Reflection of Level 4

Before coming to uni I had the whole summer to reflect on my education years as well as thinking about my aims for uni and the future. Looking back through my sketchbooks and some of the beginning posts on my blog, I was able to reflect on whether I have achieved my aims for first year.

Aims before university:

- expand influence horizons

- to learn alternative techniques as I have previously felt limited to digital based work 

- to find confidence in myself to produce high quality work, would never have done a presentation in front of people before no

-to work with a range of people and learn from their design process

Through my presentation I have explained each of these aims and whether I think that I have fulfilled them and how. As I feel as though I have completed the aims I have now started to think about what I want to achieve and work towards in Level 5. 

Aims for Level 5:

- Continue to grow in confidence with my work and in myself

- I've already started this by creating an Instagram account,  this is to start beginning to get my work out there and being more active as a designer

- To do more work in the editorial element of graphic design as I don't feel limited in this area

- I hope to do a summer placement with a design studio that work with editorial design

- Placement in editorial sector

- Continue perfecting my skills in traditional print and continue to learn new methods and techniques


What have you learned and what do you want to learn?
- how to present more confidently
- how to gain worthwhile and effective feedback
- important to still have a life outside of graphic design as this is an important influence
- traditional print techniques, expand my horizons and creativity with my work
- how to over come issues and work with that I have by adjusting the design 


What mistakes have you made and how have you learned from them?
- not having a schedule for a brief. this has meant that things have been overlooked and rushed as I have not had enough time to explore my ideas
- not investigating and planning for the future that a project could go in which has meant I have had to adjust designs that I feel has lowered the quality of my work


 How will this affect your future development? 
- In the future I will have a stronger plan and aim after being briefed for a project. This will allow me to have more time experimenting with my ideas

- I will plan in advance of physically producing work to ensure that it is all consistent and fulfils my aims for the brief

 What have you enjoyed and why?
- Secret 7, working with a live brief that is more of the design area that i am interested in compared to the previous briefs where I have felt limited with my work 
- Design principles; this module has allowed me to be more free with my work that means that I can explore more areas that I have an interest in and would like to explore further


What have you disliked and why?
- I didn't and still don't have a large interested in typefaces therefore I felt as though I struggled with this brief. This meant that I found it hard to produce a range of ideas and to be creative with the brief 


How does this affect your ambitions?

- It has shown me areas of design that I do not desire to work in. However, it has highlighted areas that I am more interested in (editorial)

What did you want to get from the year?

- Working with a range of people that have different styles and approaches than myself

- growing in confidence when speaking about my work in large and small groups

- started to be interested in the future and what I would like to do once I graduate although I still do not have a clear goal 
- learn more traditional print methods

Have you achieved this? 

- I think that I have achieved this and have reflected on my aims through my presentation. Although there are areas that I still feel I need to work on, such as my confidence, I have become more confident in myself and creative with my work

    To structure my presentation I have taken elements of this reflection and brought it together to summarize whether I have completed my aims for this year and what my aims are for level 5. Within this I have also talked about what I have enjoyed and the type of design that I am growing an interest in. To ensure that the presentation is consistant with my self branding, I have used the template style that I designed at the bringing of PPP, as well as using the same typeface that I have used in my self branding. This brings consistency to my work as well as making the presentation personal to me. 

Country Living

The Country Living magazine is a huge influence on me as a designer as well as a person. Not only do I enjoy reading the content of the magazine but as a growing design I have picked up on some of the editorial techniques that they use. This makes everything about the magazine appealing to me and I am always stealing a copy from home to bring back with me on the train!

The resent issue has a number of articles on creative projects, some of which I have experimented with myself. Such articles inspire me to bring out my more creative traditional print design which is something that i've recognised as wanting to do more in the future.

End of Module Self Evaluation

After completing all the practical work that I set out to complete, I have had time to reflect on my work and myself before the hand in of this brief. Although the outcomes have been successful and I have been able to overcome any issues that have been thrown my way during the process, I feel that there is still room for improvement within the designs to be more personal to myself and to reflect the type of designer that I am. I struggled with this element as I felt it is too early to be self branding myself, however I have realised the importance of this therefore have tried to make the designs appropriate to the stage that I am at now. If I were to be given this brief again at the end of the year, I would like to bring in the more traditional print methods that I enjoy and want to work with more in the future. However, as I continue to grow as a designer and start to work in areas that I would like to specialise in, I will be able to adjust the designs I have already started working on and expand them where necessary. For example, I hope to be able reproduce the video using my own photography of sheep, making the design and photography more personal to myself. The current resolution is mainly acting as an example of what is to come. 
As I have previously recognised that I am not experimenting with a range of ideas, I feel that I have been more successful with this process by sketching and creating a number of different mock ups for the business card as well as producing a plan for the photography side of the video to manage my time. Although I find this process difficult it is something that I am going to continue to practise to improve my work and design attitude in the future as it has meant that I have produced a high quality piece of design that is appropriate and successful in terms of my self branding.  

Watercolour

From recently setting up my Instagram account I have started experimenting with techniques and styles that I have picked up on from those who I follow. Today I wanted to look at the work by @carolynj who is a designer for Ecojot. I first came across her prints on Etsy which then took me to her Instagram account. From this I am able to see what she is working on on a daily basis.

As I am inspired by her work I decided to experiment with this style myself. Watercolour is something that I have always done in my own time however have recently lost touch with. I hope to continue to practise with this style and hopefully bring it into my work in the future.

I also received a comment from Caroline when the post first went up which was lovely to receive. This connection with my work and those who inspire me is something that I wanted to get from the account and is proving to work!

Final Resolutions

Video:

Business Card:

Sticker/Envelope:

Card: 

Stickers

To create the sticker design I followed the outline of the below image. For printing a sticker it is important to have two separate layers, the first having the block colour of the sticker and the second having the outline of the shape.

Whilst talking to James, the print technician, we discussed that it would be more cost effective to print the stickers on vinyl. Considering my future development, I decided to print on vinyl so that a large scale of prints could take place at one time for a low cost. This did not limit my colour choices as I had kept the colours consistent with the video and business card, going for a grey and red design. 

The sticker will be on the envelope, as well as being cut out and placed inside the envelope as a gift to the receiver. This will be a consistent shape that will in the future hopefully appear on my website, elements of my self branding and social media. It is not a logo but works around the same concept.  

Reflection

At this stage I have now completed the pieces that I aimed to. When thinking of how to send this out to the selected companies/individuals who inspire me, I feel as though something is missing in terms of the message that I am putting across (it may seem strange just sending a usb and a business card). From this reflection I have decided to send the USB and business card in a handwritten card. This card will be hand written on the inside and will explain my intentions of sending the 'note'. I originally thought of printing the card using letterpress however through further investigation, I am unable to use the Gurmukhi Sangman that I have used consistently throughout my self branding. I can also not use an alternative typeface that is similar or that works with this typeface, due to the limited typefaces available. If I had thought of this at the beginning of the project I would've been able to over come the issue by choosing a typeface that is available in letterpress. This is something that I will be able to learn from in the future and will think of all the possibilities for production before printing. However, introducing the card brings the designs together. To brand the envelope and to have a small gift in the envelope, I am also going to print some stickers in a silhouette shape of a sheep. This idea has come from keeping the consistency of the 'sheep farm' theme as well as being inspired by packing I have seen on Instagram by a creative that I follow.

Digital Print

After adjusting the design I got the cards printed at digital print. Due to time restrictions I was unable to source a higher GSM paper before printing. However this is something that I can adjust in the future as I continue to grow as a designer and when more print slots are available!

Version One:

Version Two: