How to...- Self evaluation OUGD405

Over all i think we have worked well as a group in this module. I think that group work is still a challenge and something I need to practice more. I have become more confident and out spoken with in group situations and am not scared to put my point across. The success of this brief was down to the original generated ideas. We had some issues, such as time management, because of the high group numbers it was often hard to arrange times where everyone could meet and work. To conclude I am happy with my own personal contribution to this task, I think I have developed new skills as working as part of group, however I still have room for improvement. If I was doing this brief again I think I would have done more colour experiments and visual variations of the finish product. 

End of Module Self Evaluation- OUGD403

Message and Delivery Mail Shots: Crit/Evaluation

Overall i think i have worked well in this brief. I think i managed my time effectively and efficiently. I am pleased with my final pieces. I think that i have considered a range of elements to make the product to the best of my ability. I have thought about lots of aspects of how the mail shot information could be spread, as the purpose is to spread awareness. I included a sticker and a twitter hashtag as an interactive and interesting way to help spread the message. I think the design of my mail-shots is good. I had to work quickly and found it quite hard to visualise in the early stages, but once i decided on an idea i think i developed it well.

Message and Delivery Research: Final Crit/Evaluation

For this crit the class was split in to two. The first half of the class analysed our posters, while the second half were out of the room. after an hour or so the groups swapped and we analysed and evaluated their work whilst they weren't present. I think this type of crit was successful, you didn't have to worry about feel unconfident about speaking your mind as the person who designed the poster wasn't there. The aim of the posters was also to be bold, eye catching and easy to understand. This type of crit lent its self very well to the poster brief as the poster designers weren't there to tell the audience what the posters were about. Overall my feedback was positive, but the crit has helped me realise areas of weakness and things i can improve with in the posters.

First set of feedback:

This crit was mostly positive feedback. Although it feels good to receive such good feedback, it makes it hard to evaluate my work and find room for improvement. This person hasn't given me any feedback on how to improve this brief/briefs in future.

Second set of feedback:

Again this crit doesn't provide much critical feedback for me to work on. I think personally there is room for improvements on my posters, but the people who have viewed my work don't seem to think so. This gives me courage that the level of design that i am producing is appropriate for degree level.

Third set of feedback:

On this person's feedback they said that they don't think that my image poster is as high impact or memorable as the other two. I understand where this comment is coming from as i found this poster the hardest to produce. To correct this I could ask for further feedback on what i can do to improvement. Alternatively I could produce more thumbnails and sketches to see if i can come up with anything better.

Self evaluation: 

Overall i think i have worked well on this brief. I have met the brief requirements and produced three posters based on the news story i chose. I think one of the reasons that this brief was a success was the time I spent before i started designing brain storming and sketching. This is something that i haven't done in the past so my final pieces aren't thoroughly selected or tested. I think that a weakness was running out of ideas for the image poster. I knew that drawing was one of my weaknesses so wanted the posters to have a digital feel. I used a range of techniques for this brief such as cut paper, photoshop and tracing on illustrator. I think i have produced three well linked and seamless posters that communicate the message that i chose very well. I am pleased with my progress throughout this brief and the ones that came before.

Alphabet Soup: Partner Typeface, Final Crit

   

For the final crit we rejoined our partner as well as others from our class. In studio four we each had to stand in front of the class including simon and Amber and present our final pieces and what made us design them in the way that we did.

We had to first introduce our partner , briefly describe their personality and then describe why we chose to do what we did. There was some certain questions i made sure to answer, such as, how does the typeface represent my partner, am i happy with the out come? and does the typeface work at different scales?

When designing my typeface at first i found it hard, as i was too focussed on trying to incorporate all aspects of Danielle's personality. When i stepped back and considered the work i came to the conclusion that it would be better to have a typeface involving just a small amount of her interests and it be well excited. I really like the typeface i have created. It is not my normal style of work, so i was exciting to be able to experiment and try new things.

Feed back from the crit was generally positive both simon and amber were pleased with the out come. Amber was impressed with the intricacy of the design and that the pattern was still visible from far away. They also like the inverted name badge. One thing that they told me was an area for improvement was the letter 'R' as it wasn't legible or clear enough. 

Is there progression in my work, has the quality improved?

Are my blogs well organised and consistent?

What are my most noticeable weakness?

Am I meeting the assessment criteria?

Blog Group Feedback

In our blog groups, we compiled individually a list of forms of feedback we would like to receive from our tutors:

-How well do I manage my time?

-How have you noticed I work in a group?

-Are all my blogs equally weighted?

-Are my blogs organised?

-Are my blogs easy to understand? (wording, grammar, spelling etc..)

-Should I expand my use of media/ what media do I seem to work best with?

-What strengths have you noticed/ where have I excelled? 

-What weaknesses have you noticed/ where have I struggled? 

-Am I producing a sufficient amount of work?

-Do I respond to briefs well?

-How are my presentation / pitching skills? 

-Details: eg. Use of type, layout, colour etc..

Refined List: 

1. Use of Blog: - Content

                    -Tagging

                    -Organisation

                    -Quality: Text & Images

                    - Quantity

2. Am I meeting the assessment criteria

3. Have I got good time & project management?

4. How are my academic / writing skills?

5. Can I critically analyse my work and that of others? 

6. Am I producing good quality work?

7. Am I making intelligent design decisions? 

8. Have I improved?

9. Am I providing appropriate responses to the briefs?

10. Have I understood many design principals?

We then discussed each others lists, and created a new list of ten criteria, as a group:

1. Are my blogs organised well?

2. Can modules be separated with easy through tagging on blogs?

3. Am I up to date/ is my work complete?

4. Is my work visually engaging?

5. Are my blogs well written?  (punctuation, grammer, wording..)

6. Have I responded well with intelligent visual research?

7. Have I responded well to research conceptually? 

8. Has the quality of my work improved?

9. What can I improve on?

10. What are my strengths? 

As made obvious above, we had to choose 5 questions for the rest of our blog group to respond to on this blog. 

Alphabet Soup Partner Typeface: Power Crit

During this crit with Amber and Simon as well a select member of peers, we were given 4 minutes to present our work so far, our ideas and thoughts, as well as posing some questions in order to gain feedback on what works well and where there is room for improvement. This was the first time I had been in a crit under these circumstances. I found it really useful and insightful getting feedback from fresh eyes and perspectives. 

The feed back that I was given has been very useful to me and I plan to use it in the coming week to make my work as strong as possible. These are the main focus' i have taken away from the crit:

• Choice of existing typography to edit: In the crit the tutors said that i should experiment with a wider range of typography as my base letter form, including using italics and bolds to make my work more dynamic, and to see how it changes the aesthetics of the final piece.

• Stick with strongest idea: Before the crit i was worried that i was too focused on one aspect of my partners personality. However the group feedback was that the idea i had generated was subtle and effective. I have now decided to stick with the idea, combining my partners love of motorbikes with the classic style of her favourite designer Si Scott.

• creative and unique glyphs: Lastly it was brought to my attention that I hadn't considered the glyphs and how they would fit in with the final design of my typeface. I want the glyphs to follow the same design as the letterforms, i also don't want them to be a last minute thing and look out of place, so i will be devoted some time to make sure they are just as strong and cohesive as the rest of the letter forms.

Alphabet Soup: Visual Thinking Evaluation

For alphabet soup brief we had to create 10 letter forms (they could be different , or the same & any letter).10 - 10x10 resolutions each representing a well crafted and clearly presented typographic form.We created these letterforms based on a word we selected from the randomiser. my work was 'POP'.


I approached this brief by looking at different aspects of the word pop. I wanted to make my final pieces all individual and visually interesting. I used a range of techniques such as pen lines, bleeding ink and tracing paper. I think some of my letters were stronger than others. my favourite was the 'B' with the gradient effect using only dots, it was a time consuming, but i think the end product is worth it. 

I think i struggled slightly with legibility, if i was to do this brief again that is what i would improve. I also think i didn't generate enough developments, therefore there are some weak lettersin my final 10.

Overall i happy with the work i produced how ever if i was to do this again i would spend more time researching and generating ideas, before jumping in and producing my final pieces.

I found this crit really useful, It was interesting to see other peoples work swell as get there opinion on my own work. As a group we had to decide which 5 of our 10 letters were the strongest. It was hard to pick out of people work, and to be constructive with out hurting peoples feelings. Over all i really enjoyed this brief in particular the final crit. It was good to see what other people thought of my work and to see what other people had created.

'How to...' Evaluation

What role(s) did you take on in the group: 

One role that i took on with in the group was generating lots of ideas. I came up with the use of CMYK and helped by contributing how to make other peoples designs stronger. I also took the final pictures of the product as well as presenting in the final presentation as it is one of my strong points.

How well do you think you performed with in the roles: 

I think I performed well in my roles. The main problem was that we all had conflicting styles and ideas, so sometimes i felt disheartened and didn't work at my flu potential. Over all i think i worked well within my roles.

How well do you think you worked as a group:

I think all members of the group worked well with in the roles. Although I admit i had some trouble voicing my opinions with in the group. I sometime found it hard to speak up, wanting to avoid confrontation. Because our style of work was all so different compromises had to be made. There was also some problems with communication outside of the studio time, it was sometimes to rally everyone up and get everyone together  to do work. However after the presentation, there was an overwhelming amount of feedback saying that we had worked well as a team and seemed to have bonded. Group work is new experience for me, and i think as it was the first time it went very well.

What would you do differently next time: 

Next time i would definetely spend more time working together. I think that the lack of team work at the start of the weak was due to shyness and not feeling comfortable with each other. Because we worked separately to start with we generated too many broad ideas, so it became hard to incorporate everyones style and choose just one design. 

Where could you have improved your resolution: 

I think we could have improved our resolution by generating more ideas as a group, as well as conducting more product research, we didn't have much primary and secondary research for this brief.

What were the strengths of your presentation:

It was clear confident and concise. We worked well as a team and  delivered the message we needed to. We were confident and clear with our speech, even incorporating a sense of humour to engage the audience. Like i said earlier the feedback from our presentation was very positive. 

Why am i here and what do i want to learn? 2

Each member of the group shared their ten examples 

that illustrate their own fields of creative interest. Their reasons for choosing them are below...

Dan Everitt

• Loves the unusual, sketchy style of Andres Guzman illustration.
• The punky, neon style of Mike Joyce
• The isometric, colourful patterns of Andy Gilmore
• The dark watercolour artwork of Zac Johnson
• He chose the artwork of Brian Moore because of it's modern twist on original propaganda poster design.
• The artwork of Shigeo Fukuda was chosen because of its thought-provoking illusions based on negative space.
• The typography of Alex Trotut was chosen because of its geometric modernity.
• Any other contemporary type and/or image is of interest.
• Again, the overlapping colours and structured geometric style was found in Andrew Vastagh and chosen.
• The Powell Peralla skate company graphic are old in age, but contemporary in style.

Joe Leadbeater

• The contrasting positive and negative space of the art of Tang Yau Hoong.
• The art of 'Graphic Patrick' was chosen for its minimalistic and symbolistic style.
• The sometimes cheesy, catchy play-on words and type in Ian Collins' 'The Big Caption' sparks particular interest.
• Abstract landscapes and art deco-esque style of Marius Roosendaal looks aged and lots of interesting layers.
• Any use of word play with type
• Casey Reas' development of artwork creating software. Modern, innovative way to create art.
• ABC3D - cool way of playing with type.
• Loves the hidden meanings through the dollar bill designs of Dowling and Duncan.
• Likes original punk artist Malcolm Garrett and original punk style of image and type.
• Likes landscape based artwork of Tim Reynolds because they look softly painted at first, but are actually made up of harsh geometric shapes.

Leo Sims

• Likes the vivid contrasting landscape photography of Mitch Debrowler and its effective use of black and white.
• Likes the artwork of Fab Cirado because of its abstract subject matter.
• Likes infographics and playing with type.
• Likes mathematical art such as the psychedelic 'fractals'
• Likes the messages through Kuczynski's art and design.
• Another example given for Kuczynski.
• Likes the way the dramatic photo montages of Nick Peterson blend so perfectly.
• Very expressive work of Andy Goodman
• Really interesting details to 'Storm'
• Any panoramic landscape photography sparks interest.

Vicky Redmond

• Likes the bold type, shapes and colours through Kate Moross' clothing designs.
• Likes Craig Wards' 'Playing with type' 
• Loves I-D magazine - never a visually dull issue.
• 'Deep Clothing' loves the bold, statement wall art.
• Likes the minimalistic, modern and geometric style of 'Made By Sawdust'
• Likes the suggestive 3D style of the 2D kaleidoscope-like image from Jelle Martens.
• Likes geometric image and type of  Mark Weaver.
• LOVES Jamie Reed's poster for the sex pistols. The distinctive ransom note style is very contemporary.
• The use of statement art from Aqua Couture.
• Loves the statements made through graphics for a Dr Martens advert.

Sam Cook

• Loves the old graphic design style of the 19th century. In particular the work of Werkmann and his screen printing.
• Other artists include ; Alexander Rojenko
• Nevielle Brody
• Bradow
• and Artiva for the same reasons as above.
• Loves all other non-format art.

After each member of the group had shared their ten examples, we identified a list of criteria that was collectively used to pick our own ten examples:

• Creative use of Type
• Visual Quality
• Tone of Voice
• Attention to detail
• Simplicity of Design
• Meaning or Message
• Audience engagement / interaction
• Style or aesthetic quality
• Use of Media & Method of Production
• Relationship between Form & Format
• Interest in the content
• Use / Choice of language
• Structure & Layout