What skills have you developed through this module and how effectively do you think you have applied them?
I have built some foundations in areas relatively new and exciting to me, in particular the following:
- Visualising information: I have been exploring various ways of presenting data in a visually appealing way, and used these techniques to help resolve the ‘100’ brief. In particular, I taught myself how to create and manipulate graphs of batches of data in Illustrator, which was quite useful. I feel I could have spent a lot more time refining these techniques and perhaps going into greater detail.
- Moving image: I have developed some basic knowledge of creating moving images, although I have yet to explore the potential of these skills within my own practical work.
- Photoshop: I have been taught a few basic techniques that are commonly used on this piece of software. I struggled initially, which I felt perhaps removed a lot of the incentive to spend a long time creating work on it, particularly for the Postcard brief. I did however feel as though I used it effectively to create some interesting images for the postcards, although I wish I had spent longer refining and improving them.
- Bookbinding: I enjoyed this aspect of design due to its practical, crafty hands-on approach. I have yet to put it into practise with my own work, although there will no doubt be many situations in the future where I will be able to make use of these techniques.
- Time-management: towards the end of the module, I began waking up earlier and making it into college before 9am, which drastically helped my productivity and efficiency through the last couple of weeks of the module. I hope to keep this up for the next module so I can be consistently more productive.
What approaches to/methods of research have you developed and how have they informed your design development process?
My methods of research are becoming far more thorough; I feel I have explored various ways of collecting information from various sources, which has aided the direction of my practical work greatly. Although the theme of my Collection 100 project had been altered a few times, the body of research collected definitely helped in arriving at the resolution that was achieved.
What strengths can you identify in your work and how have you/will you capitalise on these?
In all honesty I do not feel as if this module has genuinely helped me identify any particular strengths within my work. This may well be a result of not putting in as much effort as I should have done in order to be able to reach these sort of conclusions, yet on the other hand, I feel as though I have learnt a great deal in terms of practical techniques, which will in future help me determine my strengths and weaknesses as a designer.
What weaknesses can you identify in your work and how will you address these more fully?
- Not starting soon enough. I will avoid this in future by adopting the ‘start anywhere’ technique more readily and without hesitation. I am hoping this will help me reach potential resolutions more rapidly, leaving a greater amount of time for concentrating on producing an implementable end product.
- Working as part of a group (‘What If’ brief). I find it fairly difficult to contribute actual quantities of work to the group instead of simply generating ideas (which may well be my strength in terms of group work). In future I will try much harder to demonstrate potential resolutions to the group.
Identify five things that you will do differently next time and what you expect to gain from doing these?
- Improve organisation – continue to arrive at college early in order to improve time-management, productivity and efficiency.
- Start sooner – for the simple reason of allowing me more time to ideate solutions and produce a more presentable product.
- Do not hesitate – to allow ideas to flow more willingly, in order to produce a less obvious and more effective resolution.
- Keep it simple – particularly at early stages, to allow the main ideas and communication to show through in the final product
- Seek out less obvious research techniques – once again to conjure more ‘outside the box’ ideas
How would you grade yourself in the following areas:
1=poor 5=excellent
Attendance: 5
Punctuality: 4
Motivation: 4
Commitment: 3
Quantity of work produced: 2
Quality of work produced: 3
Contribution to the group: 2
No comments:
Post a Comment