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.