Presentation report,

OUPD101 – Presentation Report

In order to establish what I had accomplished over this year, I first of all looked at the skills I had in acquired before I commenced the course. Over the last 2 years I studied fine art at college with a heavy personal interest in graphic design, stemming through graffiti and street art. I was confident in a small number of areas upon finishing the foundation course; Painting skills, drawing skills, photoshop and a developing knowledge of colour theory were all I had under my belt. These skills faired well as I applied myself to the initial briefs, and from there on I felt myself learning and advancing week by week as briefs got turned over and critiqued on a regular basis.

From what I had to what I wanted? We all wrote a list of things we individually wanted to ascertain from the course over this year, for me number one was a diverse knowledge and understanding of typography, something which prior to the course I had no experience, but a developing interest. This space was quickly filled by the first brief, ‘Alphabet Soup’, the project really got us thinking about how typographic elements can plant ideas delivering mood and characteristics, not to mention the more technical, anatomic side of typography. For us it was a case of producing a typeface that in someway represented random peer.

Illustrator was my next endeavour, software with which I had no previous experience at all (an element I worried may be detrimental to my progress early on). After a couple of workshop sessions getting to grips with the programme, I found it relatively easy to pick up the basics and wanted to implement my new found skills as soon as possible. The ‘No news is good news’ brief really allowed me to start working in illustrator, first of all designing the set of 3 posters in the 2:1 ratio, moving on to the mail shot where I had to integrate type, image, layout and net designs all produced using illustrator and really set some of the basic skills in stone. It was throughout the ‘Collection 100’ project I felt myself really advancing with the software, methodically learning shortcuts and little tricks to make my designing life that little bit easier. This realisation of the beneficial factors of shortcuts came when I wanted to copy and paste an object, each time turning a certain angle and rotating around a fixed point, which turned out to be considerably easier than I had envisaged; (ROTATE, CMD+C, CMD+F, CMD+D) that was me, I was hooked on shortcuts.

I was eager to develop my critical analysis skills, previously only critiquing fine art in my written work, I was looking forward to learning the theoretical side of graphic design, design movements, influences and terminology used to talk about design in a professional manor. I found that Richard’s teaching method really hit home to me, keeping me attentive in seminars and constantly interested throughout lectures. The small tasks we undertook nearing the start of the year seemed easy enough, but on reflection they really helped introduce writing styles and concepts that would prove to be very beneficial when it came to writing the essay question.

Colour theory was an area that I already had an element of knowledge in, coming from a fine art course led by an artist obsessed by only using abstract colour in his works. That aside, as soon as I walked out of Fred’s first colour theory session I felt more enriched with colour theory that ever before, discovering some rather interesting terms and facts. I found my knowledge expanding ever more through the photography workshops, playing around and mixing light using coloured film in the studio, photographing our experiments to go on and produce a set/series of postcards exploring a certain colour in more depth.

I have been obsessed with books and magazines for a little while now, more specifically graffiti, street art and design books. All usually sporting some rather experimental layouts at times. Before I was exposed to the wonders of type and grid I was oblivious to the amount of precision that can go into even the simplest of page spreads, even newspapers! Lorenzo took us for a few sessions analysing newspaper and mainstream magazine spreads, - measuring column width, gutters, margins, point size and base lines etc. it was at this point I realised the depth of design work that can go into the simplest of everyday designs. Furthered by the InDesign sessions, layout and grids have become something of a necessity in all areas of my design work to ensure compositions are visually intriguing and type conforms accordingly. Again working a brief aimed at a random peer in the year group, the double page spread I produced for Sarah Pritchard helped me improve a sense of point size and margin to keep a professional feeling page spread.

Moving image was introduced to me at the end of last year when a friend produced a large-scale stop motion animation for his FMP. Ever since the day I helped his process I had an urge to experiment with the technique and was determined to introduce it into my work this year. Quicktime 7 was the first piece of software I became affiliated with, experimenting with the ‘Collection 100’ project using individual frames to create short animations representing various pens, colours and sizes. Furthering my involvement with the process of moving image I decided to use it as the method of delivering my visual language project – ‘what is a line?’, the process I went through to achieve this resolution was extremely tedious, using individual hand drawn frames to  produce a video about 20 seconds in length using around 200 frames.

Over the process of the year, my public speaking ability has developed at more of a pace that I imagined it could. I have previously had trouble speaking in front of audiences, failing to deliver points with confident dialect. The involvement in projects such as ‘What if’ and our recent Live project ‘Do Day’ have aided my public speaking ability, standing up in front of the year group and feeling confident about explaining the processes we undertook and our findings etc.

Timekeeping also used to be a grey area in my academic procedures, not disastrous, but this year has definitely put in a high demand for my timekeeping skills to be second to none. I have found the Google calendar alongside moodle and the VLE to be extremely beneficial in keeping me knowing what I’m doing when I’m doing it and where I’m supposed to be. That combined with my discovery of the little handy moleskine notebooks has allowed me to really take control of my time and manage it in order to keep on track and on time. My recent response to the ‘Speaking from experience’ brief led me to produce a wall-planner-style calendar for use on UNI hall desks, specifically designed for graphic designers to be able to visually plan out their days, weeks and months. I feel this production allowed me to realise again the importance of timekeeping on this course and embed it further into my working ethic.

One of my final wants from the course this year was a greater knowledge of industry, wanting to get a feel for how the subject I practice, and shall for 2 more years will eventually feed into the real world. Many thanks must be given to the course tutors for contacting a wide range of professionals inviting them to come and visit our studio speaking of the work they produce for a living, how they ended up in their position and how they want to develop their professional practice in future projects. The visit that has most lingered in my mind was that of ‘The Beautiful Meme’, they said something along the lines of ‘graphic design isn’t just about design, it’s about being a developer of ideas, you get paid to think’ which really made me think about the industry that I’m entering into, by no means worrying me, exciting me instantaneously.

I looked at the skills I bought to the course, combined with what I have learnt over the course of this year and it was quite amazing to see how quickly I can develop as a designer in a year, with loads more programmes, techniques and mediums to discover I’ve hardly scratched the surface and I’m more excited to come back and learn than I’ve ever been. Next year shall bring a new personal list of hopes, an advanced set of software capabilities and a whole new chapter in my carer as a graphic designer. I hope it is as successful as this one has been.