End of Module evaluation

1.  What skills have you developed through this module and how effectively do you think you have applied them?
Skills that I have developed that are exclusive to this module are mainly research and categorization skills as I have never done a project that requires so much research before reaching the design stage. I collected a lot of research throughout but I should have been more critical with what I collected as I ended up with so much research it was hard to focus on a particular part of it. The ‘How to’ project helped develop my group skills and I think that we communicated as a group well and the design and development process felt much more professional than the first group project we did. A skill that I have applied a lot more throughout the ‘100 things’ brief is continuous evaluation of my work, identifying what worked and what didn’t forced me to revisit pieces to see if they worked together, change colour schemes and change whole designs
2. What approaches to/methods of design production have you developed and how have they informed your design development process?
With the ‘how to’ brief my design development was focussed on creating an authentic Victorian aesthetic, which was a new approach to design production for me. I found it difficult to replicate a style that I was not familiar with, especially trying to replicate a traditional style digitally. I had to take a lot of influence from previous designs to get the right typefaces and layout style.  With the ‘100 things’ brief when it came to designing I felt like I rushed into it a bit as I knew I only had 2 weeks to make 10 products, this resulted in work that I didn’t like and ended up spending more time changing into something I was happy with. When I was generating design sheets I got the general idea of what I was going to communicate but didn’t explore the different aesthetic possibilities in as much depth as I should. From this I have learnt that it doesn’t take as long producing a good image if you have a clear idea, and if I spent more time working on in depth design sheets so I knew exactly what it was I was producing I would have saved time overall as I wouldn’t have to redesign products. In the future I will spend the majority of time working by hand rather than panicking and getting on a computer.
3. What strengths can you identify in your work and how have/will you capitalise on these?
The product that I have been most pleased with from this module was a poster for ‘100 things’ that was about Dr.Pepper rotting teeth. I think it worked because it was to the point, it involved a bit of viewer engagement but not a lot of commitment, as in there wasn’t too much information that people would get bored of it. So I will focus on producing more work like this, products that communicate in as few words as possible that are clear and concise.
4. What weaknesses can you identify in your work and how will you address these in the future?
In the ‘How to’ brief the main weakness is that the posters don’t make immediate sense which may cause people to dismiss them. For future designs I will prioritise communicating a quick and clear message and then hope the viewer reads further, rather than trying to entice them in by making them wonder what it is about and then it making sense. The biggest problem I encountered with the ‘100 things’ brief was that the information I was communicating was too broad. It seemed concise when I thought of it as ‘things the adverts don’t tell you’ but when each piece of information was separated in to different products it seemed to be about lots of different things from healthy eating, dishonest advertising and consumerism which caused the final products to be disjointed and not work as a series very well. In the future I need to be very specific about what the problem is I am addressing and not try to communicate too many things at once.
5. Identify five things that you will do differently next time and what do you expect to gain from doing these?
Mainly I am going to dedicate a lot more time to design sheets and exploring all the potential ideas before diving into designing digitally, I expect to see work and ideas that go beyond the standard outcomes and experiment more with using different media rather than being restricted to designing digitally and printing digitally every time. I also don’t want to produce design ideas on the computer as this wastes a lot of time and the ideas aren’t very good.  I will also focus on stripping down my topic to as basic and as clear as possible so I know exactly what it is I am trying to say and how I am going to say it.
6.How would you grade yourself on the following areas: (please indicate using an ‘x’)  5= excellent, 4 = very good, 3 = good, 2 = average, 1 = poor
	1	2	3	4	5
Attendance					x
Punctuality					x
Motivation					x
Commitment					x
Quantity of work produced				x
Quality of work produced			x
Contribution to the group				x
The evaluation of your work is an important part of the assessment criteria and represents a percentage of the overall grade. It is essential that you give yourself enough time to complete your written evaluation fully and with appropriate depth and level of self-reflection. If you have any questions relating to the self evaluation process speak to a member of staff as soon as possible.