End of year 2 evaluation...

In this evaluation

! Reflect on the relationship between your protfolio of work and your creative ambitions as a designer.
! Relate your own work to specific examples/areas of contemporary design practice.
! Evaluate your strengths and weaknesses against identified intetions and areas of contemporary practice.
! Clarify areas of design, skills development and professional concerns that you aim to investigate further from this point.
! Briefly clarify the relationship between your creative practice and your proposed dissertation.

my portfolio

The relationship between my portfolio and my creative ambitions are that i want to pursue design work for print. This year i have found after completing the digital media module I'm not interested in producing moving image based work. I still want to develop my skills in web design, but more for the layout of sites and the creativity and concept building, leaving the technical side to people who know what they are doing. After my interview with Design Junkie the feedback i received on this issue, was that the industry can be quite digitally focused and although they too are interested in print, and have a print based background being able to transfer those skills digitally is a must these days. So throughout the summer i am going to work on developing my portfolio to include screen caps of how my work can be transfered digitally etc.

The briefs i chose towards the end of the second year were because of the opportunity to develop designs for print based media. I was pleased to undertake a variety of ways to work in print, from the postcards to the mail shot and the publication design. This clarified for me that i like the diversity within print design.

The aspects in print i am most interested in and find appealing are: Layout, Type, Choice of stock, Audience and interaction.

I have approached Design Junkie for a placement over the summer as when i came across their work it was the type of work i felt i wanted to produce and be involved in.  I feel i can relate my own work typographically and layout to how they work. Here are some examples of the work they produce:

I feel my interest in type is developing as the more i learn about type and layout the more i want to pursue it within my own work. I still feel i have a weakness here but i am developing it to become more of a strength as i am interested in it. Here is a typeface i produced for the brief 10 things you should know...



I like works as follows, i feel looking and engaging with contemporary design practice feeds into my work and ideas...

I feel another weakness in my work is my layout of my portfolio. I feel i can be more creative with it and the feedback i have received has confirmed this, as well as the need to add more personality to my portfolio, create an identity or something for the front. I've had a few ideas, over the summer i plan to develop this. Here is an example of what I have been working on:

I feel my strengths are concept development. I think i have the ideas to create interesting and engaging design but i need to put more focus on clarifying my ideas and producing them to a professional standard.

My dissertation topic is linked closely to my design practice as it focuses on the use of grid layout in design. I will focus on analysing how the rules and system affect the communication of a design message. How the audience react to different use of grid layouts and also look at designers who rely or don't rely on the grid system within their work. I hope the information, research and knowledge i gain from my dissertation will aid my own design practice.