BENJAMIN LEGGETT PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT PLAN.
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BENJAMIN LEGGETT PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT PLAN.
UNIVERSITY OF ULSTER GRAPHIC DESIGN & ILLUSTRATION 2014 BEN LEGGETT FINAL YEAR PDP
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SECTION 01
UPON REFLECTING
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UPON REFLECTING
Where am I? I was fourteen yesterday. I am going to approach this reflection as a sequence of events, let’s start when I was fourteen. My older brothers friend made me a forum banner for my online games guild, I loved it and asked him how he made such a wonderful creation, he told me that he knocked it up in photoshop, to this day I remember that moment when I realised making designs on a computer was a “thing” that people did. In hindsight it wasn’t a masterpiece, a cropped drawing with a bevelled border and bright red text in god knows what font, but it was good enough to make me download photoshop, jump on www.good-tutorials.com and start learning how to make stuff in photoshop. Fast forward a year or two and I was making my own websites, using photoshop to create web “skins” as I thought of them and constructing the pages with basic html tables. Jump forward a few more years and I have decided to study a-level music, I.C.T and politics, I hadn’t realised at this point that design was something I could take seriously, in the end I dropped out of 6th form without any qualifications because I had no idea what I was even doing there, I didn’t want a job in music, in computing or in politics. Eventually I decided I should have a serious go at education and do something I like, so I chose Graphic Design. I studied design at BMC for 2 years and finished with a high enough grade to get an offer from my first choice of university course, Viscom at the Art College. I enjoyed it well enough but started to really think -6-
about the future, thinking about whether this was what I wanted, after all I am still to this day trying to figure out how I am going to become hugely rich and famous, but then again aren’t we all? I enjoy design but I also enjoy plenty of other things and I have struggled occasionally to dedicate myself due to this worry that I might be focusing on the wrong interest. First and second year let me try quite a range of briefs but I was still unsure about what I really wanted to do, I enjoy illustration, I enjoy making game art, I enjoy animation and I enjoy design but I feel like I really need to hone in on one of these and master it. Jump forward a better to final year, semester one, I decided to do illustration as my main module, I wanted to explore this side of design but unfortunatly I discovered after the first couple of projects that it just wasn’t for me, I enjoy drawing comics and making short animations but I don’t really enjoy commerical illustration, things like book covers etc. So that pushed me torward design more, I moved to the art direction module and have enjoyed the projects far more, they are what I am good at and simply starting work doesn’t feel like a challenge. Jump forward a bit to now, it is semester two, I have worked hard and have nearly finished my degree in viscom (as I still think of it, despite the name change), I have gotten to this point through a combination of working hard, which I do, despite my somewhat interesting relationship with attendance, and perseverance.
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I say perseverance because despite the fact that I don’t know for sure what I want to do after University, I am willing to follow design to a conclusion, to see if this is what I’m good at and what I want to do for my career, it can be hard to push yourself sometimes when unsure but I still did. I have chosen briefs that play heavily to my strengths, my projects focus mainly around layout and typography, two things I feel I am good at and enjoy. I have pretty strong beliefs about design, mainly that design shouldn’t be about putting as many bells and whistles on something as possible, but rather making something simple and clear, something that demonstrates a message without screaming it, these briefs will let me apply all of this. I hope to finish my degree with a 2.1 and pursue my multiple interests, including design, writing and illustrating my own graphic novel and a few other things. You can see a small sample of my interests to the right.
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SECTION 02
FUTURE PLANNING
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MY FUTURE.
Where am I? I was fourteen yesterday. I am going to approach this reflection as a sequence of events, let’s start when I was fourteen. My older brothers friend made me a forum banner for my online games guild, I loved it and asked him how he made such a wonderful creation, he told me that he knocked it up in photoshop, to this day I remember that moment when I realised making designs on a computer was a “thing” that people did. In hindsight it wasn’t a masterpiece, a cropped drawing with a bevelled border and bright red text in god knows what font, but it was good enough to make me download photoshop, jump on www.good-tutorials.com and start learning how to make stuff in photoshop. Fast forward a year or two and I was making my own websites, using photoshop to create web “skins” as I thought of them and constructing the pages with basic html tables. Jump forward a few more years and I have decided to study a-level music, I.C.T and politics, I hadn’t realised at this point that design was something I could take seriously, in the end I dropped out of 6th form without any qualifications because I had no idea what I was even doing there, I didn’t want a job in music, in computing or in politics. Eventually I decided I should have a serious go at education and do something I like, so I chose Graphic Design. I studied design at BMC for 2 years and finished with a high enough grade to get an offer from my first choice of university course, Viscom at the Art College. I enjoyed it well enough but started to really think -12-
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