'How to.....' - Self Evaluation

• What problem did you identify?

How to buy a diamond engagement ring

The problem we found was that men find the process of purchasing a diamond ring for there special female difficult and all the information was very formal, complicated and high detail that wouldn't make much sense to the uninformed and would be very time consuming.

• What evidence did you find to support your decisions?

I did gather lots of research into buying diamond rings from online websites such as a variety of jewellers, askmen, advice websites, budget websites,newspapers etc. All of them were aimed at men some more formal than others and others were men actually asking for advice as they were struggling. All the sites were highly detailed and filled with complicated information to all the different aspects to purchasing a diamond.
I also asked some men for the personal experience of finding a diamond ring and it really varied in context but they didn't really understand the details and asked alot of questions if they were unaided by there female. It appeared to us that alot of there purchases were ill informed and they just 'knew' which when purchasing a very exspensive piece of jewerelly isn't the best.

• What methods did you use to gather your evidence and what forms did it take?
  (categorise your research using terms primary, secondary, quantitative and qualitative)

I asked people close to us as a form of primary qualitative research to gather evidence of personal experience of buying an engagement ring.
I went online to find seconday quantitative and qualitative research into the different aspects of diamonds as well as tips/hints, vocabulary, imagery, format, and font of our 'how to..'

• What methods of research did you find useful and why?

In gathering information about diamonds that i originally had no knowledge about i found the internet very useful as it did go into detail so i could really understand in depth about purchasing diamonds.
I found the method of asking men for there personal experience useful as it gave an honest insight into men actually going out and buying the ring. It gave a real clear view on how men go about the process and as a woman who has never been through the process or witnessed it i found it very useful to see there opinion on it.

• How did these inform your response to your problem?

Our research really informed us in our problem as it let us no how personal and quite emotional the process can be for men. These led us to change our format from a booklet that could probably be left around and seen by others to a more secretive process of a website that leads to a downloadable app which is password protected or a printable wallet sized booklet for the non tech. It also help us in our imagery and design of the website/app/booklet as it led us to keep it really simple and to the point information wise as well as our diamond imagery aka pictograms. This would make it easier for them to understand and give a simple visual aspect for them to connect the complicated information with leading them  to make an informed decision budget wise as well as get the perfect ring to propose.

• What methods did you encounter as problematic?

Getting people to respond for the primary research of there personal experience was difficult and finding a large amount of people who have proposed or are in the process of was also problematic.

• How did you overcome this?

Kept asking them to reply until they eventually did..it worked.

• What research could you have carried out that would have proved more useful?

We could of created a questionnaire asking specific questions to a larger audience of men who have and havn't proposed to get an idea wether they have any original knowledge about diamonds if they havn't proposed or if they have what happened during the process. This would of given us a good amount of data to work with qualitative and quantitative. We could of also used this to build up some statistics and focus our idea quicker. It could of also been useful as we could of used quotes and tips from men in the website to create a bigger rapport with the users.
We also could of looked into the tips and hints we found online by going into a variety of jewellers and asking the professional opinions as well as witnessing it for ourselves.
For example:
Seeing what colour they show diamonds aganist white/black etc?
Black apparently shows diamonds appear more colourless (the better expensive colour) whereas white shows there true colour.
Seeing whether there honest about price and information on diamonds such as popularness

I think i contributed to the group giving alot of research as it was my original 'how to..' and with my knowledge of the subject helped everyone else understand more about the aspects to it along with there own research. I also gave some intial design ideas for the booklet creating a few pages of layout for different subjects with imagery and information text. We then all formed as a group with our inital ideas after our crit and really came together cutting down all our work to what we were going to go with design and idea wise. This lead to us all splitting up and focusing on different parts keeping the same design logic. I created symbols for several sections of the 'how to..' and wrote up the information for those in an informal manner directed at men. Using the layout that Abbas made for the website i put mine and his work together to create website pages and passed my work onto Sam to put in to the app design he'd made up.
I think we made some good and informed decisions as a group and as individuals as we all really began to understand the process of purchasing a diamond through our collective research and put it into a practical piece of design that all visually connected and worked for our purpose (as reaffirmed in the crit).

List five things that you have learnt about the design process over the last two weeks.

1. Gathering valid primary research is difficult in a short period of time
2. Working with a group with people with different design ideas is a challenge but fun and interesting
3. The research is more important than the outcome as without it the outcome doesn't have any purpose or reason
4. Understanding the different kinds of research is complicated
5. To be a good designer you need to go out there and source knowledge about the aspect your designing about.
   List five things you would do different next time.
   
   

1. Generate different kinds of research from different sources
2. Form as a group more regulary and keep in contact more
3. Set out a process order as a group and check it off together instead of jumping into design with lack of research
4. Set out tasks with equal responsibilty and give everyone a chance to voice opinions on the design and idea
5. Do more design development and ideas

Design Research

When researching for CoP task i found these designs which i quite liked the style of although i was unable to find the designers

Information Graphics

Here is some infographics i found interesting that i found on http://dailyinfographic.com

Design Skills: Self-Evaluation

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

I think i have defiantly developed my skills in receiving, responding and producing a final resolution to a brief within a short period of time. Compared to my previous education where i was given a title and received half a year to a year to research, develop and produce work for the final deadline, i feel that having such a short period of time and expectancy of a similar standard of work with a valid amount produced has really taught me to organise myself, get on with my work at a good speed and not dawdle on different ideas but focus on the process to get the job done effectively. This i think has really gave me more experience of the skills needed to work professionally rather than academically.
I think i developed skills within my work process also as i have approached my briefs differently due to the different workshops held by our course tutor. This has lead to me doing different visual exploration and experimentation before i start design and developing ideas and given me visuals to look back on and aid my development making my work more focused and work alongside the brief.
Furthermore i feel i have defiantly considered the communication of my final result a lot more than i ever would of and effectively altering my design thinking. This i think is down to the individual and group evaluation we do on our work as after we have reflected on what we have produced we can use the criticisms to enhance our next piece of design looking at new areas that we didn't at first consider.
Finally the most obvious skill i feel i have developed is new techniques, in particular Adobe Illustrator, as previous to this course i'd never been near it and during the beginning of this course was clueless when trying to. After the few workshops and out of hours playing around with the software i feel i really have developed a new skill and my ideas now have a new technique to be considered in the making of it. I think i have effectively applied this to my design skills modules as you can see the development from hand rendered work to digital through the seperate briefs and it has brought a better quality and quantity to what i was able to produce in the time span.

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

I have developed my approaches to methods of idea generation through blogging in particular. I have never used blogging before but can already see the benefits of it as it saves alot of time and you can gather a lot of research quickly which give me a lot of visual aids in particular to work with. I usually find using the dictionary to define words within the brief help break it down for me and getting other words in connection with them give me wider idea as to what is being asked. This really has helped quicken up my process of idea development as i always struggled to get my head round titles or questions intitally. Blogging i feel is really productive so you can just at least right down your thought process if your stuck either with words or visuals and look at it all together like a mood board of collective ideas where you can source out good ones with a clear mind (it especially saves printing, cutting out and sticking down time). Blogging has definatly helped inform my design development process as its given me a basis to work from all from the same source instead of various scraps of paper or notes and helped organise my thoughts.
Workshops before idea development such as the 'cold triangles', simple symbols for the occupation and letters that represent 'pop' in various ways have really informed my design development as they have given visual and already created ideas without even thinking or looking at research. This is definatly development of a different approach to methods of idea generation but your subconciously coming up with ideas without even processing the brief.

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

I'd say my main strength in my work is my range of ideas because i usually start off with a quite a variety of different ideas on how to approach the brief and work on a few favourites until finally focusing on my chosen one. I have capitalised on this as it has allowed me to have a good development process instead of just going with my initial idea and sticking to it without any outside knowledge of research or development. I will continue to capitalise on this by maintaining and increasing a greater quantity of ideas and possibly developing more to and end result to pick out of, giving me a greater advantage of choice to work with rather than getting near to or the end and realising the problems.

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

I struggle to be confident in what I'm doing with the rest of course so good and therefore find it hard to source out the good idea from the rest. I seem to be second guessing what I'm doing a lot and asking questions I suppose its always good to get opinions off people and get reassurance as its almost like a minor crit but i feel i want address this more and be confident in what I'm doing. I'd also like to address my ideas and think more out the box material wise and structural as i used to come up with the impossible when in A-level and challenge myself. Now i actually have the resources to do these things i want to be able to organise my thought process better so i can re think what I'm doing to make it more individual and challenge myself with weird materials etc.

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

Next time i will use different ranges of research rather than just the easiest aka google. I want to start using the resources and people around me and really get some knowledge on the briefs i am doing. Hopefully i will then gain some more understanding before i form my ideas as well as general knowledge i can help to improve my future work. Theres a lot of things out there to explore, to experiment and to learn from, i want to that.

I feel like my work doesn't have any personality to it, it doesn't seem to me and my out there ideas and end result that people question 'how did she do it' which i often got at my previous education for producing something out of nothing. I really want to put a style and a me to my work without restricting myself to a certain way. I think i'm quite open to mould at the moment not having a certain style or theme and hope to take in all i'm learning to find that flare in my work that puts my stamp on it. I don't want to make endless design that doesn't effect anyone or strike any emotion, i want to produce work that make people think and encourage thought. I hope to establish myself as a designer from this.

I want to start finding techniques and artists that i've never come across before, broaden my horizons you could say on my art history as well as current. I feel abit out of it and everyone seems to no all these amazing designers and companies. I want to find them and see it, i'm always fasinated by design as it normally baffles me as i never no hows its done. Hopefully i'll be learning some more techniques soon and i will be able to spot these techniques more and more within design and actually no how it was produced. I'd expect to gain a wider range of knowledge and understanding of the making process of design and form new ideas based on the new design and techniques i see.

I'd like to produce work thats not just made on illustator and printed, seems kind of boring and almost easy. Although sometimes appropriate, in the past i've seen how people have worked within the guidelines of the brief but spotted the loopoles where you could come out the page and off it. I went looking around peolpes work and just thought 'why didn't i think of that'. I think i need to stop restricting myself in a one way thought process as thats how it has to come out and start thinking more creativity, i feel i'm being a bit misguided by the wording of the brief and should really think it through and all the many possibilities i could do with it instead of directly going to number one resolution. I'd gain alot more experience from this by using different materials and techniques as well as the ability to come up with a range of ideas to a range of processes.

Finally i would really like to get more back from the final crits. I never really no where to go from them after as i don't feel i get much feedback. I need to take in more and ask more questions to get a more thorough feeback. This would really help me learn from my mistakes and develop that work and future work to a better quality with understanding of whats gone wrong and whats gone right. This help me communicate the message across better to audiences as often designers get blurred by what they see and already know and what the unknown see and feel.

6. How would you grade yourself on the following areas:

http://www.ceridwenhazelchild.co.uk/zodiacus.html

Graphic Design Categories

reasons for graphic design

products you'd see graphics

graphic design catorgries and places of evidence

Graphic Design Caterogies

Cigarette Packaging and Advertising

I think the contrast between the original, vintage advertisement and the current is very interesting. It is visually evident our understanding of smoking and its healthiness or lack of has greatly increased and this is communicated very clearly within the packaging and advertising design. The vintage ones are colourful, use positive statements on how they improve your life/social status, use images of attractive well off women, and advertise the improvement of quality: 'cleaner, fresher, smoother!'. This is in complete contrast to now where cigarettes are often look down upon as a bad habit, unhealthily, not sexually attractive, and dangerous. The packaging and advertisement has there for enhanced this image by adding health warnings initially through text and then developed more into imagery to create a greater effect on smokers to quit. It's unusual that a product is sold with warnings, graphic images against the products purpose and yet still get multimillion sales.

Google Images;

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2011/0621/Warning-labels-for-cigarette-packs-take-a-grisly-turn.-Will-they-work

http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/15/suppl_3/iii19.full

"

The nature of marketing

The role of branding and, more broadly, marketing has never been about making non-customers of a product become instant customers.

It’s much more subtle and complex. There’s certainly more to it than assuming that marketers only need to show a couple of ads, then sit back and wait for customers to buy their products.

This has a strong parallel with trying to get smokers to change their behaviour. The process is complex and incremental, rather than direct or immediate.

All marketing activity relies heavily on a range of tactics to move you toward purchasing particular products and brands.

In 2008, marketing professors Janet Hoek, Phillip Gendall and Jordan Louviere presented research at the Australia and New Zealand Marketing Academy Conference that found “tobacco brand imagery functions via respondent conditioning, where brand names, colours and other imagery become paired with psychological and emotional attributes. These peripheral cues act as heuristics that do not require systematic processing, but are implicitly relied on by smokers to move from their actual self to their desired self.”

That said, for any persuasive technique such as branding to work, we have to be goal-oriented. In other words, for a smoker to be converted into a non-smoker (or vice-versa), the desire for that behaviour must exist before marketing activity will work.

The problem we encounter is that factors leading to that desire are also quite complex. And that pre-existing desire can be influenced by other factors, the strongest of which is being motivated because a behaviour 

"

http://theconversation.edu.au/plain-cigarette-packaging-will-change-smoking-slowly-737


Primary Research of modern packaging:

Advertising campa

http://koikoikoi.com/2010/02/best-creative-anti-smoking-ad-campaigns/

Political Media

Design always has something to say and some of those messages can often be based on a politics. Looking at Shepard Fairey and Banksy in particular, there design purpose is very political and shows some truths to the world. Fairey often focuses on war and by the looks of his designs draws a lot of inspiration from the russian revolution and there graphic design. The colour red was very significant in russian design then, representing the blood shed of the workers and them uniting together in order to gain equality. One design in particular is very similar to that of the russian revolution using the geometric shape the triangle which was frequently used symbolically as the work force.