Self evaluation.

1.  What skills have you developed through this module and how effectively do you think you have applied them?
 
From this module I think one of the main skills that I developed would have been crafting skills, and the quality of finished product. This gave a much more professional finish and I think it was applied most effectively in the speaking from experience brief. Where crafting was important to give my booklet a quality finish.

2. What approaches to/methods of research have you developed and how have they
informed your design development process?

I think the main methods of research I have used for this module have been questionnaires and surveys and internet research into existing design practice. I found that the use of surveys was very useful in the group brief and in the last brief, speaking from experience, as they helped me to gauge my responses from other peoples experience of the course.

3. What strengths can you identify in your work and how have/will you capitalise on these?

I think the main strengths I can identify in my work from this module are the quality of my finished product and my ability to research and blog consistently to inform my own design. I need to push these through to the next modules and beyond as I think these will continue to help inform my design practice. Crafting and quality of finish are important to give a professional finish, which is always important when you want something to stand out.

4. What weaknesses can you identify in your work and how will you address these more fully?

I think my main weakness continues to be the amount of work I produce, especially by hand as this is often a very useful tool for continued development of a project. In the first module I spent a lot of time working on my drawing and developing briefs away from the computer and I think I need to go back to this in order to complete a brief to its potential, and in a way that I am pleased with.

 5. Identify five things that you will do differently next time and what do you expect to gain from doing these?
 -    Go back to hand rendering and putting my ideas onto paper before moving to the computer as I think it’s always good to have visual reference from hand drawn ideas.
 -    Try to work consistently throughout a brief instead of slumping my workload at points, this will help me build a more thorough body of work for every brief. 
 -    Try to check back on my blogs more often to see if I’m missing work at any point, this will hep in the long run as I won’t have to find out on the day of the hand in that something is missing.
 -    Blog daily in order to stay on top of my work, I think this will also help in the production of my work, as it will give me incentive to aim to produce something to blog at the end of each day. It will also help me stay on top of my research and avoid situations like the one above.
 -    Use a broader range of research sources, such as books, found materials, blogs, questionnaires etc to give me a stronger hold on the subject I am working on for a brief. This will help overall in my development and in the production of a relevant and appropriate outcome. Remember that the Internet isn’t the only source of research.

6.How would you grade yourself on the following areas:

Attendance: 4
Punctuality: 5
Motivation: 3
Commitment: 4
Quantity of work: 3
Quality of work: 3
Contribution to the group: 3

Workshop with John

Photos of one of our design boards that looked at the things that were going to go on at our Food festival. 

This festival was based around the idea of bringing everyone together in Leeds city center using food from different cultures from around the world. parts of Leeds would be made to look like the parts of the world that the food represents and there would be a mass of activities in the center. The list above covers what would be happening

Final Spread for claudia.

The two seperate pages of the spread as for some reason this is how it saved the document as a jpg.

Final development of spread.

 Adding some highlights into breakout quotes and looking further at the background colour and pattern.

 Change of backdrop and a look at keeping the title on one line... However I think I prefer it hyphenated over two lines like it previously was.

the finished layout...

Layouts.

More experimental layouts.

Standard Layouts.

 The grid I used for the thumbnails.

High and Low end magazines

The spread from my high (audi) and low (prac classics) end magazines

Further development of DPS for Claudia.

Finishing writing my article instead of placeholder text and formatting the body copy as I want it. Here I've used Univers Bold condensed in caps for the headers and breakout quotes. I think this gives a good platform for differentiating between question and answer.

I then continued to work with different backgrounds and ideas to link it with Claudia. I worked with the idea of cross stitch and despite the interview being totally fabricated, there is elements of truth within it. Claudia liking cross stitch is one of those... So I tried to create the appearance of cross stitch in the background. I think it gives a nice effect...