I chose to take part in Secret 7 as this is a creative opportunity to take part in a exhibition rather than a commercial award. For the Secret 7 brief, I managed to tackle it quite quickly which was my aim. I hadn’t listened to either of the songs before Secret 7 and almost saw this as an advantage, the reason for choosing them was purely liking the music. I chose the Dream3 especially for the lack of lyrics, I have a great appreciation for this type of music. Listening to songs I hadn’t learn before and took a new approach to design by listening to the song and moving my hand/drawing to beat of the song actually surprised me how much I enjoyed this. I created 4 designs in total, 2 for Worry by Jack Garatt and 2 for Dream3 by Max Ritcher. I was extremely pleased with the outcome of these designers display my growing confident skills with a graphic skills and growing interest in drawing first before digitalising.
The Penguin Random House awards gave us an opportunity to win an internship at their studio in London, a great incentive to take part and also provided us with testing new skills to design a book cover, that’s why I chose this competition. The Penguin brief was an exciting brief to tackle. I originally chose to do the children’s fiction book ‘Emil & the Detectives’ purely because of being able to design a bright and colourful book. Illustration isn’t something I’m confident with so stuck to using my craft skills to come up with the idea of using fingerprints to present the characters. After finishing one Penguin Award brief and really enjoying it I decided to do second one which I actually prefer. This one is from the Adult Non-Fiction category. I loved the simplicity I designed for this brief, using small icons represent women hanging off a washing line made of handwritten type attempting to link every aspect with being a woman.
I chose the Fever Tree brief purely for wanting to broaden my skills in packaging design. This was also a different kind of design I hadn’t done before as it’s a wrap for a bottle. I was really excited by this brief because of how different it was to the other briefs, given me an opportunity to design something I hadn’t before. Even though in the beginning I found it tough to pinpoint exactly what to design on the bottles; I eventually designed patterns relating to 4 different that created the sophisticated look I was going. I have slight worry that the bottles don’t look realistic but do feel happy with the outcome, this could be resolved by researching a course within the college or at outside source who can help me with creating a 3D mock up.
The Grand Cafe Coffee brief appealed to as it gave me both the opportunity to re-brand a company and design new packaging for, two areas of graphic design I want to pursue, this is why I chose this brief. Our aims for this brief were clear, to re-brand the company to look sophisticated and ‘grand’. We achieved this through the use of image, type and colour. Successfully designing packaging that goes hand in hand with the logo. I was open-minded about working as part of a team for this brief but after completion decided that I do prefer to work alone this is because I feel I have natural leadership therefore always like to be in control of my work. This brief is probably the brief I am least happiest with as I felt that if I had done this as an individual brief, a lot more work would have come out it. I’ve learnt from collaborating that it isn’t as easy as just having the work halved so having less to do; there is struggles when work doesn’t get done and one team member can end up with a lot of the work.
Throughout this module I have been able to manage my time a lot better than in previous modules, the only struggle and slip up with this has been getting on with the written work. What I found most difficult about this module was the presentation boards, I struggled with defined and summing up my work in a confident manner, something I definitely want to improve on. Strengths - I tried a range of new techniques and briefs. - Time management has improved when getting design work done. - I feel I have experimented a lot more within this module. Weaknesses - I feel I didn’t plan my time well when it came to getting all the written work finished. - I also felt I struggled with the written work, especially evaluating and the presentation boards. Achievements - Trying briefs with skills I hadn’t used before. - Experience collaborating on a brief.