This brief has been my defining moment on the course thus far, not only have I felt confident with what I am doing for the first time on the course, but I am designing for passion for another interest of mine as well as gaining new knowledge and skills.
This module has given me the drive and focus I needed so badly in the earlier days of the course, with my added skill points bestowed upon me from Anthony - which to be honest was the key thing learnt from the collaboration: time management. Rather than try to just get by not knowing what day it is, what is timetabled, and not planning appropriately left me in more than a few sticky situations looking and being useless. Since the collaboration, I have managed to better structure my time, allowing for a balance of work and play which has given me a confidence boost, given me more sleep, which has, overall benefited me much more as an individual and a designer.
The initial research was quite fun to do - as well as being informative to the design work - since it was all directed at a subject I already know a great deal about,but had to collect and collate opinions from a broader context, which/who turned out to be the people I was aiming my products at. If I had not found out about Ashley Browning, I would of not gained the inspiration to use the full garment as a piece of illustration, so undoubtedly, if my contextual research had not been done, this entire project would of been a colossal failure.
Since I was working with my own set of skills, abilities and knowledge prior to the brief, it became much easier to plan out and know what was achievable by when and how. The digital side of my project was something that I was quite confident with at first, especially at the prospect of designing, developing and proposing the website which turned out to take alot more time than first expected. I would of really liked to actually make the website in Dreamweaver for submission, but knew that with my lack of proficiency with the software, I would of wasted alot more time trying to make it than actually making the website. Although now hand-in is over, I would really like to make this real, I have had alot of interest from friends in the work produced which not only gives strength to the project, but also the effective design gone into the site and clothing respectively.
The physical products themselves were not exactly what I wanted, due to the printing place being arther limited in terms of colour choices, hoodie colours, and me not having enough money to buy more as to have 3 fully finished, boxed products. I decided not to screen print them, as it did not fit in with the clinical style of the illustrations, and could of jeopardised the look of the clothing, as well as costing me precious hours in the print room. I was impressed by the feedback at the crit though, despite the Metal Gear t-shirt being 3 colours wrong, overprinted and irritatingly inaccurate, it was obvious the main success was the Link hoodie, my choice of the bottle green hoodie with the burgundy and sunflower yellow seemed to work well with each other.
The one thing I think that may have an impact on my grade is the lack of physical development work since alot of my work was digitally produced and developed on screen as opposed to alot of post production sketches and visualisation. The main reason for this is because the main body of work was to be produced for screen instead of print, which I have tried to make clear throughout the project, with the exception of the boards, products and packaging, so hopefully in this respect the reason for not having as much development work is justified. The most successful in development terms was the website, as the main body of illustrations was generated, it was only a matter of refining the initial ideas down, but whereas the website has evolved over the entirety of the brief, being adjusted according to the critical review during the timetabled sessions.
Another main improvement that I have started to demonstrate on this brief alongside being much better organised, is the ability to record and document all aspects of the project, instead of being lazy and thinking about blogging it later on, I have managed to keep on top of the posting, which has greatly benefitted me, allowing to make better decisions and design to a much higher standard by means of much better critical analysis.
Things I will do differently:
Blogger -
Try to keep my blog up to date, but keep it tidier, with less scattered posts, more critical evaluation and learn the basic HTML I need to be able to keep everything aligned and the right size.
Context -
I think that I needed alot more external sources, more critical links to my work rather than relying on the knowledge I had in my head as to ensure my work is well informed and contextualised enough.
Production -
I think instead of all the proposals I could of done alot more mocking up and making physical objects, since alot of the time my work was just print outs on sheets of A paper.
Attendance 4
Punctuality 3
Motivation 5
Commitment 3
Quantity of work produced 3
Quality of work produced 4
Contribution to the group 5
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