On starting this module I couldn’t wait to get started writing my own brief, but it turned out harder than I thought. I wanted to take so many different approaches that I became very vague in my brief. This held me back for the first week as I kept trying to make decisions and ended up with little direction in ideas and concept. It wasn’t until I had a talk with Fred that I realised I had to narrow my direction down. I felt I would be constricting myself and would miss out on designing for other approaches that I wanted to explore e.g. editorial, packaging, print, typography and hand rendered. So I chose to look into typography and packaging, this way I was able to start research and start designing appropriately.
In the first few weeks I researched into a wide range of relevant designs that had really inspired me in my work. However from the group crits it was said that they couldn’t see how it had influenced my work, I didn’t make clear of the link between my contextual research and my own practice. This feedback was very useful and made me realise that I need to get my work up to a more professional standard.
One of my downfalls with this project was my organisation; this has never really been a problem as I’m good at keeping all my files together and labelled and in appropriate folders which makes it so much easier to document and keep a track of. But I got a bit lazy with it in this Individual brief, as I was doing lots of touch ups and minor changes and towards the end of the module I had files everywhere which took up a lot of my time trying to find what I wanted.
I’ve had a real software realisation throughout this module. I usually use one piece of software for my work which I can normally do everything I need to do. I started of in Illustrator as I was tracing my hand drawn designs and made most of the different elements of the packaging designs in there, e.g. logos, patterns, informational tables. However when I started putting these designs on to a net I stayed in Illustrator, rather than moving these designs into Photoshop. So it took me twice as long to put a design together as I couldn’t use the right tools and had to compromise some things. Even though we have had inductions into this software and I have been using them for years, I now realise the strengths of each piece of software and how they actually work together.
In a similar way to the software issues that I had, I have really realised the importance of file types and size. Again we have had lessons on this which did help but it’s not until I actually started using them all e.g. PNG, TIFF, JPG, AI, PS and PDF, that I understood the values of each.
We had a show and tell crit during the middle of out brief and I felt I was quite prepared as I had my mock up pieces with their range, and my digital and print distribution. I think I got a bit to confident with myself and this was the point that I eased of a little as I thought I was quite ahead of myself. However this meant that I fell behind (of course) and even though I was still producing work I wasn’t developing anymore.
The last crit that we had was one of the most useful crits we had during this module. I was really blow away with the quality and quantity of work that people had come out with. Up till this point I was quite happy with the work that I had produced and was sure of what I had left to do, so I was surprised when I got positive feedback but I also got some rally useful suggestions on how to improve. I made a decision that day that I would spend the next day producing more work and push the boards back. This was a risky decision but I now know it was the right one as I produced the same amount of work in one day that I had spend weeks doing. I feel that I have learnt more about my own practice through this module as I have before and now know the standard of work that I can produce.
At the last stage of the brief I was getting all my boards together and taking all my product shots, but I really struggled with it. As I had produced white products with a subtle pattern on them I found when I was photographing them on a white backdrop I was looking all the detail and definition of the products. I used photography studio lighting and different set up stations and still ended up re-photographing the products 4 times. I was dubious in using coloured back drops as I didn’t want to loose attention from the products so I still needed something neutral. In the end I used some cardboard which I was still unsure of but I worked really well for the product shots. However this whole process got me back into using my digital SLR properly. I was having to manuel set the settings to get the best quality image, so I really felt a sense of achievement when I got some great impact images from it.
When designing the packaging I wanted to use a thick, uncoated and coloured stock. With my initial design I printed onto stocks such as cartridge paper, watercolour paper, white card, coloured card and grey card, but most of these didn’t fit with the designs. If I used any sort of coloured stocks I lost all the detail in the background patterns and it wasn’t appropriate for each variation. This meant that I had to stick with a white stock so that I could apply all the various colours and patterns without it being disrupted.
I do feel that i need to work on the quality of my boards more, they are not as good as they could be and some of them look a bit to crowded which looses all the impact. This is a skill Iv been working on throughout the last year and even thought I feel it is better than it was, I can still improve more, especially as now we only hand in boards so this has to represent my process clearly.
By the end of this module I was really please with the work that I had produced, I really feel that I have put the effort in and had the quantity of work to support my brief. This project is one of the first that I have produced that I feel I have gained a understanding of a professional practice and the process of which I best work within my practice.
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