Final Reflection

I believe it was Chris Do (although I may be wrong) who said that “Art is about asking questions and design is about answering them”. Before starting the course this year, that is a statement that I firmly stood by and thought summed up my approach to design implicitly. Design for me was always about answering questions, more over, answering somebody else’s questions, creative problem solving, and not so much a tool for self expression or most importantly, raising questions.

I felt like if the above mantra was true then this module has been more about exploring graphic ART rather than graphic DESIGN. However as I have developed over the last few months I have realised that these 2 things are interchangeable rather than separate entities and because of this I feel that my process has changed to be less regimented in just fulfilling the brief to its more literal or logical conclusion but now I am more playful with the brief, and do my best to leave space for interpretation, although I know I can improve on that.

On a technical level I feel there are a couple of areas that I have improved on, my Adobe programme knowledge is better, I got to tryout other programmes too such as Brackets and Processing that I really enjoyed, and feel I could spend years just mastering those!

My first design breakthrough was after handing in my zine and getting feedback about spacing, and basically giving everything more space as a way to create tension and hierarchy, after re designing that it completely changed how I approach layout design. I am much more comfortable giving space to text and images when needed and not just arbitrarily. I hope that his module file lay out is testament to that.

I have also really enjoyed having the opportunity to print my work and create physical outcomes, especially with the 50 Photos project.

From my professional experience prior to starting this year, I was very much in the Branding and Brand Identity camp, spending a lot of time researching that and feeling like that is the logical progression outside of university as I am already doing some work in that area. However I have tried my best to be more open and through these briefs have started to understand the real breadth that graphic design covers. At this time I am happy exploring what options there are and what I think I might want to focus on. Again this goes back to graphic design and graphic art idea, there is space in graphic design to be artistic and I hope to explore that more.

Overall I am happy with what I have produced for this module, I know I can always do better and will strive to do so as I continue through the degree as long as I can keep creativity and communication at the front of my thinking. I have enjoyed a lot of the briefs and have put a lot of time into executing them as best as I can.

There are a couple of things that I would have liked to have done differently, most notably with the On My Radio brief where if I had the time I would have still liked to have made a screen print and even fabricated a working radio watering can, but time and COVID weren’t on my side.