I have to evaluate two parts of my life since I have moved in September, the personal and professional side. I have to identify:
- 10 things that you have learned about yourself as an individual and as learner. These should reflect your personal development and individual journey since the start of the programme.
- 10 things that you have learned about yourself as a designer. These should reflect your growing awareness of your own interests within graphic design as a subject, discipline and profession
The ten things that I have learned about myself as an individual and learner are:
1. I used to live on Rustlers burgers and chicken korma microwave meals at home, but since I have moved I cook meals everyday from scratch, and I am really keen on using my slow cooker to make meals as well. I even cooked a Christmas Dinner for eleven people, whereas I didn't even know the difference between an oven and a hob before I moved to Leeds.
2. I hate mess. I never used to clean up at home because my mum did everything for me, but I have turned into a clean freak since I've moved out and I very organised at getting my flatmates to tidy the kitchen with me when I can't bear it anymore.
3. Outside of uni I spend most of the time with the four girls in my flat, and I prefer working with them because it motivates me to get on with doing work too. Also, once we have done a substantial amount of work we reward ourselves with Grey's Anatomy. If I don't do my work, I will finish it while they watch Grey's, so I always make sure that I get it done.
4. I'm an early bird, so it isn't a problem for me to get up really early in the morning and get some blogging done, and I prefer working then rather than at night.
5. I've always been good with money and saving it, so that hasn't been much of an issue since I moved away. I find it easier to save money on food because I always cook with about 4 people every night so we share ingredients, and I never spend much on nights out because I don't need a lot to drink, and we all share a taxi.
6. I don't do a lot of laundry, about a load a month, and whenever I go home I get my mum to do it for me. That's the only chore I am really bad at doing, and even when I do my laundry my cousin does all my ironing for me as I live with her.
7. I don't miss home at all, I think that's because I live with friends from home, and my two best friends from home live down the road. I also see people I know from home whenever I'm out, as a lot of people move here for university from Grimsby. Friends from home come up every weekend as well, so it hasn't been hard or lonely moving away.
8. I've always gotten my work done at school and college on time, and that hasn't changed here. I almost always do the work as soon as I get it, and keep on top of blogging so that it doesn't become a chore.
9. Now that I live with people, I am more considerate of others because I don't have my music up loud, I clean up after myself and help my friends when they need help.
10. I think the only drawback with mainly spending my time with friends I already knew from home and with the people we live with, I don't spend a lot of time with the people on the course. A lot of people on the course live with each other, go out a lot together and are really close, and although I have made friends on the course I don't feel I am as close to them because of how I use my time outside of uni.
The ten things that I have learnt about myself as a designer are:
1. I thought I would miss sketchbooks when I got to university, but I much prefer blogging. It saves time, it can be done anywhere and it is much easier to reference blogs and designers work.
This screenshot shows my blog, and it was really easy to have a link to the website I found the images of as the heading, which is something I couldn't do in a sketchbook.
2. At college I thought I would go into hand craft things like papercutting, but most of the briefs I have done here I have done on Illustrator, and I much prefer that, and I think the briefs worked well. For example, on the second How To brief, I created illustrations for children, and I got good feedback on them, and they worked well with what the rest of my group were producing for it, so I was really happy with them. And even though for the most recent brief the illustrations I produced were hand drawn on a graphics tablet, they were still digitalised and edited on Illustrator.
Here is a papercutting piece I did at college, and although I really enjoyed it and wanted to go a lot further with it, since the briefs I've got here, it isn't something I am as interested in anymore.
This is one of the illustrations I created for the How To brief, and it is very different from the previous piece of work that I did.
This was for the research brief, and although I did it on Illustrator, I drew it on by hand first, then on a graphics tablet, so it still has a hand drawn effect.
3. I now think more about the distribution and finish of whatever I am making, including the stock it is going to be produced on, whether it needs to be bound and the type of packaging I will need to make. Before, I would have chosen my idea around whether I could produce it, but now I will go with the idea that I want and learn how to bind or create the packaging if I need to, to make it work. I think that is most evident in the publication brief I have just finished, because I thought about how the stock would affect the illustrations and colour, and the tone it would present. I also didn't know how to book bind, but I learnt it for the project, and the InDesign induction helped me a lot as I didn't know how to use it, but it helped me lay out my publication a lot easier.
This is the binding that I did for the book, and in the crit feedback that I got, they commented that the stock was a good choice, so it shows that it is worth it to consider the stock when making a design.
These are some envelope mock ups I did while doing the Message and Delivery brief, and by doing these it helped me decide the final envelope I should make, as I decided what looked best and how to make sure that the net worked.
4. I have always been interested in packaging, and at college no one else was interested in it, so I didn't think it was a very popular aspect of design, but since being here there has been plenty of opportunities to create packaging, a lot of people are interested in it, and I've been taught that 'packaging and promotion' is a really big part of design and so my interest in it has deepened, and I've got to research it a lot more. As part of the second How To brief I researched a lot of packaging and I really enjoyed it, and created a bookmark stand for it as well.
Here is the bookmark stand that I made, and it held the bookmarks in that Daisy created, with the illustrations on that I made.
Here is a screenshot at some of the packaging that I researched. It is all packaging aimed at children because that is who are target audience was, and I really enjoyed looking at it.
5. I have also learnt a lot more about branding and identity, which is another thing I have become really interested in since being here, and really want to go into it when I leave here. After researching different agencies and blogs, I found one that I really like called Anagrama.
I think the best part of this website is when you click on a piece of work, the designers tell their design decisions, and there are lots of images of the whole identity so its really helpful in seeing how other designers continue a look and feel across a range of products, and they do it really well.
6. What I also realised I like about packaging since I've been here is that I am really interested in food packaging. Whenever I research design, I always find myself drawn to food packaging, and when I created some moodboards for the Printed Text and Reading brief I focused on packaging, and when I created them I realised they were all for food.
These were the moodboards for the Printed Text and Reading research that I did, which features a lot of food packaging.
7. From doing various research tasks, I found one designer who documents his life every day, every year, and makes an annual report in the form of an infographic, and I found it really interesting and inspiring, so I have started to do it as well. I have an excel spreadsheet which I'll make an annual report about myself in a years time.
8. I love crits, I think they are really useful, and I wold rather have people be honest and tell me what they think about my work so I can make it better next time, and know what other people think works and what doesn't. At the beginning of a project its useful to get feedback because it gives me confidence to go with an idea if other people think it's a good idea as well, and when I'm designing it it is good to get feedback to see what other people suggest. That's what I liked about working in the How To brief when I created the children's illustrations because people commented on some changes I could make, and then they really liked them, and I think they worked well with that everybody else created with them.
These are the bookmarks that Daisy made.
This one of Jasper's photographs that he took, and then put Emily's mural design on top of it. Because the images were really high quality and he made the murals fit with the wall, I think they are really effective.
This is the sticker chart that Mellisa made, and I think that by her extending the neck for the poster it worked really well with the concept.
This is one of Anna's posters which included my illustrations with Emily's typeface, and I thought they worked well as a set.
This is one of Emily's murals she made with her own typeface and my illustration.
9. I feel like the research that I have done for all the projects here is so important because it has helped shape the information that goes onto my designs, and also influences how I design things. This is evident in the mailshot I produced for the Message and Delivery brief, as it was about gender inequality, and it was so interesting to research.
Researching into the subject helped define what was featured on the mailshot, and I wouldn't have been able to do the brief successfully if I hadn't researched into it.
10. I really like how fast-paced the briefs are, because designing for different projects is fun, as they all have different requirements and topics, so there is opportunity to do lots of different things. It also isn't boring, because at college having projects that lasted a couple months meant that they dragged on, and I've found I produce better, more concise work here than I did at college. I think the project where we had to create a typeface for somebody else was really challenging because it had to be based on someone I didn't know, and it surprised me how little time I needed to actually create a typeface that my partner was happy with, and that I was happy with, and I had justified reasons as to why it was designed in this way too.
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