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:
