OUGD602 Module Evaluation (Brief One & Two)

The past year has been a very important experience for myself as it has made me realise crucial elements that are key for my own design process. The most important thing I have learnt is that it is absolutely integral to create a concept to develop my work. I realised this as I found I was a lot more passionate about the work I was producing when it had been informed by a body of research. I also learnt the importance of blogging my ideas, as it made final resolutions a lot easier to understand as I had a step by step guide of my idea generation; I found this really useful for group critiques and talking through my work at studio visits, and I therefore believe that it will be incredibly useful in industry when explaining my work, both at interviews and when I have a job to work colleagues. 

I feel a lot more confident when talking through the ideas behind my work this year, I believe this is down to my engagement with the industry through studio visits. The studios that I sent my work were very complimentary and said I have a wide set of design skills which they look for in their employees. 

My presentation skills have improved vastly this year and I believe that this is also due to my engagement with industry, in particular my internship with Foxduo Design. I discovered that there isn’t anything to be nervous about when sharing ideas with clients; the worst that can happen is they don’t like the design - this isn’t the end of the world.

I think my biggest weakness this year was time management. I left contacting studios till late due to the fact I wanted to get my personal branding and online presence perfect before contacting them, and I feel as though this could’ve jeopardised my opportunity of getting internships due to the studios being fully booked for the year. 

This year I have learnt that I really enjoy collaborating, whether that be with other designers or other specialisms. I think it has a really beneficial impact on my portfolio as it shows I can work as part of a team, but I also believe the outcomes are a lot stronger when more than one person has worked on the brief - two heads are better than one. 

Overall, I have really engaged with university this year and I definitely feel in a better position and feel more industry ready than I was at the beginning of the year.  

OUGD602 Design Boards (Brief One)

OUGD602 Updated Portfolio (Brief One)

OUGD602 Mini Portfolio for Studio Visits (Brief One)

I created a mini posterzine portfolio to take to studio visits and to my internships to give a quick summary of my work. This was really effective as it meant I didn't have to carry around a huge portfolio, especially when the studio hadn't specified about looking through my work prior to the visit. 

OUGD602 DBA Evaluation (Brief Two)

This brief was a live brief set by DBA, for which we had to get into groups and create a brand for a nootropics drug of our choice. I worked with Izzie, Florence and Taime, which worked out really successfully as we all bounced ideas off each other and I believe we came up with a very original, conceptual design.

The idea behind our nootropic drug was to aim it at a huge target audience, as we had identified from research that most other nootropic drugs are aimed at studying. From research, we came across the fact that there are four personality types, and they all relate closely to different art styles in their nature. We decided to base our nootropic drug on this, as this gave us a huge target audience and each of us creative freedom; we created a packaging design each, each completely different, however kept the use of colour a constant. Our outcome was really successful; it was very different from anything any of the other groups produced.

I really enjoyed working on this project with my group, as I believe the project wouldn’t have been as successful if we had worked on it individually; it just goes to show that two (or four) heads are better than one. This project will look really great in my portfolio as it is a live brief, which shows I am capable of working to deadlines, concept-development and presenting to clients. 

Presenting to DBA was a really different experience as it was a lot more nerve-wrecking than presenting to my course as there was a lot more pressure, however I feel I actually spoke a lot clearer in this environment, due to the fact I knew I would be getting some feedback for the work my group and myself had produced. 

Time management was key for this project as we all had to make sure that everyone was pulling their weight and getting their packaging designs completed for a specific date for printing the products. I think the fact that it was a live brief contributed to our time management as we needed to have the project completely finished for a specific date, which added a lot of pressure to get things done. 

OUGD602 .PDF Portfolio (Brief One)

Along with my online portfolio, I thought it would be useful to have a .PDF portfolio that I can send when applying from jobs along with a creative CV. This will be really useful as the job I am applying for will be able to get an idea of what kind of work I enjoy creating and my style of design. The portfolio is below. I decided to keep it quite minimal, however every page will have my logo design and contact information on. The layouts of the images are generally different on a lot of the pages, however it's still apparently that each page is part of the same portfolio due to the grid used to create it.

The grid is below:

OUGD602 Creative CV (Brief One)

For my CV, i thought I would be a bit different than to just create a nicely designed CV. I decided to create an A3 folded CV, which a really bright colour on the front with the text 'hey! you need to look at this!'. I decided to do this as I think it would make the receiver look longer at the CV, as I bet they get a lot of CVs a week and this would make mine stand out. It's a really bright colour on the outside the grab the receivers attention, however the inside is toned back to showcase my CV and a small portfolio. I thought it would be beneficial including a small glimpse of my portfolio along with my CV as it gives the receiver a better idea of what I'm capable of. 

OUGD602 Personal Branding (Brief One)

This is my personal branding from first year. When presenting to the class, it became apparent that this wasn't a good logo design as it reminded the class of something else, I won't say what. I originally thought it was successful, however hearing this I decided to change the idea completely in second year.

This is the logo design that I came up with in second year. It's a lot more successful as it is clear that it represents my initials a lot more than the previous design. However, looking at it with fresh eyes as a third year it is clear to me that the logo design still needs a little bit of work, as the gap between both letterforms isn't even and therefore wouldn't rescale very well. I don't really know how I didn't notice this in second year.

This is my revised logo design. It's based on the exact same shape as the logo design I came up with in second year, however it is altered so that it is a lot more clean and minimal, and it will now rescale perfectly. I also made sure that the logo design was measured out perfectly, for example the bottom of the 'A' is on a 45 degree angle, which I aimed for last year but didn't quite know how to make, so I just guessed. This year I realised how to do this perfectly, so this is a new addition to my logo design. I think the logo design is really successful. It's clean, modern and minimal and I think it really shows the style of design that I like to create - I enjoy focusing on negative space and creating really minimal designs.