OUGD503 Responsive: Summative Evaluation

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

One of the major skills I’ve learnt throughout this brief is the importance and manner in which to communicate with clients and potential partners. From carrying out live briefs I’ve been in touch with competition organisers and/or clients and although I’ve had some communication struggles I’ve learnt through the struggles and learnt the importance of knowing the client is boss and listening to their opinions and creative ideas. It

leads to stronger and more relevant work.

I’ve also learnt the importance of fulfilling the requirements of a brief as for the first time I’ve been designing for a real-world client, my own opinion and visual style aren’t as important. With college briefs you can sometimes make work a certain way just because you want it to look that way, with a

client, the client is boss.

I’ve also learnt to sometimes just react to a brief and pour out ideas, pick and discuss the best ones and simply execute them in the most straight-forward and efficient way. I had issues with the Ted Baker D&AD brief where I kind of lost myself within the brief and lost sight of my concept, leading to wasted time and headache. Collaboratively with Eve we had the opposite design process with clear concepts presented, the end-product was much

stronger and enjoyable to work on.

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

process?

Clear thought process and efficient research, over the year I’ve realised, sometimes the hard way that research is only

worthwhile if it benefits you and your project, sometimes in the past I’ve researched and plowed through content blindly and for the sake of it. Now, I feel I work in a much more streamlined and effective way and being careful to not get lost in research

and sometimes to simply design and go from there.

Working and having a logical design process is essential to design and to work efficiently, I’ve developed a more conceptual

way of working and to outline concepts and what makes the deliverable unique and work on executing these.

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

Strengths within my work I feel is the variety of work I’ve carried out, although I may have done primarily quick turn-around briefs such as posters and competitions I feel the

variety is there. I’ve done event and film posters, to branding to digital pixel-art for Little White Lies.

I’ve experimented with process and pushed the process of what makes graphic design, more so than I have in previous modules. Especially with the poster for The Shining where the finished effect was achieved by simply tearing and photocopying and I feel it works very well. So I feel my process is a strength.

I think I work well with colour and produce eye-catching work which conveys and captures the emotion I want to convey, in particular I feel I achieved this with the Santa Sangre and

The Shining horror movie posters. I’ve always enjoyed and been fascinated with colour and I feel I’m becoming stronger at using

colour to really add to and make the work.

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

I wish I pushed my work further and presented the work in a more professional and slick way, a lot of my briefs were quick briefs where the deliverable was to send through e-mail but I feel I

could have photographed and pushed some work further and created invites and mail-outs and similar material when suitable, maybe not for clients but for the purposes of this module and for my

own portfolio.

I need to time-management and produce my work to a higher quality especially so with branding material where it’s

essential. I assumed printing and crafting and foiling material to an exceptional standard would take me a few hours which was hugely optimistic, in the end this completely failed and wasn’t up to scratch in terms of quality. I had to digitally mock up the whole branding which turned out fine but still

disappointing.

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

1. Moving forward I’ll fulfill the needs and ideas put forward by the client and respecting their opinion more. Working with the client and fulfilling their needs and pushing a brief

yourself can make the end product even stronger. It’s a better idea to fulfill what the client wants, go above and beyond and

present a more experimental idea along with it.

2. I will work more conceptually with clear concepts outlined from the start serving as a constant reminder to not get side-tracked and to produce much stronger and easier to understand

work, especially for a pitch or proposal where concepts are very important and need to be clear.

3. I will plan more time for obstacles and accidents which may occur unpredictably. Especially in regards to production and printing time, things always take longer than you think they

will and having a few days to act as a buffer are essential and help to re-assess work and improve a little more.

4. I plan on working more collaboratively, especially for a quick turn-around brief when it makes sense to. As I’m getting stronger at working collaboratively I’m starting to see the

benefits, it’s an advantage not a hinderance like it sometimes seemed at Level 04. Twice the amount of people can mean twice the amount of ideas, twice the amount of work and twice as good

work possibly (hopefully).