OUGD201 Module Self-Evaluation

In completing your summative evaluation you should focus on the following areas:

1. your ability to select develop and evaluate a range of appropriate source material gathered through a breadth of appropriate research methods

I feel my research for this module has been successful, both on the 'what is good' brief and for the print booklet. I have mostly use secondary research methods in the module, largely books to learn about print processes and the internet to learn all about space travel and space food. For my graphical responses I used both these methods to learn about 1950's style graphics, especially the typefaces and colours used in this decade. I mostly used primary research to gather opinion from my peers on appropriate design direction.

2. the level of investigation and experimentation into appropriate production media,
processes and technologies.

I have learnt a lot about the technicalities of print during the course of the module. I now understand the differences between digital, lithograph, flexo, etc, printing and have an understanding of how to prepare a document ready to go to a printer. Learning about spot colours and the various special finishes available in commercial print was very interesting and is sure to inform my design decisions from now onwards. 

3. the breadth and quality of practical skills, ideas and design development. 

I feel I have built on my design development skills and I have refined a way of working that can bring me creative solutions in a more systematic way. I have been using design sheets for visual idea generation and mostly Adobe Illustrator for working up and finalizing these ideas. I am also much happier using indesign to create page layouts. I used this exclusively for my 16 page print book.

4. the documentation, organisation and presentation of your work for this module. 

5. the success of your final products in relation to the briefs.

For this module we submitted a pdf of highlights from our development rather than all the design sheets for the first time. I was dubious about how this would work, but in reality I was pleased to be able to highlight important moments in my project and have an overall 'neater' record of my working, I feel this has been very successful. I was less happy with my design boards I submitted, while they contained the information I wanted, the design, and particular the execution needed more care and I was disappointed to realize I had run out of time to improve these. My print booklet was more successful. We only had to submit a few double page spreads for this but as I had designed it to be a fairly small format I wanted to print and make it. I think this was worth the extra effort, although the print quality isn't great because it is only a laser printed due to practicality. My final space drink product design worked quite well but actually making and photographing this proved to be unexpectedly difficult. I had to photograph it twice because the silver packaging on a white background was confusing the auto exposure on my camera and compensating for this in photoshop resulted in noise and problems with colour shift. If I was doing this again I would plan for a lot more time for product mockup and photography.

In addition you will need to identify 5 things that you will do different next time and comment on any other issues relating to this module.

1) Not get ill. Unfortunately I wasn't really very well for quite an extended time during this module and work was left to mount up, causing a rush in the last two weeks when I felt good, the outcomes did suffer.

2) Balance projects better. I think I could have spent more time with the 16 page book, this got sidelined too often while I was working on the 'what is good' brief.

3) Experiment more. I have learnt a lot of print techniques but not really 'played' with them enough, yet.

4) Do things right the first time. Not something I usually have a problem with, but in this module I had to re-do the final product photography and also some page layouts and other design work I had completely messed up and only realized on reflection. More speed less haste.

5) Get my Illustrator skills up to scratch. I am still having far too many "how can I do this" moments which is slowing down my working. I plan to find a book or some internet tutorials to help brush up my skills.

What is good: All about space food

At the moment my ideas are focused around using space food as my product to design packaging for to answer this brief. To understand what exactly I am designing for I have done more research to learn all about food in space. I will outline what I have found in this blog post.

'Being an astronaut is Good' was the starting point for this brief, but I have found quite a few reasons why space food itself could be considered 'good' even if consumed on earth;

• It is highly nutritious, certainly a space snack would be better for you than a typical chocolate bar.
• All food must have proven long shelf life (one year minimum for ISS food)
• The packaging is light-weight and designed to minimize waste, essential in space, ethical on earth.
• All packaging is tested to be non toxic, even in extreme conditions, including the glues and inks etc.

There are various pouches, packs and tins used for packaging space food, some are very different to typical supermarket food, but others are near identical, most notably the Capri Sun drinks pouches which NASA themselves use in a modified form. See this .pdf for an excellent summery of space food packaging by Dr Charles Bourland, a NASA space food consultant. Note there seems to a complete lack of graphic design in these example packages, clearly not a NASA priority.
Also see packaging brochure.pdf and this nice tongue in cheek history of space food well worth a read

NASA space food

Capri-Sun, this packaging is modified slightly and used by NASA for their own drinks.

What is good: Space clothing

I have discussed space food in my last posting, clothing is my other main focus of research at the moment. I have found that apart from space suits used for space-walking, the actual clothing astronauts wear day to day on a typical mission is actually quite low-tech. I found full details of the kit Russian cosmonauts use click here , the American equipment is similar. This is good news as I could easily market a t-shirt that could genuinely be used in space. If I decided to use clothing as a product, then I think the way it would be packaged will have the biggest impact on creating interest and making it appear exiting and space age.

So.. I have looked at creative tee-shirt packaging, there actually is a lot of stuff out there,

Packaged as meat from Butchrd Apparel

Packaged as a sandwich from The T-shirt Deli

Packaged as explosive by that nice bloke who gave a talk in our college

Of course none of these are remotely space-age but thats down to me to get thinking about!

What is good: ideas and research

Well this project is taking shape now, at least in my own head but I haven't shared much so far on my blogs, so this will be an update posting.

My initial idea that 'being an astronaut is good' caused me some problems when it came to answering 'Why?' There were lots of ways I could take this, but the way I wanted to investigate was that space travel is good because it shows us an optimistic future and expands the horizons for humanity. I have researched the enthusiasm the public in general had for the apollo program in the 1950's and 60's. There seems less interest now in human space travel, but actually it could be a dawning of a new age in human space travel with the advent of space tourism, this time Anyone can go into space (if they have enough money) not just state selected astronauts. So this brings me to the direction for me project: Products that a space tourism company could sell to supplement and create interest in trips into space.

So far I have looked at space food, and space clothing as two obvious directions for products that can be sold for use on earth as well as in space, I think there should also be some sort of promotion attached to these so people could collect tokens, or enter draws for a trip to space with every purchase.

So first up, space food research. I have found plenty of references to actual space food that was marketed to the public in the 60's and 70's. Most notable, the American drink 'Tang' has long traded off links to NASA: details on wikipedia Even more interesting is the story of 'Space Food Sticks'. These were a energy bar type snack developed for use by astronauts. They were also sold to the public and were popular for a while before disappearing from shelves in the late 70's. Interestingly, these have recently been successfully relaunched by a new company and can now be bought online. See history pages at http://spacefoodsticks.com/

Its great to see a product that trades on enthusiasm for human space travel is out there being sold. Redesigning a food product like this to bring it up to date and branding it to a space tourism company is one idea I am developing.

Original space food sticks advert c.1970