MODULE EVALUATION

The final design practice module has gone very well. What I particular note in this module, is the quality of work I have produced coupled with a more focussed direction. While I have had a few setbacks, with cancelled briefs and the inability to complete some briefs, I feel that I have stayed true to my personal statement that I am a designer driven by concept with an focus on the culture sector. This sector includes events promotion and brands. I have perhaps deviated slightly with a few of the briefs that were done more as exercises. The Staaay brief was very successful, the brief start as a collaboration which I later developed independently. The work I achieved, the clarity of the concept, and the level of the execution has surpassed anything that I had done prior to the course. Similarly the Leeds College of Music brief is another brief that has been stand out for me. The production of the brief was of a quality I have never attained and the visuals and documentation have definitely been one of the most successful of my college career.

In addition to the quality of work improving, I have liaised with Leeds College of Music officials in the Marketing Department, I have held meetings for the yearbook and concept presentations, and I have helped to orchestrate a professional print brief in the form of the Yearbook. These experiences will be capitalised on in my interviews for placements or jobs. I will be able to discuss about these experiences that come from a focus to do Live briefs, which was a decision I made earlier in the year. I will be able to draw upon these experiences as experiences of project, time and people management and I will be to discuss how I worked with a marketing department, as well as presenting concepts at a design studio. 

DRIP was a brief that I am not proud of at all. The quality of the design is poor and the visuals are not to my taste, and I am not proud to say they are mine. The design took a turn due to me not being able to assert my own decisions, plus I am not cut out to create visuals for that particular style of film. It was a shame to get the year off to such a bad start however I feel that I pulled through well, and produced some great work prior to this period. To ensure nothing like this happens again, I will be far more particular about the briefs I take on in a professional capacity. I will now be able to identify when I will be able to compliment and answer a brief, rather than taking something in the hope they I will be able to do it well. 

Briefs such as Suilven and Rudimental Drums were not briefs that I can see being a source of income in future. Designing for bands is a tough industry to crack and I feel that this type of work will be limited to my spare time, especially if I have vested interests in the band. Rudimental Drums is not something I will take on again. The result was good, but the industry placement and it's context in my overall design practice was difficult to justify.

Moving through the year I found that my practice was not particularly specialised to print or digital and that this is something that needs addressing. I thing I would prefer to be orientated around the digital, but it is perhaps because I do not fully understand my context well enough yet to say that I am one or the other. I think that this is something that is becoming less relevant. I like to think that I am capable of creating concepts and ideas that can be applied in a multitude of different ways whether it be print, digital, or experiential. I think that in order to fully realise my context, I need more experience in the industry to figure the full extent of my practice.

My personal statement has not particularly changed, however I feel my ability to manifest my personal statement in my portfolio of work this year has perhaps made my personal statement look untrue. I am still very driven toward the culture sector, and I like the idea of working across print and digital with a special affinity to branding, and advertising. I have found that I am extremely focussed on Copywriting, which is something that I have realised this year. While, I do not see myself as a copywriter I am happy to have this skill as a string to my bow as I think it broadens my capabilities as a designer. 

As I come to the end of my degree, I will look to take on briefs that are with my interests highlighted in my design context publication. I will look at the precedents I have identified, and have a more calculated approach to design. From my progression the three years it is clear to see that I have developed a vast majority of skills that prepare me for professional practice, however I certainly need to ensure that I improve my consistency and my ability to choose briefs that are suitable to my context. 

DESIGNCONTEXT

SUILVEN_PRESENTATION&EVALUATION

Similar to the Rudimental Drums brief, this brief was completed earlier in the year as a short brief ‘in-between’ collaborative briefs. I enjoyed working on the type design for this brief as I tried to achieve a bold typeface without using bold shapes. I wanted something easily identifiable with a distinct natural character. In addition to this, I wanted the typeface to be clear. The name Suilven comes with a difficult pronunciation, and I wanted the letters to be clear and stand in their own space.

This work was done earlier in the year, and I feel that since conducting the brief my ability to design, and the quality of my work has greatly improved. While I do not remotely consider myself a type designer, I enjoyed creating the typography for the band. I do not have an interest in creating the everyday functional typography that is created by foundries such as Dalton Maag or Colophon. I feel these typefaces need to be created by people who dedicate their life to the world of type design, and that is something that I am just not willing to do. Despite this, I enjoy creating one off word marks like this one. This is due to the quick turnaround of the marks, and I can focus on the letters work together immediately. I find this particularly interesting when text becomes more flamboyant and each character physically interacts with the one next to it. This is something I have done outside of this module and I found it very therapeutic. I think I know have the abilities to create a desired effect through the use of software and my own design ability. This is something that has been nurtured throughout the three years, and I feel confident in my ability, and I will capitalise on it in future by taking on more briefs.

I am not particulary too interested in making a habit of doing design for bands, however the wider music industry in terms of events, businesses, and organisations does interest me greatly. I am personally in the band I have carried out the work for, so I felt that I had vested interests in this brief. I think it is important to use my design abilities to help myself out from time to time, and this is definitely something I will carry into the future. I am very interested in the idea of creating design for my own personal ventures, outside of my day-to-day graphic design practice, perpetuating my own contexts for my design and experimentation.

CANCELLEDBRIEF_LIFF

I cancelled this brief due to unforeseen circumstances taken on by other briefs. I did not plan on doing briefs such as the Yearbook, which has taken a lot of my collaborative time up. The meetings and the presentations take time which I had not accounted for and I have had to give up this brief.

I am very disappointed with this as this is the type of brief I would like to do and I think it runs perfectly with my personal statement. I planned to do a campaign for the Leeds Independent Film Festival, however it has turned out that I would not have enough time to completely the brief with the level of integrity that I wanted.

RUDIMENTALDRUMS_PRESENTATION&EVALUATION

Rudimental Drums from Ross Franc on Vimeo.

This brief was conducted earlier in the year so that I had conducted some briefs from start to finish independently. While I have worked quite solidly in collaborations throughout the year, I have still felt that I have done a substantial amount of independent work. I have often found that working in a collaboration can lead to more independent work than working on a brief on your own.

This brief was completed rather quickly. I spent time working to a brief and pleasing a client, however I felt unfulfilled in myself. I feel like I answered the brief well and I effectively applied my own written copy to a professional and engaging standard. The design isn’t particularly bad, but something was lacking for me. I feel it was the application and context of the brief, and perhaps even the audience.

I think that I need to be working to a larger audience. I feel that this brief was not substantial enough for me to find particularly interesting. While the client was happy with what I had done, I feel that working in the sector of music and education is something that I need to be careful with. I was certainly not interested in the education side, purely because it does not appeal to me as a career, and the music thing is something that I need to be careful with. I need to find a broader context if I am to work within the music industry.

FAYEARBOOK_PRESENTATION&EVALUATION

The first thing that comes to mind when I reflect on this brief is that it seemed to consume a lot of time. From the initial pitch, to the multitude of planned and impromptu meetings with the Fine Art committee. While this time can definitely be attributed to the success of the brief, it was difficult to manage interms of following our collective and personal work flows.

One thing that was very successful about this brief was the way in which we conducted ourselves as a design team. In the first meeting the Fine Art committee asked us to bring us colour choices and fonts to the next meeting. I felt like this was an injustice to what we had learnt over the past three years and I urged the rest of the design team to take a pitch to the next meeting. I felt this was necessary for 2 reasons. Firstly, I felt we needed to put across to Fine Art committee that we were confident in our ability to design, in order to garner a level of respect from the committee. Secondly, I thought it was better to take a starting point with justifed design decisions, in order to gain a level of authorship over the design. The pitch went down very well, and although the book has been developed a lot since the original pitch, I feel that this was a vital step in our development. It allowed us to gain more constructive feedback, and move forward with the brief in a considered and organised way. The pitch allowed a point of reference for the Fine Art Committee, and the feedback allowed us to take away parts that weren’t right and quickly replace them with problem solving design.

The book was a thorough grounding in managing a lot of content and displaying it with an element of respect that would make the students feel proud. We organised the photographers so that everyone would have the opportunity to have their work taken as professionally as possible, this gave the artist a level of ownership and direction over the way their work was displayed. This also minimised the amount of chasing up we had to do, as the photographer’s had a level of responsibility to get all of the photographs that they signed up for.

In addition to these elements, we created a 3D type sculpture with the help of 3D modeler Luca Calabrese. We created a 3D rendered sculpture of the word SUM that was made up of a number of physical sculptures. The type face became a physical rendering of the concept. This was something that I have never given myself the opportunity to do. To apply type in this way has been a fantastic experience that opens my mind to the scope that typography can have. The type became a model that then became image, and informed the overall aesthetic direction of the yearbook and exhibition branding. This process of working with a 3D modeler was quite difficult due to the amount of time he could dedicate to our project. We were very conscious that he did not have a lot of time to be making amendments, so this part of the project could have been executed better in a professional environment such as a design studio, where there may be an inhouse 3D modeler. This time would have allowed us to make a greater statement of the type, and tightened up some of elements. The process was not made easier by our own inexperience in working in 3D. It is one thing to work with photographers, but working in a 3D piece of software comes with it a whole new level of opportunites and problems simultaneously. I would like to work with this more in future as I expand the focus and the range of possibilities and applications of my practice. I think that 3D software can play a huge role in the day to day of graphic design, and I would like to acquaint myself with it a little better, or atleast the people that work with it.

Overall this brief went very well, and the feedback we have received has been great. Working collaboratively became easier as we developed the brief, on the whole we worked well collaboratively in terms of us giving each other feedback and getting a final result we were all happy with. We all had significant input into the book and I feel like the decisions that were made were shared, and a true reflection of our collaborative practice.

COINS_PRESENTATION&EVALUATION

 There is not particularly too much to evaluate about this brief. The brief took 2 days to complete. I have a lot of silly ideas that I can execute as a graphic response, and I think this could be added to the list. What sets this apart from the other ideas I have had, is that this idea has been executed.

Being influenced by Daniel Eatock, I took the role of producing a piece of design as an art object. While I am glad I executed the idea, I think I need to be careful having ideas like this. They have very questionable value to my practice. I do not particularly want to make my living exhibiting prints, or making pretentious statements like this one and they have little value to people other than myself. I have a tendency to critique and I love the world of satire, I feel that this particular brief reflects that, but has also allowed me to realise that there is a time and a place for it. I’m unsure that I will be conducting many briefs like this in future, as I am beginning to find that there needs to be a more useful context for my work.