OUGD406 Evaluation

BA (Hons.) GRAPHIC DESIGN		LEVEL	04
Module Code	OUGD406
Module Title	Design Practice

END OF MODULE SELF-EVALUATION

NAME	Sophie McDonald

1.  What skills have you developed through this module and how effectively do you think you have applied them? Despite being intimidated by Illustrator, in this module I have pushed myself to use it over Photoshop which I am more used to. In doing this I have realised when going back to use Photoshop that Illustrator is a lot more useful and graphics friendly. I have learnt how to use certain features of the program and I can now work much faster on it. By using screenprinting for the first time, I now feel a lot more confident in that area and I understand how it works and how to use it to my advantage. I have done some double sided printing, which can be tricky and confusing but now I know how to tackle it and make sure it is successful. I made a book(belly) band for my designs for brief 4, which is a small thing but I had never considered them before. I also created a concertina leaflet for the first time,  which was a success after hard work to put it together.
2. What approaches to/methods of design production have you developed and how have they informed your design development process? For one of my briefs I had to create a two-colour screen print. I now feel a lot more confident in that area and I understand how it works and how to use it to my advantage. My development process was affected in that I had to design it with only two colours and couldn’t use photographs unless using two tone. We used the digital print room for the brief 2, which was good practice as I’ve only used it once before that. I printed onto coloured stock for the first time, which meant when designing I was only designing in one colour – black. I didn’t want to print colour onto colour as it completely changes how it looks when printed.
3. What strengths can you identify in your work and how have/will you capitalise on these? I use colour quite a lot and use them appropriately; I feel in this module the colours every time have been vibrant and quite interesting. None of my work has been dull. I felt I really delivered well in the viral brief, where I took charge of the social media for Selftea which made it go viral. I realised I am good at communicating on that platform with enthusiasm and know techniques for exposure.
4. What weaknesses can you identify in your work and how will you address these in the future? I lack confidence in my work, which can be a struggle when I have to present my work or when I need feedback. However, I really have seen improvements in my confidence in this module since the previous modules. I let myself down in terms of time management, but again I am working on it and slowly but surely getting better at it by making mistakes (which I think are quite vital for my growth). I am intimidated by experimenting with different printing methods which I am really desperate to overcome in the next module.
5. Identify five things that you will do differently next time and what do you expect to gain from doing these? Experiment more with printing/production methods – I can be more creative and can gain vital experience. Manage my time more effectively so that I can improve my working methods and also the quality of my work.
6.How would you grade yourself on the following areas: (please indicate using an ‘x’)  5= excellent, 4 = very good, 3 = good, 2 = average, 1 = poor
	1	2	3	4	5
Attendance				x
Punctuality					x
Motivation				x
Commitment				x
Quantity of work produced				x
Quality of work produced				x
Contribution to the group			x
The evaluation of your work is an important part of the assessment criteria and represents a percentage of the overall grade. It is essential that you give yourself enough time to complete your written evaluation fully and with appropriate depth and level of self-reflection. If you have any questions relating to the self evaluation process speak to a member of staff as soon as possible.

Studio Brief 4: Final printed designs

Final prints

 Concertina 4 page booklet

Front

Back

Inside

Outside

 Timetables

Back

Front

Pack with book band

Overall, I am really pleased about how they have printed out.

• I used three different coloured stock to give the 'student' a choice, and because they look great as a set. I think if I had more time I would experiment with putting different colours together, but this can be tricky to get right. I think that having bright and bold colours is encouraging and can be motivational.
• I found the folding of the concertina a lot less tricky than I thought. I lightly used a pencil to mark the folds and I used a bone folder to score and flatten the edges.
• When folding the book bands, This was trickier as I was trying to get them to be a tight fit around the designs but not too tight. In doing this I had to loosen the grey one which made it a bit scuffed on the edge. I used folded sello tape to seal them on the back.
• I found that double sided printing is a bit of a challenge, but I did a lot of test prints on printer paper before hand to help with that. I had some course mates help me with the printing.
• When cutting everything down, I found it difficult to get right because of my inexperience in how crop marks work etc. I found that some of the timetables didn't match exactly in size so I had to keep cutting. I wish I had marked with a pencil in more places after printing to make it easier for myself.
• When designed hand rendered type, I took too long working on it and trying to perfect the letters which is a regret of mine. I need to have more of a focus of what exactly I want to achieve next time and stick to it. I kept going back and forth with different styles and didn't even use my painted letters in the end.
• Also, maybe I should have just printed and put together one pack for submission, as it took me awhile to make all three. 

Some feedback I got was that the sans serif typeface looks really good and suits the design. Also that my choice of colour works well - however somebody didn't like the blue as its a bit in your face. I still like it, however. Some thought that having a simple booklet of the timetables would be more appealing... but I think that that has been done so many times before, I'd like to see how these individual sheets would work out. I am going to attach about 5 paperclips to each package before submission.

Studio Brief 4: Timetable development

I have decided to make a pack of weekly timetables that can be attached with paperclips to a sketchbook or notebook to make it less bulky which can be an issue with planners/diaries.

Every week the timetable will be changed and it will be a clean slate to start again. Some feedback on this idea was that maybe it would get lost or the student wouldn't have something to attach it with, but I'm thinking off attaching some paperclips to the pack. And yes, it could get lost whereas diaries are more durable, but I like the originality of this idea and it gets the student more involved as they have to change it every week.

I want to put on the back the question "did you reach this week's goals?" so that the student can see how successful they are at time management. They can then write below where they went wrong if they didn't achieve enough.

Something which I have never used before or don't see that often in the studio etc is a book band (or what is known as a belly band). It keeps things together or can be just for show. I would like to push myself and create one so that the name of the package can be on it ("Get it done") and so that the concertina booklet is attached snugly.

I created some prototypes to see which size would work the best. I'm trying to keep it small to match the concertina and to make the package the opposite of daunting; I want it to be playful and pretty. However if I make it too small then there won't be enough room for notes to be written.

• 15.8 x 11.2cm is the size I'm going to use, which is bigger than the prototypes I created but its definitely big enough.
• There will be approximately 5.6 cm in length for each day for notes to be written, except for the weekend where each day will have about half than that. I did this because I believe weekends need to be about relaxing, so there should be less on the lists. Hopefully this will encourage harder working on week days.

Studio Brief 4: Format - concertina fold

I'm not yet sure which size I want to make the booklet, so I have made some paper prototypes to put it into perspective for myself.

The sizes are:
12.1 cm x 9 cm
11.6 cm x 7.7 cm
10.5cm x 6.8 cm

I've decided to go for 10cm x 6.6cm.
I don't want to put in a huge amount of information, just short sentences, so the smaller the better.. however I want it to seem significant, so not too small. I also want the type to be big enough to be easily readable and legible.

At first my idea was to use a concertina booklet as a timetable as seen above, but I realised I would have to make it bigger than pocket size which is what appealed to me in the first place. If it was pocket size there simply wouldn't be enough room to write substantial notes in it.

I just liked the idea of every other page having space to write lists etc, then the pages in between asking "did you reach today's goals?" to help the student make progress and realise where they are going wrong. A concertina wouldn't be user friendly and easy to use in this format, though. It will work better just having simple information to read.

I want to definitely use hand rendered font in my design, but after printing off this prototype of the booklet I've decided not to use these particular letters and definitely no hand rendered type this large as it takes up too much space. I just thought that it would have impact when the booklet was opened, but I think the composition is lazy and not thought out enough. I also think these letters aren't strong enough.

In experimenting with prototypes of the concertina fold, I have decided I want to use 3 folds instead of 4; I don't need five pages in it as they will be double sided and I don't want it to be unappealing by being too long of a leaflet when it is folded out. Short and sweet is the way.

• Somebody suggested I use a gatefold leaflet instead which looks like this:

But I don't want to as on a small scale it doesn't work very well.

• I was also told in feedback that concertina folds are very tricky to get neat and the pages need to be printed individually and then stuck together but I think I'll be able to pull it off by just printing it on one piece of paper and folding it myself. It only has 3 folds and I feel like I would be more likely to ruin it by sticking things together.
• I asked somebody if I should use indesign for it or just illustrator and they said that I could do but as I don't need pagination or anything illustrator would be fine too. I think I'm going to stick to illustrator as I'm using vectors and because it is so small it is less about the layout.

Studio Brief 4: Painted type

The photographs below show some hand rendered type I have been working on. For this I have used acrylic paint, experimenting with different sized brushes and different paint dilution using water.
I've found that thin, watery paint flows a lot better and makes the letters more smooth, but I like the thick blunt effect that thick paint gives: the texture is great.

• By creating these scruffy typefaces I am hoping to capture a youthful feel that is in the theme of development and artistic creativity. I am designing it for graphic design students after all.
• I think that using a serif or sans serif typeface throughout my designs would be dull and wouldn't be as exciting looking - I need to attract young students and so many information leaflets handed out today are boring and uninviting.

I am unfortunately (and fortunately) a perfectionist so I repeated many of the letters in the hopes of creating the perfect shape, and so that I could pick and choose later.

• I feel like this was a waste of time because doing individual letters rather than doing whole words each time was a downfall as I found that words don't flow aesthetically as well as they could because the letters don't fit together naturally. However recreating letters was good for practice.

I was told in feedback that the bottom sheet using small jagged letters for "manage" and "time" are strong, but I disagree as I think they are too messy.

• I scanned in the letters and gave them coloured backgrounds to help with readability/legibility (I am going to use brightly coloured stock).

Some of the phrases I may want to use these letters for:

• Don't be/stop being lazy
• manage your time effectively
• How to manage your time
• get it done

Using hand rendered, scruffy type for these titles/imperative sentences makes them seem more friendly and on the same level as the reader.

I arranged the letters as words to see if they'd work. I like the large 'GET IT DONE' as it is very clear it has been created with paint and a paintbrush which I like. I enjoy the word 'manage' as I painted that word as a whole, but overall the sentence doesn't have enough character. The same goes for 'stop being lazy', so I don't know if I will use them. This was a mistake on my part because I spent too long painting and the digitally rearranging.

OUGD404 Evaluation

BA (Hons.) GRAPHIC DESIGN		LEVEL	04
Module Code	OUGD404
Module Title	Design Principles

END OF MODULE SELF-EVALUATION

NAME	Sophie McDonald

1.  What skills have you developed through this module and how effectively do you think you have applied them? The ability to analyse typefaces, design layouts using grids, know the effects of colour. I have applied them quite effectively in this module, but I think I will be even better at applying them as time goes on and I get more chances to apply them.
2. What approaches to/methods of design production have you developed and how have they informed your design development process? I have learnt to sketch out plans of grids in terms of thumbnails and real size plans. They have made my development more organised and thought out.
3. What strengths can you identify in your work and how have/will you capitalise on these? Organisation in layouts – This has made my spreads very easy to follow and understand.
4. What weaknesses can you identify in your work and how will you address these in the future? Lack of trying new things – In the next module I will try to be less afraid of breaking boundaries and stepping out of my comfort zone.
5. Identify five things that you will do differently next time and what do you expect to gain from doing these? Blog my work exactly when I do it, which will benefit me as I can analyse it a lot clearer Take more risks, so I can learn new things Get more involved in class discussions
6.How would you grade yourself on the following areas: (please indicate using an ‘x’)  5= excellent, 4 = very good, 3 = good, 2 = average, 1 = poor
	1	2	3	4	5
Attendance					x
Punctuality					x
Motivation				x
Commitment				x
Quantity of work produced				x
Quality of work produced				x
Contribution to the group			x
The evaluation of your work is an important part of the assessment criteria and represents a percentage of the overall grade. It is essential that you give yourself enough time to complete your written evaluation fully and with appropriate depth and level of self-reflection. If you have any questions relating to the self evaluation process speak to a member of staff as soon as possible.