OUGD402//SPEAKING FROM EXPERIENCE//STARTING POINT

BRIEF

Produce a graphic response/ graphic product /body of work that makes a statement, comment, observation or gives advice about your experience on your first year of this course. You will need to identify appropriate content, and develop/identify appropriate media/formats that will effectively deliver your concept to next years new first years. Will it be entertaining, advisor, informative or instructional?

Background / Considerations

Think about the new experiences that you have had, the difficulties that you have overcome and the new people you have met and the life skills you have acquired this year. Remember what it was like starting your first week, how did you feel and what emotions did you experience? Excitement, trepidation, fear or did you feel overwhelmed. You might have benefited from some advice, opinions and insight from others that have experienced the same transition. What might you say, do or give to next years graphic design students to make the transition into the student experience, particularly this course more welcoming?

TASK

IDENTIFY THREE PROBLEMS YOU WILL NEED TO BE ADDRESSED, THEN 5 WAYS IN WHICH THEY COULD BE DELIVERED AND FIVE WAYS TO ADDRESS THE PROBLEM: 
1.BUDGETING 
REASONS WHY IT SHOULD BE DELIVERED:
-help students save money
-to be able to balance spending on essentials and luxuries
-spending your loan wisely
-the best places to buy as a student/deals/student discount etc.
-to survive 
WAYS IN WHICH IT COULD BE DELIVERED:
-small booklet on the students guide to budgeting
-info-graphics?
-guide about student friendly offers in Leeds
-budgeting diary for year 2012/2013
-interactive wall chart to keep track of money


2.LCA BAGD (HOW TO SURVIVE FIRST YEAR)
REASONS WHY IT SHOULD BE DELIVERED 
-so that first years can have an idea of whats in store for them
-to give as much help and guidance as possible so its not to overwhelming
-to prepare and organise something to make it easier for them
-so they don't make any unnecessary mistakes
-to make the transition from a-levels/foundation to degree easier
WAYS IN WHICH IT COULD BE DELIVERED:
-survival kit
-survival guide
-zine (tips and information about the college)
-postcard tip pack
-organisation guide (form of diary or chart)


3.LEEDS (ALL ABOUT LEEDS)
REASONS WHY IT SHOULD BE DELIVERED:
-to familiarise newcomers with leeds
-best spots for students in leeds
-so that students can find their bearings 
-promote certain places in leeds (for students)
-to advertise what leeds has to offer
WAYS IN WHICH IT COULD BE DELIVERED:
-a guide to leeds life as a student
-posters promoting student places
-zines with different subjects in each (venues/nights out/places to shop etc.)
-pack of playing cards for students involving leeds in some way
-newspaper guide to freshers
-map of leeds
INITIAL DESIGN SHEET:

OUGD402//SPEAKING FROM EXPERIENCE//WORKSHOP

5 THINGS YOU WISH YOU HAD BEEN TOLD ABOUT LEEDS:

-woodhouse/IQ isn't the best place to live

-it rains all the time

-a high possibility of being burgled in a student house

-good places for a night out

-what the current second years thought about their first year in Leeds.

5 THINGS YOU WISH YOU HAD BEEN TOLD ABOUT BEING A STUDENT:

-budgeting your loan is essential

-people won't tidy up after themselves in the kitchen

-washing up is annoying

-dealing with early mornings

-getting ill is easy due to lack of good diet/sleep/looking after yourself etc.

5 THINGS YOU WISH YOU HAD BEEN TOLD ABOUT GRAPHIC DESIGN:

-graphic designers have no social life

-graphic design is everywhere

-it takes up most of your time

-its competitive

-target audience is important

5 THINGS YOU WISH YOU HAD BEEN TOLD ABOUT THIS COURSE:

-never time for anything other than graphic design

-NEVER be late

-you will stare at the mac for hours a day

-printing work costs

-first year is not easy

5 THINGS I HAVE LEARNT ABOUT LEEDS:

-friendly

-definitely a difference between northerners and southerners

-you can walk to most places

-the weathers worse up north

-big student environment

5 THINGS I HAVE LEARNT ABOUT BEING A STUDENT:

-budgeting

-getting up early everyday is hard

-better to get work done before the night of the deadline

-cooking can be a bit of a chore 

-some people never take the bins down

5 THINGS I HAVE LEARNT ABOUT GRAPHIC DESIGN:

-how to use Adobe (basic)

-you must be motivated

-its challenging 

-its more than what I thought it was

-its a competitive career

5 THINGS I HAVE LEARNT ABOUT THIS COURSE:

-full timetable

-attendance and punctuality is important 

-heavy work load

-cant get away with slacking

-makes you produce good work

5 THINGS YOU WISH YOU HAD DONE THIS YEAR:

-made more of an effort to visit friends back home

-become better at photoshop

-explored leeds more

-saved money: not spent loads off money on pointless stuff that I could of saved for summer

-kept up to date with blogging

5 THINGS YOU WISH YOU HADN'T DONE THIS YEAR:

-let my work load pile up

-kept getting ill because of not looking after myself 

-let the kitchen get so messy

-getting fined for not buying a train ticket

-spent so much money on taxis

5 THINGS YOU HAVE DONE THIS YEAR THAT YOU NEVER THOUGHT YOU WOULD:

-the amount of work

-sign for a house

-cook a decent meal

-be able to use Illustrator

-have to present work/ideas

5 THINGS YOU HAVE DISLIKED THIS YEAR:

-IQ (my halls)

-being broke most of the time

-not getting nice food cooked for you

-falling behind with the work load 

-design principles

5 THINGS YOU HAVE LOVED THIS YEAR:

-friends 

-Leeds, getting to know a new city

-nights out

-experiencing new things

-achieving/learning so much

OUGD404//DESIGN PRINCIPLES:MODULE EVALUATION

EVALUATION

1.What skills have you developed through this module and how effectively do you think you have applied them?
I think this module really helped me to gain an understanding of an aspect of graphic design I hardly knew anything about before.  Its helped me to gain a more professional understanding of the subject and introduced new topics within graphics that will be used in the future.  I know have quite a good understanding of colour theory, something I'd never been taught before, experimenting with different coloured objects and photography helped me to grasp the understanding of hue, complimentary colours, warm/cold colours etc.  Another thing that I've learnt about on this module is type and grid, I'd never even realised that magazine and newspaper layouts stuck to a certain criteria when designing a spread.  This was something I enjoyed doing, recreating the double page spread, however, I didn't feel as confident as I should of when laying out the grid for my final design as I'd missed both type and grid lessons and so didn't have as deeper understanding of type and grid as I would of liked.  With this in mind I looked on moodle, went through the seminars notes and did some further research in order for me to be able to finish the type and grid task.  I know have a better understanding of measuring type.


2. What approaches to/methods of design production have you developed and how have they informed your design development process?
Using the grid format to help me create my double page spread was something I found to be useful, also drawing up some thumbnails for initial design ideas, I think, helped to vision where I would like to lay out certain type and image before actually creating the spread digitally.  The understanding of colour theory.


3. What strengths can you identify in your work and how have/will you capitalise on these?
I think my photography for the 'what is a line' brief was quite strong, I think it worked well considering it was for interRail and they'd been taken on interRail, if i would of had more time I would of liked to of made a small booklet (maybe hotdog format) with more information about interRail.  I also thought the colour theory investigation went quite well.  The initial lessons at the start of the year really interested me in colour theory and how colours can have such impacts on other colours, bringing the objects in and making a life size colour circle was an interesting and helpful way to get a basic idea about the colour wheel.  Also being introduced to pantone for the first time, which made me realise how professional you have to be with those type of things when working for a company.  I don't think my work was as strong in this module as the previous, as all the things I'd learnt in this were completely new to me, also the nature of the module allows you a lot of time to for independent working because they're are now weekly deadlines, which made me estimate more time than I actually had for some area of the module.


4. What weaknesses can you identify in your work and how will you address these in the future?
Time management- in this module I found it easy to loose track of time which sometimes made the final outcome of some of the projects disappointing.  i wasn't happy with my thumbnail drawings, i would of liked more time to go over them, but once i'd found the layout I wanted i created the double page spread and then found it hard to go back and generate more layout designs having already made the final piece.  I quite liked the idea for my hotdog booklet, but wanted to take it a bit further, because of time I didn't get to explore it as much as I wanted to.  Also only after printing did I realise that some of the words had been slightly cropped but after printing 10 copies it was too expensive and time consuming to go back and print again.  Type and grid- I understand the basics but because I missed it I will go back and look at it even more.  I had a lot of ideas for what I wanted my 'what is a line' poster to look like but because I'm not very advanced on photoshop I found any ideas I had to hard to actually execute, I will try to use photoshop more in order to become better at it.


5. Identify five things that you will do differently next time and what do you expect to gain from doing these?
1.Managing time better, this is something I need to learn from, and will make a big effort to do so in the future.  This will generally help my practice, giving me more time to spend on designing the final solution and allowing me to make changes to it if I'm not happy with it.
2.Design sheets, I don't realise how much these help create ideas and just give you a general starting point for a brief.
3.Research- I think this module has probably taught me the most so far in terms of the principles of design, however, I feel with a bit more research I'd be able to further my understanding of type, type and grid, colour theory etc.
4.Ideas-  I want to be able to come up with ideas quicker in order to try out a bit more development work, I quite liked my posters for 'what is a line' but I wanted to take it further and because I'd spent so much time trying to figure out an idea.
5.try different techniques, I want to start using different facilities in order to create my work, like screen printing, letter press etc.

6.How would you grade yourself on the following areas: (please indicate using an ‘x’) 5= excellent, 4 = very good, 3 = good, 2 = average, 1 = poor
	1	2	3	4	5
Attendance			x
Punctuality				x
Motivation				x
Commitment				x
Quantity of work produced		x
Quality of work produced			x
Contribution to the group			x
The evaluation of your work is an important part of the assessment criteria and represents a percentage of the overall grade. It is essential that you give yourself enough time to complete your written evaluation fully and with appropriate depth and level of self-reflection. If you have any questions relating to the self evaluation process speak to a member of staff as soon as possible.

INTERIM EVALUATION//OUGD402

Evaluate the problems that you identified and had to resolve within the briefs this year:

I think an important problem I've had to solve so far with all the briefs is having to have all the outcomes made digitally (Adobe programmes) I'm really glad I've been made to use illustrator/photoshop because its definitely something I would of avoided as all my previous work was hand rendered.  I do however think it limits ideas sometimes because I'm working to a usually short timed brief and so I always feel like I don't have enough time to research, generate ideas, draw some design sheets and then learn some new techniques on the programmes to create the designs I have as potential ideas in my head.  Another problem, my time management skills.  Again and again I've found I'm not leaving myself enough time for the final design, the majority of the time for each brief is spent on researching, design sheets and trying to think of an actual idea.

PROVERBALLY YOURS (OUGD403)

This was one of the first briefs we got at the start of the year, looking back the outcome was pretty rubbish, the three posters were hand drawn because I had no concept of Adobe.  It looks unprofessional, the use of colour is bad because I think we were limited to two colours plus stock and so hand drawing it wasn't a good idea.  After everything I've learnt over the past six months I definitely think if I was handed this brief now the outcome would be improved drastically.

DESIGN PRINCIPLES HOT DOG BOOK (OUGD404)

I quite enjoyed making a hot dog book for the first time, a problem I had with this which has happened a few times is printing.  I have to be exact with measurements on inDesign etc. and print out test versions in the mac suite, even though I did this, type was still managed to be cut off when printing the final 10 copies.

PHOTOSHOP BRIEF/POSTCARDS (OUGD405)

Something that I do constantly, I found especially with this brief, not giving myself enough time to actually produce the final piece of work.  I think it happened with this one more so because it was running along side the '100 things..' brief which was a long project.

Evaluate the key considerations that you had to take into account when investigating briefs this year:

After being on this course I've realised there are a lot more things as a graphic design student that you need to consider rather than just what the final piece looks like.

GENERATING IDEAS/DESIGN SHEETS:

-I've never had to do so much prep work before starting the actual design, this has definitely helped improve the quality of the final outcome.  Design sheets, which I hated doing at first, is a great way to get things down and generate ideas.  The amount of design sheets I've done in the last two modules compared to OUGD403 has increased.  I think design sheets allow you to get a basic idea of potential designs without going to the trouble of designing them first which would waste a considerable amount of time.

RESEARCH:

Research was a massive part of '100 things' OUGD405, this was where I learnt the importance of research and also the importance of a varied body of research, primary/secondary, quantitative/qualitative.

AUDIENCE:

Target audience is a massive part of graphic design, which I hadn't realised until starting the course.  At Camberwell there wasn't as much emphasis put on this.  I think most of my designs were done with little or no consideration for my target audience.  This is obviously an important factor as graphic design is all about communicating a message and with no clear target audience that only makes it harder.

Evaluate the research activities that you had to undertake in order to resolve the briefs this year

Research is something else I've found to be important and useful when doing any brief, when doing OUGD405 I learnt the importance of primary research, making surveys is something i've done this year that gives you good feedback about what design direction to take.  Secondary research is something I rely on heavily, however, I've learnt to try and use reliable sources, this is key, if you design something with incorrect information its sending out the wrong message.

Evaluate the examples of secondary research that informed your design decisions

I think for secondary research I rely way to heavily on the internet, and should try and use different sources to get some information. Also you never know whats reliable on the internet.

Evaluate the examples of practical research that informed your resolution

I found doing questionnaires and surveys helped to get a better understanding of an audiences point of view.  I want to start incorporating photography into my projects more, using your own images instead of ones off the internet.

Evaluate the breadth of visual investigation that you explored before deciding on your design direction

Visually I've looked at quite a few images, for example with the '100 things' a lot of my research was looking at old packaging, old record sleeves, the general style of things from that period of time that I was researching. I tend to draw up my designs visually before hand on design sheets, however, I find on most of my design sheets I do tend to write just as much.  A lot of my visual research is done on the internet or just from things that catch my eye in general, I should start getting resources from the library and other places for future briefs.  I look at some designers I like to get visual inspiration for things like type, layout etc.  I found when I was doing the Rain Poster Brief OUGD406 I tried to look at various poster designs to see if I could get any ideas on design and style.

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Systematic, Stimulated & Intuitive Approches

The approach taken for the last brief: STAMP IT!//OUGD406

-Stimulated

-Intuitive

-Systematic 

I used a stimulative approach at the beginning  to draw inspiration from the internet, I looked at previous work that answered the brief before to help get an idea of how other people had responded to the brief.  I then looked t facts and stats to get information about the topic.

Intuitive approach: I drew some ideas out on designs sheets, to get an idea visually of what I was going to create.

When I'd decided on an idea, what the message was I wanted to display and the basic idea/style, I used a systematic approach to make my designs, the style, consistency etc.

OUGD406//STAMP IT EVALUATION:

What skills have you developed through this brief and how effectively do you think you have applied them? What approaches to/methods of design production have you developed and how have they informed your design development process?
-Working on this brief has really helped me to try and successfully deliver/communicate an important message.  This was a brief in particular where the message had to be clear and concise because it involved important issues and the format was to such a small scale.  At first when trying to design my final set of stamps I was finding it hard to try and fit as much image and text on because I was aware the type might not be legible when coming to print.  I feel in this brief, doing research was essential to aid my final designs as my stamps were based on facts about recycling.
What strengths can you identify in your work and how have/will you capitalise on these? 

I think, at first, I found it hard to work on such a small scale, obviously I designed the stamp on a bigger scale but you constantly had to think about how much you could put on the design because when scaling it down it could go wrong.  I found once I printed out a size tester the design still managed to work, i was quite surprised with how much information I could fit on a small stamp.  I found the research I'd done to be useful, this was a brief I found research to be essential as I knew very little on the topic before hand.  I think the stamps worked as a group because the style and imagery were consistent along with the facts that hopefully engaged the audience.
What weaknesses can you identify in your work and how will you address these in the future? 
I struggled to get the actual design started, I'd done a few design sheets to generate ideas and came up with quite a few basic ones which I could picture, however, when trying to design them on illustrator it didn't work or look the way I wanted to at all.  This is down to me not having a clear understanding of the programmes, it can be frustrating, visually having these ideas in your head and knowing what you want your designs to look like but being restricted because of the lack of skill and experience.  I also spent too much time researching things that then became slightly irrelevant to my final designs.
Identify things that you will do differently next time and what do you expect to gain from doing these? 
-Not leave the final design so late on, this should be something I start to develop half way through the brief, not towards the end
-Explore different aspects of illustrator/photoshop to try new and interesting designs
-Pay attention to the brief in detail, read it until it is completely clear and know exactly what is expected.