Year 2 PPD Evaluation

1. Reflect on the relationship between your portfolio of work and your creative ambitions as a designer.

My portfolio is very type based. There are examples of work in my portfolio that demonstrate me working with graphics, simple illustrations or with photography, however in all of these there are elements and of typography. While I want to learn more about type and head in that direction as a specialism, I want to show that it isn’t just type I work with, so it was important for me to include this in my portfolio. It is also mix of work that is print and digital based, which again, is something I wanted to show. The design for digital module this year was my first real forray into working in a digital medium, and is something I really enjoyed and want to expand upon next year, learning more about moving image and screen based design. However, having said this, as a designer I am aware that alot of jobs are still going to require me to design for print, I just don’t see it going away any time soon. I would like to further inform myself with this side of design, mainly by looking into print finishes, such as using screenprinting for posters.

2. Relate your own work to specific examples/areas of contemporary design practice.

My ambitions as a designer and career wise is to work in a relatively small, independant design collective that is able to deliver a ‘whole package’ to a client, be this posters, booklets, websites, animations or TV adverts. This sort of role may have me working in a specilist area, such as typography, but would need me to have an understanding of various aspects of graphic design as I would be working alongside designers who’s job could perhaps be a different specialism, but would need to work collaboratively with them to provide the typography, or provide them typography to work with, etc. An example of this would be Airside. Though they have quite a big reputation, they are still a relatively small design studio. On their website there are biographies in the ‘About’ section that detail what they do. I guess in my work I have tried to demonstrate the ability and understanding to do this, aswell as making my specialism a feature in all too.

3. Evaluate your strengths and weaknesses against identified intentions and areas of contemporary practice.

My strengths lie in my type skills and my understanding of software. While this isn’t a skill in itself, I want to capitalise on this and use it to get to grips with some software packages that will allow me to produce work I just didn’t know how to do before, aswell as being more employable in industry. These packages include Dreamweaver, so I can create websites, Flash, for animations and games and to supplement designing for web and Final Cut Pro, as a more professional video-editing option, as well as to supplement what i’ve learnt this year in animation, it will enable me to supply and create video for animations, aswell as bring final animations into Final Cut to combine with video themselves.

My weaknesses lie still in my project management. I feel that this year I have improved my geneal organisation as outlined as a weakness last year in PPD, I attend more sessions, and turn up to them on time, I know when and what is going on and haven’t missed a hand-in this year, however I don’t do justice to alot of my projects by losing track of time and not having a clear plan for the project. Next yearI am going to timetable my projects, look after these timetables ammend them in needed. I will write todo lists and stay ontop of what I’m doing. Hopefully this will improve the quality of work I am producing by keeping me organised and on track, less underwhelmed, but it should also make the process less stressful and more enjoyable, not ending up in late night work stretches and having more time to myself outside of my design work.

4. Clarify areas of design, skills development and proffessional concerns that you aim to investigate further from this point forward.

In my third year I want to learn more on typography, understanding the ‘hardcore’ side of type, and complimenting this with an increased focus on layout. I also want to get more into screen based design, looking at websites and other avenues to digital based media aswell as looking at screenprints, mainly so I can start to produce more posters and display work, which has been fueled by the project i did for ISTD on music lyrics. I am also going to take the time to look at more designers work for inspiration. What is going on in the industry and where my work fits into that. I will be using the library to read the journals they have there, such as Creative Review and Computer Arts, as well as keeping a more up to date blog with more regular posts. This will serve to inspire, motivate as well as educating me towards being a better designer.

5. Briefly clarify the relationship between your creative practice and your proposed dissertation.

As a designer, it is going to be near-on impossible to get through a career without being asked to advertise something. For my dissertation I am going to look at advertising from a marxist viewpoint, but more importantly look at how advertising has changed and how it is being used to fund certain businesses, such as TV networks and websites, that because of that funding, can supply free tv programmes or free content on the web. I want to find out if this can be viewed as a posative from advertising from that marxist viewpoint.

Design For Print: Evaluation

Before the start of this module, I was only aware of CMYK, RGB and grayscale. During this module I have learnt how to manage workflows in different colour modes, as well as properly setting up documents to be sent for commercial print. Learning about how to work with spot colours and duotones has helped me expand what I can physically do with software, and it seems to me to be an essential part of what you should be able to do as a graphic designer in the industry.

The workshops we had in InDesign have opened up new ways in which I use the program. Though we covered InDesign in Level 1, I was still unsure of what I was doing and what could be done. I now know how to properly set up documents, use master pages, manage links and print booklets successfully from the program. This enabled me to produce a 16 page booklet for this last project quite competently and without too many technical issues.

For this project I did some quite extensive research. I directly contacted companies for specific information, bypassing the internet as a gateway. This is an issue that I have fell down on previously, causing me to run into problems related to lack of research along a project. This extra research helped me to better define variables such as my audience, and also requirements such as expected level of design, etc.

One of my major weaknesses on this project was time management. Being such a long project, I easily lost track of time, where and when I should have had things completed in time. Though I like my final design, I think it is the backup work and the ongoing evaluation that has suffered as a cause of this. This is something that I do need to work on, while I am quite comfortable and focused on week or so projects, this sight is lost on lengthier briefs. Week plans and more committed timetabling on my behalf is what I need to address in the next module.