OUGD503: Responsive Design Process 2 - Summative Evaluation

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

Throughout the Responsive module I believe I have developed skills that will aide and inform my current and future professional practice.

For example, when working on a live brief such as the ‘Triple Dot Food Truck’ brief I completed I would be producing work for client who might have different design tastes to me and as a result my final outcome could be something I did not necessarily like.

2. What approaches to/methods of design production have you developed and how have they informed your design development process?

For the first studio brief of the Responsive module, we were required to complete a minimum five competition or live briefs one of which needed to be quite substantial brief.

The other four briefs I completed for the module were therefore quite small briefs with a quick turn around meaning I was sometimes completing a brief within a day or two. I believe this way of working has improved my development process, as I am now able to generate ideas quicker giving me more time to refine the final outcome.

Working on a several briefs at once has also improved my time and project management skills.

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

Personally throughout the Responsive module I believe my strengths have been in the concepts and ideas I have generated in response to the problem set by the brief.

For example, for The Body Shop brief that I completed as part of my individual practice I was required to produce a range deliverables; four product posters, one social campaign idea and a proposal for a new communication channel.

I therefore created one overlaying concept - positivity - that I could roll out across all of the deliverables in the brief and create a sense of continuity.

4. What weaknesses can you identify in your work and how will you address these in the future?

Within the work I produced for the Responsive module I believe my weaknesses where in the professional presentation particularly in the design boards I presented at crits.

For example, some of the mock-ups particularly for Triple Dot Food Truck and The Body Shop were quite poor in the quality and therefore do not display my designs in the most professional manner which I am disappointed in as these would be submitted to professional competitions and clients.

In future I will take more care in the presentation of my work in order to hopefully give me a better opportunity of being successful in live and competition briefs.

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

1. Improve quality of design boards - By giving more attention to the quality of my design boards I will not only be able to display my work in a professional manner but also to their best possible quality.

2. Work on more live briefs – Working on more live briefs which require a one on one professional relationship with the client will not give me more confidence in communicating, but also increase contacts in industry and aide my professional practice.

3. Complete more smaller briefs – I particularly enjoyed working on the smaller briefs during this module, by completing more smaller briefs on a range of different areas of design would inform my design practice

4. Experiment with media – Using these competition briefs as opportunity to experiment with media could potentially be good pieces for online portfolios etc.

5. Be more assertive in creative partnerships – Working within a partnership and being able to communicate my opinions in a professional manner is an important trait for a Graphic Designer.

OUGD503: Responsive Design Process 2 - Studio Brief 3: Project Report

OUGD503: Responsive Design Process 2 - Collaborative Practice Brief For Studio Brief 2

OUGD503: Responsive Design Process 2 - Individual Practice Brief For Studio Brief 1

OUGD503: Responsive Design Process 2 - Brief(s) For Studio Brief 1

OUGD505: Design Production 2 - Studio Brief 2: An Exhibition of Beer Culture Progress Critique

In order to assess our progress at this stage of the second studio brief of the Design Production module we were asked to attend a progress crit to present any printed / digital solutions and mock-up we had in order to receive feed back on how we could improve before the final deadline.

As we are quite far into this second brief, our work should be able to speak for it's self therefore as the format of the crit we were asked to leave our work on the table with our questions for specific areas of feedback.

My Questions:

1. What other deliverables would be appropriate for a beer festival?
2. What information would be appropriate / beneficial to include on the website?
3. How could this possibly be extended to an app?

My Feedback:

• Sometimes at beer festivals the organisers get a special beer glass made with the logo and perhaps the event dates
• Branding looking strong and constant - think you have quite a range of products and proposals already
• For the website some information about the beer and breweries taking part. Information about whether there will be any food available to buy
• Beer. Beer labels. Beer matts, promotion on tables and promotion for the event
• Where, when, how to get there. Do I need to book a hotel? And the venues, when they happen
• Branded beer. Uniforms. Beer glasses, beer kegs, beer taps, beer mats, menus, darts (can't have a few beers without a game of darts) wrist band
• I don't think it needs to be an app, alcohol and drinking is a social event
• Agree with the previous comments, could possibly look into products that are designed for when pulling a pint, for example the "scraper" bar tenders use that flattens the froth on the top, could be an interesting product that could be branded, or even sold as a novelty item
• Perhaps consider changing the map on the back of the beer mat to match your colour scheme. As the pink you have used looks slightly odd
• Beer pong! You could include games so that you can interact with you audience more - design the mats to play on etc.
• Back of beer mat needs to be drawn yourself as it is too pixelated 

Although I felt at this stage in the brief I am in quite a good position in terms of the amount of deliverables I have produced, recently I have been stuck in a rut with the designing and wasn't really sure what else I could produce or where to take the brief in order to ultimately had a feasible event. Therefore I found the progress extremely useful as I was given lots of ideas on possible deliverables I could produce.

OUGD505: Design Production 2 - Studio Brief 3: Alternative Movie Poster

For our third and final studio brief of the Design Production 2 module we were asked to design and produce a two colour print for a given Jack Nicholson film. These poster would then make up the Level 04/05 poster exhibition and will also be submitted to the Alternative Movie Poster website.

Requirements:

For the exhibition on 22nd April: Print must be at A4 scale and must only be two colours plus stock

For submission on 21st May: Print can be enlarged for submission purposes

Each member of the class was given a Jack Nicholson which we would explore literal and lateral responses to, I was given the film Hells Angels On Wheels. To begin the design process I began by researching into the film itself.

• 1967 American biker film
• Tells the story of a gas-station attendant with a bad attitude who finds life more exciting after he is allowed to hang out with a chapter of the Hells Angels outlaw motorcycle club
• Moody gas station attendant who is looking for more excitement
• Soon Poet is riding with the angels and living their lifestyle of violent debauchery
• Rating 5.1/10

 

I order to get a better understanding of the film I then watched it, whilst screen-shotting what I felt where the most pivotal moments and taking notes of any quotes I could possibly incorporate into my poster design.

• "Better to rule in Hell than to serve in Heaven"
• "You ain't no angel yet"

Existing movie posters for the film

I order to get inspiration on how I could produce a response which represented my film visually and the conventions of a film poster I began collecting examples of alternative movie posters for existing films.

From this research I discovered that many of the resolutions where purely image based and did not rely on type as much to represent the film, perhaps this is because films a visual and one simple image would have more effect on the audience than a sentence of type.

Design Idea #1

In my first design idea for the movie poster, I experimented with a quote from the film "Better to rule in Hell than to serve in Heaven" which I personally felt captured the essence of the story.

Through the research I collected I found that a lot of the movie posters relied on visuals to appeal to the audience and therefore I tried to represent the words 'Hell' and 'Heaven' within the colour and typeface I chose to make it more visual.

Although I liked the idea of using the quote from the film within my final design solution, I do not think it would be appropriate in terms of a movie poster to have the quote in a larger point size than title of the actual film and therefore I explored another design idea.

Design Idea #2

Similarly to the existing posters I collected as part of my research, I chose one simplistic image - a halo - which I personally felt would represent the film.

I particularly liked the idea of using two halos within my design, to not only represent angels but also two wheels however when I tried this it didn't look aesthetically pleasing.

For my final design I have referenced both the 'Heaven' and 'Hell' aspects of the title, Heaven through the halo imagery I have incorporated and Hell through the deep red I have used which is commonly associated with Hell.

Final Alternative Movie Poster

Submission to Alternative Movie Poster

Two design boards which document the research, process and design decisions I undertook throughout the design process of our third studio brief.