503 - Project Report

I chose Display Wizard as the project for my substantial brief as I could initially see the advantages of getting to research deeply into my university, and refresh myself of the first hand reasons as to why I chose Leeds College of Art, and Leeds as a city to come and spend 3 very important years of my life at. This in itself acted as inspiration for me for this project and encouraged me to question how and why prospective students may be considering it the same way I was, and then how I can produce a piece of graphic design which would aid their decision. 

I particularly enjoyed looking into the actual brand identity guidelines already existing for LCA, as it allowed me to understand the identity surrounding the uni, which I communicate with everyday, but in a much more considered and in-depth way. Then to be able to apply this knowledge and get to experiment with producing my own response - which aimed to be consistent and representative of the college, of which I found both satisfying and difficult because of my poor time management. This did leave the project more rushed than I’d have liked meaning I was not able to experiment with more of a range of my initial ideas. I feel like this is the brief within the module which will slightly let me down, so I can honestly say it has taught me to plan contingency better and to not leave the main chunk of the project to the last week. This did influence my final outcomes I would say as I have produced a piece of graphic design completely different to what I would usually experiment with - thus opening my mind to how I viewed my own practise on a whole. With my usual focus of negative space to emphasise the individual elements, this time I have applied this to more a complex series of compositions which do strongly reflect concepts consistent with the college, so I would still say the project was a success in terms of helping me develop and respond to briefs quickly and differently.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed producing a quick but considered response to the Papyrus brief as it gave me the opportunity to actually produce design for a change; I felt strongly about the concept of my work actually impacting someones life for the better, and I feel like my final approach to the illustration carefully considered the individual colourer, allowing them to develop on bits of the illustration which I left blank for them, for example, inside the hut, and on the beach, etc. I hope the combination of a relaxed summer mindset with the trippy repeat patterns effectively satisfies what the brief was looking for and my design do get chosen and published. I effectively met the guidelines within this brief and was able to respond to the whole project within 48 hours teaching me vital lessons in how to research, idea generate, develop and reflect and then finalise and evaluate my work for a quick turn around brief - a valued skill once in industry, when working for clients who need the work publishing asap. 

For my last smaller/medium brief within the responsive module I chose to respond to the Penguin Book Cover Competition, with this project I initially stated how I aimed to readdress my skills in Illustrator as it had been a long time and I desperately wanted to enhance my practise within this program/style of work. After completing the project and looking back I can confidently say how my development within this project was nothing but positive. I completely met those initial aims/objectives and was able to completely restore my skills in Illustrator after extensive experimentation - this building my confidence in my own work, and directly feeding into the other modules and projects I was working towards alongside this one. Also opening new doors of potential for my animation deign - evidenced through my interactive, vectorised ‘OnYerBike’ project for Design for Screen and also the illustrations within both my Papyrus and Monotype briefs. 

In turn, I enhanced my eye for illustration and how I can incorporate light and shadows into a vectorised approach, resulting in a sophisticated and more considered response to the brief. 

Overall, I am pleased to be submitting the Responsive module and I thoroughly enjoyed the direct focus into the real world this module has. I feel as though it has developed my time management skills for next year as it has taught me valuable lessons in both contingency, but also advancing my skills within programs, allowing me to produce my considered response even more efficiently than before. To conclude on the module, I do hope my submissions may provide some connections and discussions with people from the industry, but this can be pushed by myself by documenting my responses on my online portfolio after the winners have been announced and then distributing it accordingly.