OUGD103 - Speaking From Experience

OUGD103 Evaluation

Don’t Panic
Following my last interim tutorial, I decided with such an open brief it would be a good opportunity to explore illustration; something which I have never really pushed before. Working with visuals which represent a face, but with only two parts to each, was quite a good place to start for me, as it helped me settle into an illustration style, which is messy, yet simple and clear.

Communication is a Virus
This was an interesting brief for me as I have never worked in a pair before, only in larger groups. It was quite a challenge spreading the work duties evenly, and almost a risk choosing the correct partner. I didn’t feel as confident in a pair, compared to a group, finding myself more polite and less decisive. Also it was the first time I had thought about designing for children, and I really didn’t like it. I’m aware that if I was employed to design for children, I have certainly learned how this is possible, but I will never choose to do so if I can avoid it.

InDesign / Type & Grid
I enjoyed the type & grid sessions, as they were a nice recap on things I had been taught or found out in the past. It was good to learn how to work out how a previous grid was composed. When we first received the InDesign partner brief I was quite excited, but when it start to run in parralel with Speaking from Experience, it became a bit of a chore to do one DPS compared to a 50 page magazine. Never the less I always enjoy the thumbnail process. To improve the layout it would have been good to produce my own photographs, but with the lack of snow and skiing equipment in Leeds this was obviously a problem.

Speaking from Experience
After experimenting with many different styles of working throughout my first year, but settling back into my comfort zone, having taken more skill on board this was no doubt my most successful brief of the year. I really enjoyed and benefited working with a producing type in a variety of print processes and then combining them in a magazine with an experimental layout. I am happy with the outcomes, and I received some really positive feedback throughout the process and production. Getting the zine professionally printed increased the quality of the end product, although they seem to have been trimmed more than the size I was told to work with, I expect this to be my error as I doubt a company would make a measurement error, but I did check again. The only other minor errors were how messy the final posters got, because it is so hard to keep anything clean at Vernon Street! I found blogging more successful this brief, but I still need to get round to the idea of blogging the process and not as a showcase for work.