OUGD402 Studio Brief 1 | OUGD405 Module Evaluation

OUGD405 Module Evaluation

For the most part I really enjoyed OUGD405. At first I wasn’t really enjoying brief 1 so I wasn’t producing very good work or vice versa so it took me a while to start producing work I liked and wanted to explore. Once I knew what I was researching for brief 2 I was pretty happy as it was something I was interested in and it way my own personal collection. As I said I was pretty wrong about this as it really was a boring and pretty tedious subject matter but thankfully due to crit feedback and a brief talk with Simon in my tutorial, I was able to come up with a topic which was much more ‘interesting and engaging’. If I were to do brief 2 again I don’t think I would change anything because that research led me to my brief 3 and 4 work which I really enjoyed doing and I’m happy with the outcome. I have learned from this brief how much research helps, and even when you think you have enough research you definitely haven’t; the more the better and if you keep topping up on research it defiantly helps throughout the brief.

Studio briefs 3 and 4 were really enjoyable for me as I could really experiment with things I had never done before, especially with brief 3. At the start it was a bit daunting having to create a book with almost no guidelines or restrictions and it being completely up to us. Then, as I looked into some layouts I really liked things got easier and then they got better once we had the interim crit. This interim crit really helped me as it was suggested I looked at Elephant Magazine and Matt Willey. Once I had looked into these I made these my inspiration for the design of my booklet. The main thing I learned from Studio Brief 3is to always ask others for help or opinions and then always follow it up. Even if you think you know exactly where you want to take your work like I did at the start, you could find something that will completely change your mind. The same goes for Studio Brief 4; I looked into a lot of ideas and formats of design before settling on a poster and what style of poster I wanted to design. Along with that research I also took on people’s opinions on colour to help me decide which was the best.

Overall, I have learned a lot from this module and at the same time really enjoyed it. I’ve produced some work I’m quite proud of and it’s introduced me to some things I would like to do more of which I never before had an interest in.

OUGD402 Studio Brief 1 | OUGD405 Studio Brief 4 Evaluation

Overall I am happy with the outcome of Studio Brief 4. I am confident that my work is a suitable solution to the problem I identified within my research  from Studio Brief 2.

I think this because from my final crit that took place on Friday 16th, the feedback I received was very positive and helpful to me to identify what worked well and how it helped in more ways than I had noticed. I also spoke to multiple people in the studio who really liked the design and feel to my final poster.

This also came up in the crit; one person said that at first they didn’t really see how the design worked but once they noticed it was very clever and effective and suited the theme very well. I am extremely happy with this feedback as that is what I was going for. Although it is a type only poster I wanted something about it that would relate directly to the topic.

Although I am happy with the final outcome I do wish I had more time to work on this brief. As I would have liked to design more for the event to make it more clear as to what I had in mind for it as I am worried it is didn’t come across clear enough.

If I were to do this brief again I would definitely plan my time better so I had as much possible time to perfect and explore all possibilities that came with this brief.

One thing I have learned with this brief is the ideas of concepts, problem solving and designing with a purpose. I am happy I was able to find a problem in something that interested me and I hopefully designed a piece of work and a concept that would help solve it.

OUGD402 Studio Brief 1 | OUGD405 Studio Brief 3 Evaluation

All in all I am extremely happy with the outcome of Studio Brief 3. I think this brief went well for me due to the fact I did a lot of initial research to get me started, but then the interim crit gave me some extremely helpful opinions, ideas, feedback and directions to go in. Without the crit I doubt I would have completed this brief with a piece of work I like so much. 

Although my initial research was very helpful to me as it gave me the foundations of my designs and layout, the research I gathered after the crit due to the suggestion of looking at Elephant and Matt Willey was a lot more helpful and influential to my work. It was from that research I discovered ‘Port’, which also gave me ideas to play around with and I hope all of this is clear in my work although I don’t want it to appear I have just copied or take ideas from those publications.

This brief has taught me to always follow up other people’s suggestions; whether that be to change something, add something or look at something, because it won’t do any harm but may be of great use. In this brief I listened and asked other people for their opinion more and more and got great feedback every-time which helped me make some pretty big design decisions in my work.

If I were to do this brief again I would definitely try to get my hands on some physical copies of Port and Elephant as I think this possibly would have helped me a lot more than just looking at a very select few on a computer screen. Other than that I’m not sure how much I could do differently as I had set content to work with, but I am happy with my final outcome.

OUGD402 Studio Brief 1 | OUGD405 Studio Brief 1 Evaluation

My Studio Brief 1 work isn’t my favourite worked I have produced and I’m not 100% happy with my final outcome but from the crit feedback I am confident that I completed the brief.

I think the research I gathered at the start of the brief could have been more extensive to help me get a wider range of ideas to explore but overall I think the research I did gather helped me get to where I finished.

The interim crit was a very important point in the brief for me as the feedback I got was extremely helpful. I started off looking at animals and thanks to John’s feedback along with the group, I ended up doing something much more interesting to me and hopefully to everyone else too.

One thing I do regret and would do next time or if I had more time on the brief, is that I couldn’t take my own pictures. At this point I hadn’t had my photography induction yet and wasn’t fully confident with a DSLR. Instead I gathered my images from the internet., which was good as I kind of had a wide range of choices. I say ‘kind of’ because I had a specific look I wanted and I also needed an object to form my polygon shape around, so although there were a lot of images, not a lot fit the criteria i needed.

Once I found images I could use and liked, it was difficult to match the black and white settings as each one already had their own. I thought I had done it as close as possible and they looked okay but it wasn’t until I printed them out I saw how different they were.

This has taught me that I should definitely take my own photos for any project.