End of module Evaluation

Adele Pierce
OUIL 503 Responsive

Summative Evaluation

I have found this module both challenging and quite fun to be involved in. I think in terms of professional practice and experience of live briefs it has really benefitted me; working to schedules and interpreting different arts into illustration that I would not usually consider. I have explored different formats that I have not necessarily been comfortable with which I feel will benefit me in future modules.
I feel I have really stepped out of my comfort zone and experimented with different approaches within this module, which sometimes I enjoyed and has paid off, but others have been really challenging and not something I have been particularly interested in in the end.

I think this module has shown me that I can adapt to different techniques; and that my work can be taken across various formats that I had not considered before. It has taught me to be more open towards briefs and try tackle them in a way that I will enjoy rather than restricting myself to things I think suit my style more. There have been certain briefs such as ‘WrappedCo’ where I turned it on it’s head and made it my own using character design rather than pattern.
The brief I enjoyed the most was ‘FilmDoo’ because I was really happy with the finished result and it had emotion embedded into it. The brief I feel I will get the most satisfaction out of is ‘Propercorn’ because it is an up and rising brand. Seeing their packets everywhere and knowing that I was involved in that in some way excites me. On the other end of the scale some briefs have been a nightmare such as Spice UK where I was asked to change my design a multiple amount of times. Yorkshire Tea I started to lose interest in half way through because I had a great concept to begin with but just felt individually I could not express my ideas well enough and perhaps needed to collaborate on that with an animator instead.

If I were to start the module again I could have approached the ‘Propercorn’ brief individually, and used the Yorkshire Tea brief as a chance to collaborate with an animator, see how they work with briefs and gain a stronger skill set. I really enjoyed collaborating with Hannah I learnt a lot of digital skills and experimented with colour palettes more. It was really nice to exchange ideas back and forth and bounce off each other. As we both had the deadline to work towards we were less stressed and more laid back in the run up to it as we shared the workload.

I have learnt to finish my work to a more professional standard, which I feel is evident in my presentation boards and project proposal. This developed through crits presenting our work and getting an insight into how the graphic designers display their presentation boards. I have discovered that I work better with being given a more open brief as this gives me room to play around, meaning I enjoy it more and remain constantly interested in what I am creating. Whereas with specific briefs such as ‘SpiceUK’ I lose interest, as it is not something I want to be creating.

Finally, overall I think I have created a good body of work. Despite being challenging, I have experimented with various formats such as clothing, products such as iPhone covers, album covers, wrapping paper designs, animation, logos. These are things I would never usually consider my work to be displayed on when creating an image in other modules. I have surprised myself. However, I do feel there are certain briefs I could have pushed further such as ‘Secret 7’, Illustration Friday (which I did not complete as I lost interest), ‘Yorkshire Tea’. The brief I feel I put my upmost effort and time into is ‘Propercorn’ so I really hope that we are able to get some nice feedback from that.

In terms of time management some of my designs took a couple of hours or days to produce such as ‘WrappedCo’ and ‘Tigerprint’ whereas others took weeks. Balancing these alongside each other to ensure I hit the deadlines was pretty tough but rewarding when completed. What was most challenging for me was getting my head around PDF’ing my blog and arranging everything in order. I feel I have been pretty up to date with my blog but issuu, was an issue! I hadn’t been using issuu throughout so I had to go back and convert every image into issuu, which also took a great amount of time – something I will definitely learn from in the future. I think my drawing skills have improved as I now consider shape more and pattern for example in the ‘TigerPrint’ brief; I tried to step away from line work when creating the plants to give it more of an abstract, current feel. I have enjoyed the module; it has opened my eyes to live briefs and where you can find work which will definitely benefit me in the future. I just wish I’d got involved with more briefs and intend to continue doing so.

SB3 Project Report

SB2 Individual role in collaberative brief

SB1 Individual Brief Yorkshire Tea

SB1 Other Individual briefs boards

Studio Brief 3 - Project Report

Responsive SB1 - FilmDoo

The films I was interested in illustrating :

• The fault in our stars - Could illustrate the characters cuddled up with the oxygen wires wrapped around them, or their hands hanging off the side of a hospital bed holding eachother with injections in their wrists and wires
• Pitch perfect 2  - Blowing into a pitch pipe with headphones in and a chain around the neck 
• Fifty shades of grey - Hands tied up in a scarf attached to clamps hanging from the ceiling

I decided to go with The fault in our stars as I feel this is the most emotive and could be best illustrated

My design development

Re-positioning my image, printing it, drawing extra on and then scanning it back in

I then had to look at what colour palette I was going to use and I think blue black and white will be best as this is the colour originally used in the book and film posters. I tried to mimic the font of the book using a brush that was quite spongey in white

Presentation Board




Submission

I had to scale the file up to 686mm x 1020mm which gave me more space to add more background colour and move the text around a little bit, I think this looked much better





















Issue - When I tried to upload it to Behance it said that the file was too large. The minimum had to be 8.4mb and this was 12.1

I had to ask the IT technician and he said that when I save the file as a JPEG it gives a scale of the quality and if you lower it it will lower the MB, which worked thankfully!

Project Report

Responsive SB1 - Little Bud Designs

Charlotte Grant from Little Bud Designs got in touch with me to ask if I could help her brand her company with a logo. 

Little Bud creates personalised photo frames for occasions with typography and hand wrapped to order.

Charlottes email request to me :

My design :

I decided that the font for the logo was not matching the soft aesthetic of the background and that more of a handwritten feel would work better. As I usually write calligraphic I decided to give this a go on the Cintique. I played around adjusting the background to ensure that the white font would stand out and moved the text within the frame, making it smaller and more central. I felt that some of the background was too white so I added splashes of colour and smudged them to mould in. I also cut one of the flowers out and pasted it onto the left hand side, rotating it to add more textures.

Emailing my design over :

She then posted a picture of the logo to my Facebook wall thanking me for the design and inboxed me asking for some private commission portrait work in May.

Presentation Board

Project Report

Responsive SB1 - Illustration Friday (not submitted)

SOFT

• Soft pastel colours
• Harsh colours
• Animals with spikes - hedgehogs
• Harsh animals
• Animals with spiked teeth
• Humourous spin
  
  Animals that are seen as opposite to soft -  harsh
• snake
• alligator
• shark
• tiger
• hyena

Soft pastel colours

Animals with human teeth - soft

I am struggling to figure out how this could work as a composition
I am not sure if it is interesting enough, and really shows 'soft'
Kind of thinking this choice won't really work now and I don't have much time to turn it around seen as I only have a week to complete it. I think I will leave this one as I don't think the idea is strong enough and wont be something that I enjoy creating based on that. I think I will just keep my eye out for future subjects to come

Responsive SB1 - Tigerprint

In order to make the pattern fit in with the spring theme I looked into spring patterns, spring colours and fashions. I think pastel colours could be quite in for the spring so I used this to inform my colour palette. Spring also references a lot of floral designs and plants to represent growth.

I started to come up with a leaf type design to tesellate. I then added a blue for more of a pastel colour

It is quite a simple design but I think in terms of the audience it is fitting. Gift wrap and tags for a more mature audience but for Marks and Spencers they are quite high end so I think this is quite a trendy design for them.

Scale

I read back to see the requirements and it has to be 500x500px so I put it into that frame. I think it actually doesn't look as simple in this dimension.





















I looked at more spring colours like greens, yellows and browns and decided to draw up some more designs of more abstract plants

I then tessellated these into another design and scaled them down to the 500 x 500 pixels 

'As always, we’d like you to keep the Marks and Spencer customer in mind. Your design must have a commercial feel that will appeal to either our male or female customer/recipient. Get familiar with the designs we already offer at M&S by popping in to your local store, or go online and check out our everyday range of wraps and gift bags that are on display.' 

I think my design would suit both a male and female audience due to the colour scheme and simplicity. 

I noticed that they are quite into pastel colours as well from their Facebook site so I am going to explore this as a colour palette also; with the plant theme and then submit all 3 as you can submit up to 5 entries.

Also after researching Marks & Spencer's wrapping paper it seems they use a lot of typography and character design which is restricting their audience. Perhaps simple patterns would cater to a wider range.

I looked at their Tigerprint blog and it featured posts about colour palettes used in certain designs that they admired which could be something to bare in mind

I experimented with more turquoise blues and greens for this piece

Submission

I decided to submit the last two designs as I felt these were more reflective of Spring and I was happier with them as a design. The first one needs more work

I chose this as a presentation board idea with influence from their colour palette choices in blog posts. I think the round colour palettes work well underneath the design and if they were interested in my designs this would be something they could feature on their blog. 

Project Report