisement showing scale, format and placement. Another comment was that we need some consistent weights in our type. All the type has been done to be the exact same size and weight throughout, so this is an irrelevant comment. Another comment was made on the fact that it wasn't clear who the audience is, however on the first page there is a written explanation stating that these messages will be placed inside the Oasis store primarily, with the clear audience of their customers. Another comment is that we haven't shown one of the messages. As these were design boards, we didn't feel it was necessary to show all the work as it is all proposals and all very similar so it seemed like a waste of space to put these on when there were other deliverables that needed to be shown.

The feedback on the first sheet was definitely more constructive and was actually positive in some areas, whereas the second wasn't positive at all and seemed like it hadn't been done with much look into what was actually on the boards.

OUGD503 - Responsive Interim Evaluation

At the end of the final crit for our main competition brief we were told that we should review where we were up to in the module at this point and evaluate ourselves against what we set out to do at the beginning, writing an interim evaluation of our progress.

The main aim I had when starting this module was to experience and take part in live/competition briefs. Typically I have shied away from this completely during the first year as it seems like such a huge step to take, to show my work and have other people judge it. Within this aim I had a number of different points I wanted to accomplish through these briefs. The first was that I wanted to work on a variety of different design challenges to expand my skills and improve my confidence in all areas of design. I also wanted to take part in briefs which were different in size, doing some quick ones and other longer ones.
Looking through all the competition briefs I have completed/completing at this point, I would say I have designed for different areas of the industry as I have been consciously looking for these. For example, I have designed a brand label for 'Glacier Coffee', but also designed a pizza box design for '131Pizza'. I have also done design in Christmas Cards for 'Tiger Print' & created a label for 'Pickled Pelican' jams. On top of these four briefs I am currently designing my submission for a CD cover for this years Secret 7" competition, and have another recently found a brief for an editorial design competition. The main competition brief I am taking part in is a large campaign proposal. This all shows that I am consciously taking on briefs which are fulfilling the aims that I set out for when it came to which briefs to choose.
Throughout these briefs I have undertaken I have tried to variate the designs, colour schemes and design elements. I am a designer who likes to work with primarily text, using image to back it up, so what I wanted to accomplish in this module was to be more competent and confidence in my design skills for vector images and creating images using Illustrator. I took this aim head-on when choosing my second competition briefs in the 'Glacier Coffee' branding. For this they wanted it to be very image driven, using an image of a mountain goat to be recognisable for their brand. This gave me the challenge in creating an Illustrator image which needed to be easily recognisable. During this brief I experimented with different styles of drawing in Illustrator, first going for a more realistic look, and then afterwards designing to a much more contemporary square look. Working on this brief gave me a lot more confidence in my ability to create images in Illustrator, and even though my design didn't win I do feel I did a pretty good job on it.
In regards to doing a substantial brief along with these small ones, I chose the YCN Domino's Pizza Campaign as it is a very open brief with a lot of possibilities. Throughout the course I haven't really had the opportunity to create a campaign of any kind either, so this would give me that chance to design over a range of media. Working on such a well known brand was something I wanted to experience as well as in reality I could potentially be asked to design collateral for a company with branding already. This brief gave me an idea of how to get into the mindset of designing for a branded company and how to use their guidelines for the designs and come out with a design which best represented them as a company. With this being such a large brief time management is key, and I have been actively making sure I kept on time for the deadlines given for studio sessions to do with this brief as it will give me a better chance to improve my response. I have found that keeping on time has benefitted me greatly in this module and in others as it leaves me in a much better position and gives me more time to spend on developing designs and concepts.
One thing that I wanted to experience in live briefs is creative compromise and meeting the clients needs even if it isn't what I feel is best as the designer. I found that this was definitely met while creating the 'Pickled Pelican' label. At the beginning the brief was completely at a minimal with no direction so that was a challenge to overcome, and then on top of that, when I thought I had created a good response to the brief, the client wanted large changes made, so in the end it looked nothing like the original idea, and was not anything that I was proud of at all. However I did win that brief and was paid for it so can't complain too much.
At this point in time it would seem that generally I had fulfilled the aims I had set for myself at the beginning of the module, but I do feel that these can still definitely be worked on. I would like to continue to work to find a variety of live briefs in different industries and with different needs. Something I haven't designed for yet is something that would be viewed digitally. This is definitely something that I would like to at least consider doing as it would give me more experience and confidence in this area of design.
Overall I am quite pleased with my progress in the aims I set myself. I'm not usually one to just go out and do live briefs or anything, but by throwing myself into the first one I got the confidence to take part in more, and I do think I am much more confident in this aspect of design. I think my design skills have improved throughout this module, and I am learning how to adapt them better to the design task given. I would like to do a few more briefs which are a bit more substantial and have a bit more to them than just creating a single brand image or something quick. I think working on the editorial brief will give me a decent start in working to complete this aim. Another thing I would like to work on is doing a piece of design which is much more conceptually driven, which is what I think the editorial design can start to help me work on. From this point forward I am going to continually develop my skills in the aims that I set myself and will continue to work to try better myself as a designer.

OUGD503 - Domino's Final Crit

For this final crit we were asked to create five boards for our competition brief. We were also asked to bring any collateral we had to go along with it.
Boards:

We were then put into groups of six and split into pairs. We then were told to choose two other people in the group and go crit their work. We were given about an hour and a half to do this. I paired up with Anna, and we gave feedback to Sarah & Charlie.
Grace & Joe gave feedback for my work.

Comment on the effectiveness of the product/proposal in relation to the original brief
Strengths
Appeals to the target audience - youthful and current
Attention grabbing - campaign sticks in your head because it is offensive
Weaknesses
Tone the offensiveness down or focus the offence on everyone else but the individual, e.g. 'you're awesome because you do two for tuesdays. everyone else is a sad loner' etc.

Comment on the appropriateness of the response to the identified audience and/or context
Strengths
Young people don't get as easily offensive so it works
Weaknesses
Older people might be offended or not understand

Comment on the visual quality of the final resolution
Strengths
Very striking, eye catching aesthetic.
Very clear and crisp
In line with Domino's identity bus is extended well.
Like the use of pattern & line

Weaknesses
Strap line below banner on A5 flyer too small to read.

Comment on the quality/effectiveness of the presentation of the product/proposal
Strengths
Good Aesthetic & layout of boards
Good visual elements

Weaknesses
Understanding the concept was difficult - not obvious straight away. A bit more written explanation would be good.
A bit more written explanation would be good.
Also no explanation of audience & relation to concept

General comment on work presented 
Pretty awesome
Tone down offence or direct it at everyone else but the individual - make that obvious

Overall the feedback was generally positive, with some suggestions that are very helpful. The main issue that they had with my brief response was that I didn't indicate my audience on the boards created, which in turn made it hard for them to generally judge whether the response was appropriate.
I have also taken into consideration what they have said about how offensive it is and maybe toning it down a little.

OUGD503 - Domino's Interim Crit

For this crit we were put into groups of five and given a couple of hours to talk through our briefs. The main aim of this crit was to make sure that the concepts and our responses made sense and were appropriate to the brief, as well as enough design ambition and scope.

I prepared the following design boards to show my proposal.

Feedback on the concept was positive as it wasn't a typical take on advertising the brand, more of an anti-advertising but still working to promote the deal. The focus on printed advertisements was agreed that it is the right direction for the type of design/concept I have, and it was suggested that I could experiment further with the digital side of the campaign.

After this crit we were told the final crit was in two weeks time where we would need 5 final design boards representing our responses in the best way possible.