Monday, 23 April 2012

Design Principles: Self-Evaluation


Overall from this module i feel that i have developed a lot skills into the theoretical side of designing. Learning about the effects of type and how you can alter certain elements through such things as kerning and tracking etc has altered my designing as i can produce what i want  effectively and professionally. I feel similarly about learning about colour and the principles of combining colours and how this can alter how it not only appears but the communication. This has been something that i have had to consider when designing and printing as it can really effect what my design is communicating. For example when choosing colours for my What is a line? aztec pattern i needed to consider my audience and context before picking a palette and when designing the promotional posters how the colour patterns effected one another and its legibility. 
I found learning about grid and layout particularly useful as previously when designing i had no structure whereas now i am more inclined to use a grid to layout my work to create a professional and fluent layout throughout my work. This has not only helped the atheistic quality  but also aided the design process as from working with design sheets to producing the design has become more accurate,focused and neater. This is a strength i hope to develop further as i no there is still a lot to improve on and will be very beneficial to my designs and work method.
A strength i have noticed in this module is problem solving as when doing the hotdog booklet brief it took a lot of prototypes, practices and tests in order to get the design right and laying out correctly. Although i couldn't do the original idea i was able to twist the design in a different direction and still be successful as i sold five books at the book fair!
One weakness i have found in this module is design sheets, i feel i have been designing more digitally rather than sketching out enough ideas first, particularly with What is a line?. In the future i will push myself to draw out and write down ideas before i jump into designing digitally. Another weakness i struggled with in design principles was getting my head round the seven contrasts of colour and the differences between the two. I understood the presentation to a point but when it came to applying that myself i feel i struggled.
If i was able to go back and change something in this module i think it would be to be more practical and hands on with my work. I feel a lot of my work is becoming digital and print and i'm loosing the skill to create something with my hands. I enjoyed doing the hotdog booklet and was really excited about the brief but i feel i could of pushed it further and done a lot more with it as the brief was so open.
With What is a line? i would change the way i created my designs, i feel that the way i used illustrator to create the images and patterns was very amateur and this made my life very difficult when trying to make the pattern continuous. I feel there is a lot left to learn on illustrator even in the basic tools.


5= excellent, 4 = very good, 3 = good, 2 = average, 1 = poor


Attendance - 4

Punctuality - 4

Motivation - 3

Commitment - 3

Quantity of work produced - 3

Quality of work produced - 2

Contribution to the group - 3

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