Evaluation.

End of module evaluation OUGD301

The start of this module was a bit of a nightmare for me, as I was a bit unsure what design work I wanted to create and felt the pressure of third year and felt I should be producing really amazing work. This pressure kind of paralysed me to do anything good, and just did what I thought I should be doing.

When I received the headline brief, my immediate reaction was to illustrate - which is probably one of my weakest skills, so I don't really know why I even attempted to do this. I just made decisions and not very good ones, and I was trying to design what I felt like I should be designing. I did not feel comfortable with what I was doing, but it took a disastrous crit for me to realise what I was doing was not working. It was at this point I was forced to really look at what I wanted to get out of this module, and find something that I wanted to work on. I naturally fell into a brief that led me to creating type.

Typography was what I was interested in before I came to the course, and I felt like I was stripped off everything when I came to Leeds - learning to work in a completely different way, realising how much there actually was to design and how my way of working before was quite superficial.

Now, I feel I have fallen back into typography after learning everything that I have and have started to love it again. The reason I picked to do a brief on the Royal Mail was due to seeing the Johnson Banks send a letter campaign, I just thought it was brilliant, but I did not really see it as typography at that point- just a great idea. Which is what I am really interested in and what I think makes good design, concept. But now, I see typography as a format to present my ideas - rather that image - which, for me, seems like such a simpler and more effective way of doing it.

The Royal Mail brief was without a doubt the brief I enjoyed the most and that must show through in my work. This was my starting point to typography and was a self initiated brief so I was able to do what I wanted with it really. The rest of the briefs gave me a real world context to use my type and concept skills.

I am really happy with my perfume book cover, however, I do want to work on it more before submitting it to Penguin, as I think after I had stepped away from it, I started to realise things that I did not like. For example, I forgot to put the penguin logo on it!! Also, I want to experiment with the type on the back of the cover a bit more. I showed this piece to Si Scott and he said that he liked the used of the mask to represent the masking of natural odours idea.

The H.G Wells cover was a very quick brief, and I do like the final pieces. However, I want to do more on it - for example, produce the whole set before submitting to D&AD. And to experiment with the composition of the type more. I think it has more potential.

My other brief was Jazzcakes. I enjoyed this one the least, and after a Week I just wanted to get rid of it to be honest. I just got qhite bored of it - I could have done all of that in a day, and I should have set it as a day brief really, It probably would have been more successful as a shorter brief, just because I lost the motivation to do anything with it. Next time I have a branding brief, I am going to spend just one day on it.

I have learnt alot this module - I seemed to feel alot more comfortable working in the studio as well, and this has had alot of impact on my body of work.

Every time I got a brief last time, I would feel paralyzed for the first few days not knowing what to do, but now, I come up with ideas in minutes. Just knowing what I am good at and knowing my idea is going to be in the format of primarily type, makes the whole process alot of smoother and more successful.

I have not submitted two briefs that I worked on - headline and Metro. I did not complete these briefs because I had a bit of a nightmare with them (this was the disastrous crit) and decided that I needed to get out of the rut I was in and more onto something fresh to inspire me - which really was the best decision I made.