Formative feedback Student name
Rebecca Weakley
Student number
524276
Course/Unit
Graphic Design 1
Assignment number
Two
Overall Comments Part two of the course focused on the creative process of problem solving, encouraging you to explore your own working process and apply it to a number of briefs. Overall your response to part two has been mixed. The exercises feel rather rushed and poorly rationalised, while your assignment although also has quite weak research, is more developed and you’ve produced a coherent set of greetings cards to a good standard. I get the general sense you’ve added things such as moodboards to go through the motions of research than to actually use it help you develop your work, which means you are not exploring the briefs to their full potential. Project: Working to a brief You were asked to read and analyse a number of briefs, identifying what you are being asked to do, any keywords, and how a client would judge a successful outcome. You have done a very fair and logical deconstruction of each brief and rationalised why you would select the third well. With regards the second brief, it is true generally most commercial graphic design is produced with a quite a focused final realisation in mind already, but it is important to keep in mind it is possible to have quite an open brief and for you as the designer to interpret the most appropriate application. Even with the brief you have chosen, the application is left ambiguous, so there can be varying levels of control over the brief as a designer. Project: Researching and developing ideas In this project you were asked to reflect on different ways of researching and developing ideas, and to put these into practice by designing a cover a HG Wells novel. It was good to see you start with moodboards although I am wondering you have missed the point of these a little. The flipboard plugin you use gives the impression these are several different boards – is that correct? If so, each board needs a lot more imagery and you should identify the theme of each board for your documentation. It’s obvious for the colour theory one at the end, but are some of these around existing books for example? Also look at what is out there in terms of existing books is good as a starting point, but 1
you should broaden your research out further. I saw you used mind-mapping as a tool – I would actually have used some of these as springboard for your moodboard. For example, for ‘sense of unease’ – there is lots of visual imagery that comes to mind and you should collect as many examples of images that give this feeling in as many different ways as possible. This should be repeated for a few more themes, as many a possible so you have a broad volume of research to draw on to reference and assimilate ideas from. It doesn’t have to be super focused at this stage, and you don’t have to use everything you collect – the key thing is to explore. Slightly worryingly the way you develop work which was a strength in your first submission has been a little lost here. You were interrogating and experimenting with your ideas much more previously and this is something you should think about more as I think this has meant your final ideas feel very under-developed and lacking some of the sophistication seen previously. You mention wanted to have a radical take on classic stories so, I think a body of research that looks at ways this has been done before as a research pieces needs to be included as the final pieces here feel a little dated. Overall an exercise worth coming back to and looking at again. Project: Visualising your ideas This project explored how to quickly visualise ideas through thumbnails, mood board, mock-ups and prototypes. You were asked to explore different ways you can fold paper to make a leaflet for a voluntary organisation. Again, the moodboard misses the point of its function here, which is the same as above so I won’t go through that here again. My main question for this is, did you have any other ideas that you tried? Your idea itself was well produced but again it feels like you jumped to solution very quickly and the final idea doesn’t seem to have moved on much from what you initially proposed. Project: Critiquing your work The critique is the process of being self-critical about your work in order to achieve the aims of a brief. You were asked to put this into practice by designing two posters and reflecting on whether they had too much or not enough information. The posters you created as two examples are fine, but once again deficit of research and development here, which means it is difficult to ascertain your decision making here. Both examples just seem to appear! Project: Finishing your artwork The point of sale display exercise asked you to generate artwork for your local green grocer. This is quite a focused brief but again, very minimal background work of research or development here. What other ideas did you have if any? What did you look at to inspire yourself? I had a look at your moodboard, but it was fairly samey collection of pictures of fruit and veg. Could you consider different styles of photography? Or Illustrations? How else could you communicate the messages you are trying to communicate with this visually? Assessment potential 2
I understand your aim is to go for the Visual Communications / Creative Arts Degree and that you plan to submit your work for assessment at the end of this course. However, from the work you have shown in this assignment, I am concerned that you may struggle to meet the assessment criteria, and recommend that you instead consider taking the personal development route rather than seek assessment (see Conditions of Enrolment, Section 2 a). I will review your work again in terms of readiness for assessment at Assignment 4. Feedback on assignment Creative and analytical thinking, Visual and Technical Skills The Thinking of You assignment asked you to create a range of cards for sentiments or events not currently catered for by card manufactures. Your final cards are produced to a good standard, but there remains a very large deficit in your background processes of research and development that lead up to this, and there is no documentation of how you produced the final cards which sort of just appear as finished pieces at the end. You are still not exploring freely in terms of visual inspiration. This shouldn’t be a chore but something that is enjoyable and there is strong sense you are going through the motions of a process rather than fully utilising it inspire and develop your own work. You are jumping to final solutions that you have already pre-determined from the beginning. If you haven’t looked at it already I strongly urge you to view the following video here which covers this. The background research for the brief appears to be images collected solely from one Daily Mail article. This is far too narrow and does not demonstrate an ability to explore a diverse variety of ideas and then bring them together to develop something that is your own. Looking at existing examples of cards is fine as part of your research, but you should be sourcing examples from a variety of sources in a variety of styles and applications. This should not be the sole subject of your research however which it is currently. You also need to broaden your horizons, to look at imagery that is beyond just existing examples of what you designing. This could be art movements, sculpture, branding, photography, layout, wallpaper– anything! You should not be limiting yourself to exploring what is existing in the narrow scope of what you are being asked to produce. It is fine to look at it as a starting point to get your barings but it shouldn’t be the be all, end all of your inspiration. Your final designs themselves feel produced to a good standard – but lack research that informs them and don’t seem to have any development work behind them. They feel like a good reproduction of existing ideas of greeting cards and demonstrate limited creativity and imagination. They don’t feel like your own ideas that you have developed by triangulating and assimilating various ideas. There is a big jump from some of your initial ideas (themselves which seem to appear from nowhere) to these 1950’s themed cards, with no visual research of various qualities of the style of this era. Could you have looked at posters? Magazines? Shop Signs? All of this alone could be a very 3
cohesive moodboard of collected images that you could refer to develop ideas from for example. Even with the ideas you produce you should be experimenting with the layouts and be trying different treatments – something I cannot see at the moment evidenced. Could you try a different typeface? What about layout? Have you thought about colour? You should show everything that you have tried, tested and reflected upon even if it didn’t work, as the missteps are as much part of the development of your work as the successes. Overall I am quite concerned there isn’t really much of a creative journey being properly followed here which we need to see. I understand sometimes there can be an anxiety to not knowing what your final work will look like, but by allowing yourself to be led by your research and exploration you will much less likely get stuck and produce work that is much more interesting and creative than settling for the certainty of the ideas you already have when initially approaching the brief. Sketchbooks Research and idea development, Context There is little sketchbook work documented here. I need to remind you as in my previous report, it is important to remember, keeping sketchbooks and a learning log is an integral part of this and every other OCA course, not only because they constitute 20% of your marks if you choose to have your work formally assessed but they are also an excellent way to document and reflect on your development. Learning Logs or Blogs / Critical essays Research and idea development, Context You were asked you to reflect on how familiar you are to graphic design software, identifying what you might need to learn. I couldn’t see this work anywhere on your learning log. I think the format of your learning log still needs some work in how you organise your work. You need to clearly title sections and also reference things such as your moodboard, so it can be understood how they relate. Some of the copy on some of the pages was hard to read. I know you have done this on a WixSite – in my experience this is often more trouble than it is worth. Most students use Wordpress, you can see here for a sample of the basic blog or alternatively The OCA now has OCA Spaces which makes a lot easier to set up a learning log – have a look. I think this could be a better solution for you and the functionality is being developed and added including being able to interact with other students. Pointers for the next assignment The next part of the course encourages you to become more visually literate by exploring visual dynamics, colour and visual language. This is an
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opportunity for you to experiment with your ideas more and develop them further. Tutor name:
Asheck Ahmed
Date:
21/05/2020
Next assignment due: 03/06/2020
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