Evaluation

I have mixed emotions about this module, at the beginning and up until reading week I found it hard to get into any of the projects. There was no clear reason why but I think the fear was of the amount of work ahead of me. After a few crits of constructive criticism, I started to stop being stressed about the amount of work and started to enjoy the process of developing ideas and handling that much pressure. There was quite a leap between second year workload and quality required and the effort and commitment needed compared to that of third year and I think that within this module I’ve learnt more about myself as a designer and my own practice than at any other point in the course.

I was coming in to college at 9am and leaving at 9pm quite often, but it wasn’t up until after reading week that I’d actually fully take advantage of this time and being as productive as I could instead of just been busy. I think that’s something in hindsight I would definitely change, making the most of the time I’ve got instead of thinking about what I’m going to do and actually do it.

Reflecting on the work I’ve produced I realise I haven’t worked in a way that ticks all the criteria boxes and maybe this is a problem I need to assess ahead of FMP, but I also think it’s a case of documenting my development and my idea generation. However I feel that my design practice is changing and improving, I’m in a place now where I feel more confident about experimenting with new styles and that I’m improving as a designer and pushing the concepts of a brief.

From the beginning of the module I had a clear idea of what I wanted to do and what areas I wanted to cover, this was mainly design for the fashion and art industry which two of the briefs covered (Blue Rinse branding and branding for a photographer) and I want to carry this forth into my FMP as I still feel strongly about designing for the creative industry and collaborating with different disciplines of creative. I also developed good networking and communication skills whilst working with the photographer and this has allowed me to get more out of a client than I would of normally and really helped with developing idea for the project (brief two)

Overall I’m frustrated with myself that I allowed myself to slip into a slow pace so early in the module and I genuinely think I made a huge mistake and ruined a potentially rewarding module. My time management and my documentation needs to carry on being at its recent level and go as far as improving substantially.  I’m disappointed that I didn’t quite reach the potential with my briefs and that I only did four but it’s something I’ve learnt from and I’m heading into the final part of the course knowing what I need to do and knowing I’m quite excited about turning it around improving from this module.