This year proved to be a challenge from the start. Having to write 10 initial briefs and a statement of intent to define who we are as designers was a struggle to begin with. As someone who finds it difficult to make decisions and hate's to make any commitments, this process took much longer than expected, I found it quite difficult to put things down to define who am as a designer especially as I felt that I wanted to pretty much do everything. The process of prioritising the things I wanted to focus on really helped clarify what I wanted to do a lot more, helping me define the types of briefs I wanted to work and what I aimed to achieve from this module.
My main focus for this module was to really explore and develop both my design and practical skills as a designer and produce some high quality work that would contribute towards my portfolio. I really wanted to experiment a bit more with print processes whilst developing my type and layout abilities, which I felt my selection of briefs really worked well towards. When it actually came down to the design practice, I did struggle a bit to make a start in the beginning. I managed to keep up with my schedule and produced the work for the crits on time, but wasn't entirely satisfied with the work I had produced. For the majority of the time I was undecided on several different design directions which stalled the process a bit and left myself in a negative mood to move onto other briefs. Inevitably, this left me a few days behind from an early stage, I felt that my work wasn't developing how I wanted to so decided to pick up the newsletter brief to allow myself to work on fresh material while I postponed the other one for a few days. I managed to complete the newsletter in a day and was selected for the final 3 to be reviewed, which gave me some confidence back. At this point I realised that I felt more comfortable working on subject matters that I did not select myself, which made me have second thoughts on my other briefs.
Moving on, I continued to work on my briefs with my doubts about the subject matters that I had picked. Some of the more successful briefs I worked on were the Dimsum and Ocon briefs, both were towards the end of the module. Due to the pressure of getting things completed, I didn't have as much time as I had planned to explore as many different routes as I had wanted. My design practice and the pace that I was working on changed midway through the module due to the time I had planned myself. It was comparable to the pace that I was working at during my placements over the summer, simply developing initial ideas within a day and moving on quite quickly to resolve certain briefs. This wasn't the ideal design process that I wanted to work for, but possibly the ones that I had produced the strongest work out of, which challenged my work ethics and preconception on how I should work.
My main weaknesses of this brief were probably the project management side of things, it was definitely a challenge to juggle several briefs at the same time, especially as I was also tempted to revise past briefs once I had resolved them. I aimed to work on 6-7 briefs for this module, these were a selection of long and short briefs with the intention to pick up a few live ones aswell so that I would have a variety of live, commercial and more culturally driven work to go towards my portfolio. Unfortunately, due to the poor judgement on durations for each brief, I was unable to pick up the competition briefs that I aimed to work on. I found myself constantly putting dates back due to printing and bad timing with events happening during this period, which didn't help, eventually leaving little time to start a further brief. In the end I decided to spend the time revising existing briefs rather than making a start to another small project.
The whole module has been a massive challenge for me as a designer, it really gave me taste of potentially what it would be like to become a freelance graphic designer minus all the admin jobs. For the next module and towards the next few months, I'd aim to really stick to my action plans and make more realistic schedules, considering things like printing time etc. Although I did enjoy the module, I was not satisfied with the quality of work I had produced. Looking back, I don't think the briefs I had written were particularly strong to begin with, I felt that my resolutions were viable design solutions for each brief, but lacked the flare that I was looking for in my work. In the next few weeks and coming up towards my FMP, I will aim to discuss with other professionals in regards to getting some advice on writing briefs that I would like to work on myself. I will also be looking out for more live briefs that I could engage in some form of a dialogue with, which I believe would add to my professional and design practice.
Wednesday, 15 December 2010
Tuesday, 14 December 2010
Monday, 13 December 2010
Wednesday, 1 December 2010
iPhone app final interface
Final design direction for the iphone / iphone alternative digital devices of the dimsum app. The visuals hopefully explain the interface and interactive element of the app and how people would navigate around it. The visual aspect of it implements the infographic icons and details as shown throughout the printed materials, which keep the whole project quite consistent. I had to however adjust the type and layout details such as point size for digital devices, arrangement of icons and text aswell as considering the arrangement of the information and how one page would change to another.
Iphone/ ipad app Home screen
Development for the homescreen and design direction for the iphone/ipad and equivalent digital devices. The designs needed to follow the same design direction of the printed materials but with more consideration to how it would function on these devices. I kept with the same shapes that make the inforgraphics for the poster as the main focus of some of these designs, but applying them with a bit more consideration rather than just pasting the printed materials onto an iphone platform.
Open publication - Free publishing - More iphone
These are the 4 relatively different design directions that I feel are the strongest in terms of the design direction and how they flow with the printed outcomes.
These are the 4 relatively different design directions that I feel are the strongest in terms of the design direction and how they flow with the printed outcomes.
Dimsum Booklet Final
The front & back design for the final dimsum booket before it is folded. This will be printed in full process colours on A2 matte stock.
Iphone interface development
ABOUT
Development of the [About] page, which details the apps main function and a background information about the subject of the app.
Final About interface
LIST VIEW
Development of the list view of dimsum dishes, with a brief description. Users will be able to scroll down for further dishes, press the grid view to access the gridded view of the dimsum dishes or select a dish which would direct them to a full screen/details for that dish.
GRID VIEW
Development of the gridded interface of the infographics. Aswell as having a list view of the dimsum dishes, the user would also get the option to change to a grid view, which prioritises the use of the infographics.
Development of the [About] page, which details the apps main function and a background information about the subject of the app.
Final About interface
Development of the list view of dimsum dishes, with a brief description. Users will be able to scroll down for further dishes, press the grid view to access the gridded view of the dimsum dishes or select a dish which would direct them to a full screen/details for that dish.
GRID VIEW
Development of the gridded interface of the infographics. Aswell as having a list view of the dimsum dishes, the user would also get the option to change to a grid view, which prioritises the use of the infographics.
SELECTED PAGE
Development of the individual pages for each dish, showing a more detailed breakdown of the information.
Dimsum iphone app icons
Icons for the iphone app for the home screen; a small detail but something that had to be considered still. I didn't want to design anything completely new as this would just sway from the existing materials. Instead I experimented a bit more with existing elements of the designs that I had already worked on, but applying it into this tiled space. The icon itself is just about 10mmx10mm in size so didnt want anything too complicated, such as having a photo; not only will this look quite disastrous, but also quite different from the current materials as I focused more on type and simple shapes, therefore that was the general direction for this aswell.
Eventually I decided to use the last of the 1st row, it's clean, simple and stands out due to it's black border around the circle which almost resembles a plate. I found some of the other way too complicated especially for such a small scale.
Eventually I decided to use the last of the 1st row, it's clean, simple and stands out due to it's black border around the circle which almost resembles a plate. I found some of the other way too complicated especially for such a small scale.
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