End of Module SELF-EVALUATION

BA (Hons.) GRAPHIC DESIGN		LEVEL	04
Module Code	OUGD405
Module Title	Design Process

END OF MODULE SELF-EVALUATION

NAME	Sophie McDonald

1.  What skills have you developed through this module and how effectively do you think you have applied them? I have learnt how to use InDesign as a beginner, which was been applied quite effectively to brief 3 as my spreads were completely designed using InDesign. It could have been applied to a larger effect though, as I am still grasping it. I have also developed the skill of putting layouts together, and communicating information in the form of spreads.
2. What approaches to/methods of design production have you developed and how have they informed your design development process? For the first time I used my own paper for printing, which was a lot more successful than when I’ve not used my own before. I chose antique white paper for brief 3 and an off white textured paper for brief 4. Antique white is a browny-cream colour, which informed my design development as I had to imagine ahead what it would look like on the paper instead of on white that the computer showed.
3. What strengths can you identify in your work and how have/will you capitalise on these? I think that my strengths are being able to format a layout neatly (brief 3) and simply. I capitalised on this by paying good attention to the final crit and developing my spreads afterwards to make sure they all joined together nicely.
4. What weaknesses can you identify in your work and how will you address these in the future? My weaknesses would have to be the ability to format posters effectively, as this is something that took me awhile to design. This will come with practice and also more exposure to other’s work. I also think I need to do stronger research in the future that is more specific.
5. Identify five things that you will do differently next time and what do you expect to gain from doing these? More accurate research, be more adventurous with layout, be more adventurous with production methods,start planning earlier. Doing these things will help my creativity to flow better.
6.How would you grade yourself on the following areas: (please indicate using an ‘x’)  5= excellent, 4 = very good, 3 = good, 2 = average, 1 = poor
	1	2	3	4	5
Attendance					x
Punctuality					x
Motivation				x
Commitment				x
Quantity of work produced				x
Quality of work produced				x
Contribution to the group			x
The evaluation of your work is an important part of the assessment criteria and represents a percentage of the overall grade. It is essential that you give yourself enough time to complete your written evaluation fully and with appropriate depth and level of self-reflection. If you have any questions relating to the self evaluation process speak to a member of staff as soon as possible.

Studio Brief 4: Poster research

Ross Gunter designs posters for an ongoing series called "Bridging the Gap". His posters are based on music nights, so I looked at them for inspiration.

http://www.behance.net/gallery/BTG-Poster-Series/533043

I like the colour and simplicity used. The lines used to seperate information appeal to me and for some reason, they improve the whole design.

Studio Brief 4: Rewritten brief

Identified problem:

Album artwork isn't admired like it used to be. These days music videos and the internet replace the art of album covers reflecting the artist and their music. Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and King Crimson were amongst music artists who had iconic artwork. This can't be said of this generation; the cover of an album is much less important. This is mostly because of technology and the internet, most people now digitally download their music, and sometimes illegally which causes even more problems.

The Answer:

An exhibition will show the best of album artwork, from the past and from the present. It's aim will be to get people more interested in album artwork of past generations, but also present ones, as it is a dying art.

Who needs to know? What/why do they need to know?

The target audience is music enthusiasts and design/art enthusiasts of many different ages, mostly between 16-60. These ages can relate to the album artwork included in the exhibition and also find new album covers to appreciate, to show that album art can make a comeback.

How will you tell them?

I will design promotional posters that will encourage the public to come to the exhibition on at the 'Design Museum' in London. The posters will reflect music, album artwork and spark interest.

Tone of voice

Friendly and perhaps debating, as different people will feel different things about the range of artwork in the exhibition, as there would be a range of half a decade worth of album covers. Also,  IS  it a dying art? Are album covers just as important as they used to be? Why are they less in the limelight? It can challenge the viewers to rethink the music industry and how techonology has changed everything.

Studio Brief 4: album artworks

I am looking at various iconic album artworks to help me come up with ideas for my promotional posters.

http://rateyourmusic.com/list/fedderedder/rolling_stones_100_greatest_album_covers/

MOST of these album covers are from the 20th century... showing how much more importance they used to have back in the day compared to now.

http://www.musicradar.com/news/guitars/the-50-greatest-album-covers-of-all-time-444093/13

If I can somehow incorporate some of these into my designs it would be a great way of drawing people in to coming to the exhibition.

Studio Brief 4: interim crit

In the crit, we each explained a bit about our research and the ideas we have. Above shows the help I got.

• A campaign for raising awareness of the dying art of vinyls, eg 'BRING VINYLS BACK'
• CDs aren't worth the price, like vinyls were/are. CDs could do with better packaging... creating some could be an idea.
• Promote record store day in a new, exciting way. Get more people involved.
• Timeline of album artwork, from old to new. This will show the differences and how they've evolved.
• Show artwork disappearing on a timeline; there used to be design studios solely for album covers, which is impossible these days. 

These suggestions opened my eyes quite a lot.. the timeline idea is good, but I still may stick to promotion work as it may be too complicated to actually create a timeline myself. However this could definitely reflect in my promo designs.

Studio Brief 3: crit

Below is what I supplied for the final crit:

For the final crit for our page layouts I asked these three questions:
1. Does the colour scheme reflect retro vinyl colours well? (I chose common colours found on old vinyl albums that I looked at)
2. Are the spreads too simple or do they work being minimal?
3. Any improvements?

I have bolded the useful feedback.

Does the colour scheme reflect retro vinyl colours well? (I chose common colours found on old vinyl albums that I looked at)

• Yes I really like the 'faded red' colour, it reminds me of '60s and '70s music.
• I think it's difficult to sum up colours associated with 'old/retro vinyl lovers', rather, I think you've captured a sense of the time period vinyl was popular in; especially with the typography as well.
• The colour is not a problem. Only use colour if it links in with your work.
• Think the colours are ok. But they don't really excite me as most of the page is a waste of an image.
• Definitely, thought so before I read the question.
• Yeah I'd say it does. Washed Out. Nice stock would help this too.
• Yes, it could be improved by fading them slightly more and printing on a slightly textured, creamy stock.

Are the spreads too simple or do they work being minimal?

• I really like the top spreads (big vinyl and big photo); I think they work well with blocks of colours (like in the first one) and the type. The choice of font for the titles couldn't have gone with some 'crazy' layout so yeah I think it works.
• No I don't think they're too minimal.
• Simple is good as you don't want to overcrowd your work.
• The best one is the far left as it feels the most balanced. The others are hard to read and there isn't much hierarchy to them.
• I think they should be more minimal.
• I think they could be simplified even further. It depends on what the info is you're telling us. The red type over the large turntable photo (v nice) isn't very legible but the use of a whole page as a photo is a good mix up.
• Break the mould slightly - why so regimented and traditional, look at the textures of your subject matter for inspiration.

Any improvements?

• Maybe you could improve the bottom spreads by laying out the text next to the images better? There's something wrong with them that I can't quite figure out.
• Bodies of text all the same colour.
• Look more into page layouts about albums.
• Well all the hierarchy of the type and the positioning of text with your image
• Consider cropping photos to square to resemble an album sleeve.
• Maybe arrange text in squares to resemble record sleeve backings (like a song list) I think a more square layout will evoke a more retro theme.
• Really not a fan of the musical note bars at the bottom and type grid on bottom left needs sorting out, not quite working or me at the moment.

From this feedback I'm going to improve my designs, especially the layout as I didn't put enough thought into it, I focused too much on trying to balance the amount of information. I'm also not experienced with layouts at all so the feedback has made it a little more clear for me.

Studio Brief 3: Layout research

I went into a few different vinyl shops to collect free music magazines/zines/booklets. These are some features I am fond of.

The Fly

The white and black contrast is really effective in these layouts as the page is matte. The simplicity makes it very striking, as well as the contrast between the large type and the body font. The large quote makes the viewer have no choice in reading it, therefore finding out something about the article regardless of whether they want to or not. Using a black background is really vivid to me and it made me realise I am sick of seeing white backgrounds with black text on top.
I'm very fond of the highlighted text; its less like highlighting and more like a prominent feature of the layout. Without that one feature it would be a plain page and it follows the structure of sharp lines and boxes.

Howard Assembly Room

I really like the use of colour in these spreads, it makes the whole booklet very vibrant. They have also taught me that using black or white for the body font is probably the best move when using colour, as a lot of small colourful text doesn't work too great.

I think the use of a photograph for the background of one of the spreads works really well, and it is pretty captivating with the neon colours. Using photographs in the same placing on each opposite page makes the layout overall very neat and easy to navigate.

Vibrations

I really like the simple three colour scheme that is used throughout the zine. Some pages have neon photographs as well as matching body text, which normally I think is quite ugly but the pure simplicity of only having two colours makes this very stylised and successful to me. It makes it stand out against other magazines.

The City Talking

It was interesting to look at this newspaper about music as it is made on a much bigger scale, so I can see how the layout is different from much smaller pages. The two spreads of 40 top albums helps me a lot as I'm doing a similar page based on favourite albums from 20 people, and this newspaper has a very orderly, neat and straightforward way of laying them out.

Studio Brief 2: Final 20 statistics

1. CD sales have dropped 50% from their peak in 2000.
2. Vinyl records were most popular between 1950 and 1990.
3. Sales of traditional album formats rose by more than five percent in 2009.
4. CD sales have fallen off by a fifth during the same time frame.
5. Cassette album sales reached 3,823 sold in the UK in 2012.
6. Michael Jackson's Thriller is the best selling album of all time, with an estimate of 65 million sales.
7. 188.6m singles were sold in 2012.
8. This was a rise of six percent from the previous year.
9. 99.6 % of these were digital sales.
10. The sales of albums in the UK fell 10%
11. Each year sales of albums on CDs fall 19.5%
12. 125,000 iPods had been sold by September 2001.
13. 15 million iPods had been sold by March 2005.
14. 350 million iPods had been sold by September 2012.

http://www.nme.com/news/various-artists/68040

http://www.purplerevolver.com/bulletin/the-method/12342-vinyl-and-cassette-sales-soar-as-digital-drops.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_Cassette

http://ipod.about.com/od/glossary/a/how-apple-changed-music.htm

These 20 statistics that I gathered were collected from the websites above. The facts fit into categories of:

• Audio formats
• Albums and statistics
• iPods
• Survey