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.