OUGD102: Personal Evaluation and Reflection

Design Process has moved my work and my taught me valuable lessons in time management whilst i have learnt new working skills. i have found this module much more challenging than the previous. gather and collecting research is actually quite hard and collecting relevant and interesting research is even harder. The collection of 100 photographs at the start of the module was and as it sounds fairly easy and simple although trying to print them all out did prove a challenge. The development from there led to looking at information looking at clouds. from this i did initially find it hard to gather information. starting at wikipedia helped me gain a little knowledge about technical term whilst i developed my skills in photoshop by producing my first panoramic imagery. from this i collected in surveys and imagery of clouds, found out about social groups relating to clouds and some spectacular cloud photogrpahy. Gathering resrach at this point seemed easy as there was no direction into where it was going, little was i to know at this point it would get on top of me very soon.
From the information that I gathered on clouds we then directed our attention to the week on the brief "What If...” this brief involved our group capabilities. from the information that I got on clouds, it was analyzed by several people and I received opinions, facts, things I could look at, and others, we finalized this to one, 'clouds make people sad' and from there I was put into a group with Liam, Craig and Chloe and we established that our link was d 'melancholy'.
Starting a new research project was refreshing; working on such a mundane subject for a long period of time can become laborious and frustrating at times. The subject of melancholy was completely new to myself and so l lacked even the basic Knowledge of what melancholy meant, never mind interpreting it however after grasping the subject by talking to my peers I quickly gained confidence approaching a subject that seemed to not inspire a great deal of 'happiness' so to speak, it seemed that looking at melancholy could quickly become depressing. I intended however to make the most of a dire situation and I feel I helped keep up a certain amount of morale within the group by taking the initiative to book the group into a session in the lighting studio to help kick start our project and it gave us something to look forward to, having all of us not used such facilities previous. This was thoroughly enjoyed by all of us and we learnt lots of new skills as graphic designers and came closer as a group of people I myself would love to use this again to help make my photographs look more professional, or even use it personally. The outcome of this project was images to make people think positive. I think we could have produced a better idea it we had pulled together and addressed our lack of research, but I think we learned a lot about group communication and sharing research with effective time planning.
Both of these briefs l really enjoyed despite maybe a dry sense of interesting material. After this brief we started night from scratch, selecting a new subject of research. After a short group session we each chose subjects areas to research. Mine, looking at dust. Having worked on the past two briefs on this module and studied subjects that may normally be struck as mundane yet produced interesting work from I felt it would be logical to do the same again. I have never approached a subject to do with hygiene before. The Idea of researching dust seems challenging, to research something that most people don't know about or I have ever seen being approached before, it is information that is new and what more is exciting than that?
I started looking at basic sources via the Internet and came with basic information as well as interesting articles such as a dust orientated physics game which was really interesting and gave hours of endless entertainment me initial inspiration to design a swatch guide to creating colours of dust. At this point I did begin looking toward to design ideas which I think was a mistake. I think I should have looked more toward simple forms of research such as the dust drawings I came across later on; I think this could have taken the book in a completely different direction, possibly a missed opportunity at this point. I think this was actually the point where research should have been considered and not a final products to which I jumped at the chance of making.
The initial fixed format book that we were supposed to produce was a bit of a dissapointment having tried to process large amounts of information and getting nowhere, for nearly two weeks after the deadliine the book was produced. to a high standard maybe but the amount of work that initial book took, took its toll on the time I had for everything else. I had two weeks less on the freeform book that I was to produce. not very good time planning but i had no other options, processing time had become a major factor which I feel I had really overlooked on this project. beside from this setback there were others that i didn't count on. the freeform book that i was to produce could not be duplex printed which meant for a design think with only a day to go. I think i came togther in the end and a successful idea was there. Throughtout the design process of the book I have learnt only a few skills but learnt to be tolerant and patient in order to get what i want out of something, if I want perfection it does take that little bit longer and some deep thought aswell. A book of photoshop brushes for graphic designs was something that i think couldbecome a reality and i would really like to try the success of my brushes out on the market and see peoples reactions. I feel that i really have turned something that is completely useless into something that has a purpose. the beutification of something vulgar and disgusting into something beautiful is to me quite an achievement. I really want to get back on this project and see what can be made of it.