Evaluation/Reflection of first term

I found this first term very challenging as the briefs were very open in a sense that I was able to create designs from my own ideas, I feel that I have developed as a designer since last year as I am working harder on each project so therefore I am pleased with how I am working. I learnt a lot this term whilst working on each of the VCC2 briefs, the main thing that I learnt from each brief was that if you come up with a strong idea at the start of the project then you have a stronger chance of producing a strong final outcome. I feel that this was my main problem within my work apart from the Animal packaging design where I felt I started with a strong idea and also showed strong development work. The greetings card project was the one where I felt that I lacked in by not coming up with a strong idea at the beginning, this really effected my work as a had little time to come up with my finished outcomes after I thought of what I will be producing for my greetings  card designs. This was my own fault because after the critique for the Look Again/Think Again project I started by developing my poster instead of working on the greetings card project, this was a big mistake and really had an impact on my greetings card designs. 

Reflecting on my work helps me a lot because it makes me realize what I have done wrong and how I can improve this next time, so therefore I intend to continue reflecting on myself and my own work throughout this blog to help me improve as a designer.

This is a website that I found called Sitesquared, I looked into the portfolio page of this site and found that the way the designer has positioned the images on the page looks really strong and effective to the viewer as they are not so small which makes them look bold. I also think that the rounded edge of each thumbnail gives a quality finish to each image. I really liked the look of this website so I started to produce a design similar to this. The image below the website is the design that I created for the portfolio page of my site. The small black squares will be where each thumbnail will be positioned. I looked at the CSS of the website Sitesquared to see how they positioned each square, I then created the squares in illustrator and made a few adjustments to the size and the positioning of them to suite my page. 

VCC2 Results

Today I received my results for Visual Communication in context 2,  I was pleased with the feedback that I received but I know that I need to improve my final designs. I feel that I put a lot of effort into each project and this was shown in the feedback that I received. 

Each of my grades were between the 40-49 mark which isn't were I want to be, so I really need to consider the feedback I received and reflect on it. My overall grade was 46, I can understand why I received this grade and I do agree with all of the feedback that I received for each project, but this doesn't mean that I am satisfied with this mark. In fact I am quite disappointed  in myself as I was hoping to achieve better than this, although I feel I worked hard on each project I know that I kept making the wrong decisions, I feel that my research for each project was well produced, its just my final product that needs producing to a professional standard. 

I really want to achieve a strong final grade at the end of the year and to do this I intend to put as much effort as I have for this project, but to also take on board the feedback that I received and to put this into practice in the up and coming projects. 

I started drawing out some designs in my sketchbook for my websites first page, I took some ideas from two different websites that I found during my research. After drawing some layouts in my sketchbook I decided to draw up my design in illustrator to see what it would look like on the computer screen. I think the design looks a bit plain and boring as there is nothing to it, but this only the start of a design so I wasn't expecting to create anything spectacular at this stage. Also I need to work on my banner as the typography needs rendering, I intend to do this by experimenting with different typefaces, positioning of the type and also the colour.  

After the tutorial with Mike yesterday we looked at other adverts which are aimed at a similar age group as the one that we are aiming our campaign at. After looking at these adverts we gained lots of inspiration and ideas of what we could base our concept around. The best idea that we thought of was to use sexual innuendo to create a funny, funky and humorous poster campaign. This idea went down well with Mike and we were told to look into this concept further, and to also start thinking of tag-lines, typography and also visual ideas.

Today myself Alistair and Robert had a tutorial with Michael Ryan about the competition brief that we had chosen. We started off by explaining what brief we had chosen to work on and also explained to Michael what the requirements of the brief were. We then showed him what visual research we had gathered which was mainly other advertisements aimed at people aged between 16-25 year olds. We did explain that we were going to focus on the fact that the product is only 99p but then we decided to change this by focusing on our target audience. Michael did say that we could still show that the product is only 99p but it is good that we are now focusing on our target audience, so we now need to look at how other companies have communicated with a similar target audience, we also need to research other drink companies which use a fun and funky way of communicating with there audience.  

Today myself, Alistair and Robert had a tutorial with Neil about the live brief that we have chosen. We started of by explaining which brief we have chosen and what we have been working on so far, we explained that we have gathered some knowledge about the competitors of PJ smoothies such as innocent and tropicana and then began to go into detail about our concept which we thought of which was interacting the fruit with the bottle and making sure that the viewer knows that the smoothie is only 99p. After discussing some ideas we were told to research into our target audience, the brief is is asking of us to aim the campaign at students aged between 16-25 year olds so therefore this will be our target audience. We were told to look at other adverts which are aimed at this particular age group to get an idea of what to produce, and also what interests people in this age group. So for thursday we intend to have a lot of visual research to show Michael Ryan who will be coming in to help us with the brief.