Module Evaluation

Overall I have really enjoyed the module and the way it has encouraged us to enter more live briefs and feel more like practicing graphic designers. The short individual briefs have encouraged me to work quicker and not be too precious about my work. I have found that often my initial ideas are good enough to develop on and sometime I don't need to be as extensive in my experimentation. I have also enjoyed working for different clients and applying my design knowledge to different tasks. The four small briefs I have done range from doing work for primary schools, a setting I have recently more comfortable and familiar with as I now volunteer in one, as well as work more on the sustainable side of things which is an area I don't often look at. I really appreciate having the opportunity to branch out and work on briefs I personally enjoy and have an interest in. 

Doing 6 briefs did become a bit exhausting and I have often felt like I was repeating the process a lot especially when it comes to design boards as I tend to follow the same structure throughout these. However I think it has made me more aware of my design strategies and the process I naturally follow without realising. I tend to go through the same stages of: making a brain storm, research, idea generation, research, design development, research, production and final design which I think is a good process to follow and works every time. 

In terms of the collaborative brief, I knew from the start I wanted to do the Bumble brief for this as I knew it was too big to manage on my own. After speaking about it with Danii she offered to work on it with me as she was interested in this brief too. Danii and I have very different styles therefore I thought it would be nice to get a combination of the two. I had the idea to approach the brief in a more illustrative way, where as Danii is much more strong in the typography area therefore I thought our skills were perfect to combine. We gave ourselves two weeks on this project, I had already done a lot of prior research therefore was ready to dive straight into design work. However Danii was at a different stage to me and hadn’t done much research before hand therefore we ended up being at different stages of the process. I decided to design some of the elements myself whilst Danii researched further into the brief. I designed the billboard, bus ad and underground ad whilst she was doing this. I showed my designs to Danii and from this we worked on them together and thought of ways to simplify them down as this is a skill Danii excels in, always finding the right balance of negative space and busyness. Overall I have really enjoyed working with Danii and think our skills have complimented each other well.