FMP - Evaluation

After my mark for last module i was really disappointed and felt didn't know the areas that i had fallen down so much. The only think i could think of was not being specific enough with my briefs. When first writing my rational I still found it really hard to define myself as a designer, there were people i saw who were defiantly illustrators or editorial designer or typographic but i felt that after 3 years i still like to work will most disciplines

"A typographic lead designers working in the culture sector with a focus on format, paper engineering and colour"

My rational now define me perfectly, it was tough writing it but it has really helped me become focused and not at all constricting as i though.

Overall i finished 8 briefs, all of witch have different deliverables and approaches but all that reflect me as a designer more than ever before. I have become more in tuned to the design industry and working with clients as well as working on production and formatting.

The first brief that got me started was a live collaborative with Hannah Jackson which was great to get stuck into when we first came back after Christmas. We motivated each other to work and found that we worked well together and seem to have a similar process of thinking and approaching things. This was the first experience i had of project management as i took on most of the responsibility of working with the client and making sure deadlines were met. However it was my first experience with working with a demanding cleint and on a small budget. The design direction was very much lead by ourselves but the delivery and content was specific to the client and thinks having to be changed meant that we wasted a lot of time and effort designing and printing material that was un used. It became a chore that seem to carry on for months after the deadline. But we both managed to keep up to date with it all and produced work for the client. It showed me the work of design is not just about producing something aesthetically pleasing but clients always have the last word and you have to come through for the.

One of the most enjoyable briefs that I worked on was for ‘Vote Steve’ which was client lead but I had most of the final say in the design direction for it. The brief started really bad, I kept avoiding it as I simply couldn’t think of what the project needed. Then when I started designing I stuck myself into a rut for months practically ‘polishing turds’ and it wasn’t until Lorenzo pointed things out to me that I realised I had to rethink the approach. I ended up waisint months on this and getting nowhere instead of facing the problem head on and i would have resolved it much faster. However when I got the concept right the range seem to follow easy and I produced some really conceptually successful work that was fun, clever and aesthetically pleasing. The client also won the election and so the project was not just a great piece for me but a successful campaign.

When I started brief 10 –OU pop up mailers I was really exited to explore these paper engineering techniques and had loads of brilliant ideas of how these would work. However after trying a few pop up techniques I found that it was harder than I thought to get a fully functioning pop up and I got really frustrated with it. This meant that I avoided work on this project for months while I distracted myself with other briefs and when I finally forced myself to produce work I was really struggling with the technology of paper. I really under estimated this brief and how long it would take to get my head around the techniques and I think I got frustrated with not being able to make them work when before I have been quite good at working out templates.

At the start of the module I proposed 6 briefs to do and started on 2 of them that I didn’t get chance to finish. These two briefs fitted into my rational and were briefs that I had some great ideas about but I ended up getting about 5 live briefs and so I had to put some things on hold while I worked on these. I never managed to get back on track with these briefs as I was already dealing with 5-7 briefs at a time and realised that I was never going to get them done. This was actually a weight of my mind as all the other briefs that I was dealing with were fitting with my rational and I was really enjoying all of them.

After three years I have finally been able to manage my time well. I made sure that I wrote myself a weekly planner and even if I didn’t look at it again it still helped me to organise in my head what I needed to do. The success of my final major project was how I managed my time the week before hand in. I decided that I needed to stop designing everything at least a week before the hand in so that I had time to actually catch up on everything else. I soon realised that this was the best thing to have done as I managed to get everything else done before hand in, all my boards were done and identity, ppd, project file and my blog and it took the stress of the last week unlike a lot of others in the year. This may mean that I may loose a few marks on the expansion of briefs but I feel it was more important to round up the rest of my practice before hand in.