I am writing this having just spilt a large Costa Coffee over myself. A hot Italian blend penetrated the jean and most of my skin. Maybe next time I will chose a different location to write my evaluation.
Graphic Design in my third year of study has been influenced by placement experience and understanding my potential career path. Having experience in an advertising agency made me understand that even though I had the fundamentals of being in an advertising environment, it is my other skills that make me what I am. So on top of my idea and concept processes I also recognise my abilities that lye within typography and layout, moving image, colour and print management and basic web design. Becoming more advanced at these skills means I can start to become a well-rounded designer. By this I am not saying a want to be a Jack-of-all-trades, but become more expandable to applying my work across various channels. This potentially helps me as a freelancer or an ideal candidate for an agency to take on. One of the key areas for me is introducing type digitally to my audience.
The start of the 3rd year of study allowed us to explore, in terms of self-direction. This was in the form of writing our own briefs with tutor input. The briefs I chose where to re-ignite some of the candles that had been blown out towards the end of the second year of studying Graphic Design. The glamorous witty thought processes and outcomes of advertising drew me in. I wanted to be the person that came up with every idea from Luzers Archive (a popular advertising magazine). I was quick to learn from my work experience that a simple witty press ad doesn’t work solely to sell a product. Without going into detail there are some principles from my advertising experience that I will lend to my thought processes and concept building in graphic design practice. Below evaluates the briefs I set.
The first focus point was inspired by the ISTD competition brief, Type and the environment. I wanted to produce a series of typefaces that were inspired by the environment. The surrounding city of Leeds became my grid on which I manipulated into language. The main focus here was the photo documentation. They became snapshots of what I see in the environment everyday. This process then allows me to spend the following day sketching out the thoughts and seeing which have potential. The outcome was 5 individual typefaces, some more legible than others. This became a point of interest to me. Because of the diverse outcome it proved that I could start to apply my work to various channels. This being display, editorial, exhibition based and within that it could be practical, decorative or in-between? The design of the Envirad typeface became the most legible; it was one of the most laboured outcomes I worked on, the first ‘realistic’ typeface I am producing. I enjoyed the process of working with the type on and off the screen, making the appropriate changes. This is potentially one of the most successful types as it served as both decorative and practical for editorial design. I had some good feedback from these typefaces and think it is too easy to try and follow the same processes again. I believe that when you take on a new brief you can have an overarching way of approaching it, however I think if you try and follow the same patterns then there is potential for the work to become stale. That is why when I approach briefs in the future it will be more about new ways of understanding how type could be made or used and less about following the same steps you took to producing the last piece of good work.
The third and fourth focus points were about designing something for web and having it function in print also. This was about me developing my design skills, me progressing to be the adaptable designer. I had worked on print, now I wanted to transfer this to web. It resulted in a blog-site titled Give Us Something To Talk About. This was a forum for people to discuss a given title, however just like the coffee, this brief was not well balanced which meant part of it was spilt. It was like trying to put cream in you coffee, it curdled a bit. The problem was not planning the considerations; instead I was more interested in the designing for web without considering how it would be transferred over to print. I needed to pay more attention to the colour matching, what files to use for web, having it saved for print and web, the context, which typefaces work for both. The parts that went well were the branding of the site. It was important to have a consistent theme through each page. This was aided by the colour scheme and use of type and layout. More curdling came in the form of choosing the titles. I was more interested in writing witty and relevant to the Guardian titles than taking an open-minded approach. In future I will start to select the beans more openly and roast them without thinking about it too much.
I should take on some of Tony Davidson's approaches,
-Stop doing things the way they have been done before
-Don't begin by writing ideas
-Dig Deeeep
-Keep doing things you've not done before
But also keep some practical ones of my own,
-Keep learning flash and After effects
-Make more of an effort to learn Dreamweaver
-Find more interesting grids, anywhere. Environment, body, science, buildings, the skins of bananas e.t.c
-How can type be introduced to people digitally
-How can type be introduced environmentally