OUGD203 - Design Practice(part2) Evaluation.

1. What skills have you developed through this module and how effectively do you think you applied them?

Within this module I wanted to further my skills with the screen-printing process and the Sainsbury's brief enabled me to do so. To begin with I knew that I wanted to actually create my Sainsbury's bag and in doing so I would have to look in to the different methods of printing on to material. So another skill that I gained from this was screen printing on to material which is very much similar to the normal process with the exception that you use a different meshed screen and don't use the vacuum screen beds. I definately want to continue to improve my screen print skills and to further this in my next year.

My skills within time management were definatly tested within this module but to keep this on track I decided to create a timetable to plan out my time throughout the module. I tried to stick this as much as possible but still things didn't go according to plan.

Within the briefs that I chose I felt that I could also push my skills within the use of colour and simple illustrations. For example within the postcard brief I decided to limit myself to just using two colours and simple line illustrations. I felt that giving myself these constraints to work against allowed me to produce designs more effciently since this brief was so broad.

I also re-gained a new skill in sewing, I was abit rusty to start with so a few practice runs were needed before I started on the real bag but I feel that my final bags turned out well in the end.

2. What approaches to generating work and solutions to problems have you developed and how have they helped?

One thing that proved to be helpful when designing for the postcard brief was that I set myself some limitations within my work to create some focus as the brief was so broad. I decided to limit the use of just two colours and to not over complicate the illustrations.

For my feelgood brief this was a challenge in a sense as the brief was to promote awareness of the brand and to spread feelgoodness. So researching in to thier brand ethics was important to gain an understanding of what they already to do make their consumers feelgood. Another important factor was to find out what other people did to make them and others feelgood.

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

I found that the Sainsbury's brief was the most successful out of the three briefs I chose as I enjoyed creating the artwork for the bags and producing prints for it. It was also beneficial as I got to learn a new printing technique and I was able to produce some screen prints for my portfolio. I am also really pleased with the bag that I made and quality of the print on to the bag as I was unsure how this was going to turn out. I also created a hessian bag aswell and printed on to that too. But because its more of an open weave I was unsure how my design would come out after printing, however it was worth the risk as it came out ok.

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

I would have liked to have had the chance to reconsider the duration of the briefs I chose. As I would have liked to have spend 4 weeks on the Sainsbury's brief and had that as my main brief, for then to have the feelgood one to just 3 weeks. As I really enjoyed the Sainsbury's brief and I could have progressed that one further if I had the extra time that I spent on feelgood brief.

5. Identify five things that you will do differently next time and what do you expect to gain from doing these?

• Improve on my photography skills when presenting my final resolutions.
  
• Time management is still an issue so to address this I plan to continue to use timetables to make sure my time managment is kept on track.
  
• Organise my work from the start of the module instead of leaving it til the end.
• To have used screen printing to produce my postcards, as I feel that the ideas that I had could have worked well within this process.
• Explore other ideas even if they don't turn out so well and make design decisions early on so that I can develop it further.
  

6.How would you grade yourself on the following areas:
5= excellent, 4 = very good, 3 = good, 2 = average, 1 = poor

Attendance - 4

Punctuality - 4

Motivation - 4

Commitment - 4

Quantity of work produced - 4

Quality of work produced - 4

Contribution to the group - 3