Final Critique

Criticism is important because it gives us a language (indeed a lens) by which to discuss and view design.

Steven Heller, 2007

Today, in groups, we critiqued our work and thought of improvements and slight alterations that could be made to the work. Here is the sheet I wrote the improvements on:

As you can see, there is a lot of feedback, especially towards the bottom where the titles are:

What don't you like about the design? and What could be improved on the design?

I could be put off by this, and the fact that no-one else seemed to have this much on their sheet. Or I could think this has given me a really good opportunity to improve my design and get a better mark at the end of it! I think i'm going to agree with the second option as it makes me feel better in myself.

In the session, I felt really embarrassed to show my work, I really was not confident with it but the group seemed to like the concept which was probably what I was looking to achieve before the session as I can change around the design for the last couple of days rather than changing round the whole concept.

So, the main improvements that could be made to my design are:

Front Cover

1. The title could be moved so instead of it being a right justified it would be left or more central, this is due to the potential customers hand blocking the title and the author.
2. Spacing problems in the title - Kerning needed.
3. Could change author's typeface as the author is already quite distinguished.
4. There seems to be an overbalance of white space.

Spine

1. The spine type is too thin and hard to read on black.
2. The colour of the bottom half of the spine could be changed to black on white.
3. Possibly change the font of the spine to match the blurb typeface.

Back Cover

1. The image could be changed to a different composition, perhaps to the bottom as it is distracting from the writing.
2. The image could be made smaller to match the size of the pepper shakers on the front cover.
3. The barcode needs to be bigger.
4. If the image is changed to the bottom the barcode could be placed over the pepper face.
5. All the shakers have a P on them, could be removed or had some hole taken out of them.
6. Blurb font is too blobby and hard to read.
7. More space could be made so that the reader has more room to read everything.

Even though I did receive a lot of criticism for this book cover, I got a lot of feedback from other eyes that is going to help me improve the book cover and make it visually appealing for everyone. With a few changes I think I will be confident enough to show this work if I had to on Friday - That is the most important thing I believe.

Illustrator Technical Workshop

In todays session, we learned how to draw images from another image by using the pen tool. Initially, I had forgotten from the last session how to use the pen tool, I did many attempts after the first session using the pen tool and I could not even make a shape - completely forgotten.

This was a good refresher for me, as well as a new learning experience. I had no idea you could trace images yourself using Illustrator and thought the only way to do this properly was to use a graphics tablet. I found the session to be really useful and quite enjoyable, probably because I could do the set task for a change! 

Here is the original:

Here is the duck I created using Illustrator tools:

I wanted to make it a flat, cartoon version as I tried to add highlights and shadows but preferred this version. I think this was a big achievement for me and I will definitely be trying this out and putting into practice for the printed artefact in the integrated design module, maybe even the individual pages of my website.

Ornamented Columns... Is all the 'faff' necessary?

It has been revealed that Michael Hansmeyer is creating some new ornamented columns. Upon discovering this I thought it would be a good idea to think about the necessity of the over-design of the pillars. They are incredibly beautiful as seen in the proposed CAD drawings, and add a contrast to the environment they are being placed in but why is it needed?

There is no denying that this work is not beautiful, which is often the case when discussing work in my essay, "The Crystal Goblet: A Fine Vintage?" but the pillar is a pillar and therefore should be doing it's job of supporting.

Summarise your Design in 3 words

In today's lecture, Phil mentioned a good idea about summing up your design in 3 words which I think is a good idea because at the final stages of the module I should be more focused on the main aspects of my design. This should help me stay focused!


INTRIGUING, STRIKING, CONCEPTUAL


If I can stick to these words with my design in the next 2 weeks then it should turn out how I want it to.

Computer Session on Photoshop

In today's computer session, we had our second lesson of the year in Photoshop. Before the lesson, I thought I was alright at Photoshop after teaching some of the things to myself through trial and error. After the lesson i've realised how teaching myself has made me sloppy with creating things and not technically correct in Photoshop.


Today we had to create a scene of a snooker table with subtle lighting and a mood set. It's a bit unusual to be creating an image in Photoshop, but in a way we were able to create lighting and mood which I do not know if you can do in other programs like illustrator. I think this session was a definite wake up call that I need more technical lessons in Photoshop.


Here is the image I created:

I found it hard to think about the balls in perspective, which is something I need to work on with my designing. Overall, I believe I followed the instructions well and having some previous Photoshop knowledge allowed me to quickly locate the commands. This lesson was really useful as before, I believed that the only way to create good quality images was to use Illustrator. Also, it may allow me to create the image for my website pages in Photoshop rather than Illustrator, depending on which i'm more comfortable with.

Another One Day Project

Today we had another one day project to complete with a made up brief set by Phil. This day was to make us think of interesting ways of creating a printed artefact with 3 folds. The brief was to find out interesting facts about sea fishing areas that would make the group want to visit.


Our group's place was Portland which is an island still connected a little bit to the South of England. In the researching, I found a blog about Portland where a man had posted interesting facts about Portland that you would only find out if you had been or lived there. For instance, Portland is shrinking due to the limestone cliffs being constantly eroded. The the place is also invested with rabbits. There is much superstition around them too as years ago people working in the quarries thought they were bad luck as they built lots of warrens on the island which could cause it to collapse. Some of this superstition was used in the Wallace and Grommet film which would instantly make people interested in Portland - Well I believe so anyway!


Firstly, we were going to use origami to create rabbits and display the information on there, but after I had made several different versions we realised that the information just wasn't going to fit on. So after that, we decided to use the fact that there was a famous Lighthouse in Portland which then led us to choose a lighthouse shape that folded 3 times as the final design. I wasn't keen on this idea, or the design of the brochure because we were doing the design of the content at the very last minute and I felt very pressured to finish it on time. So I was slightly unhappy with the result, but maybe we should have managed time better during the day, maybe less time for lunch?

Origami Rabbits

We were a bit late with printing the final artefact which wouldn't be accepted in the real industry but I'm sure for peer review we were fine, and will not let it happen again. We've learned a time management lesson from this which we will apply to the next project we did. The day wasn't really a competition, but there was a prize for the group that received the most points from the other students. Our group won, after all the scores averaged out ours became on top winning us a book and some chocolates! Guess I can be wrong quite a lot of the time, just got to start trusting other people are their opinions, which will be hard but i'm sure I will manage it.

All the artefacts placed on the map where they are located

Our leaflet of Portland

The feedback sheet for our team

Another good win for the spine team, and a good opportunity for us to work together and practice our team skills. I definitely think these are improving.

The prizeeeeee

What a good morning!

This morning me and my group in Add+Vantage presented our campaign against cheap ugg boots. I was feeling quite nervous, mainly because I felt that our presentation wasn't right. Then, as soon as our tutor said: "Oh you're doing it about uggs? I'm going to enjoy this" I soon relaxed and thought we would be ok.

After doing the presentation, there was little feedback from the rest of the class, but when asked they said they enjoyed it. Our tutor said that it was a very good presentation, very well presented and that we'd done some good research around the subject. I am pleased with the feedback considering my feelings at the beginning of the presentation. I felt like our group worked well together and we were all allocated different sections of the presentation - even though I was not completely happy with mine, I made it work and made it seem like a lot of work. I also used the version that I had saved with animations done by me and Miheala instead of the one our 'leader' which she was not happy about, even at the end of the presentation when she knew that we had done well? This goes to show what was more important to her - being in control, whereas I am more than happy to have just done well for the whole team. I have to write a statement about the team work and think I will be writing a little hint about her 'leadership' skills.


Later on in the morning, I went to a surgery session with Phil that I signed up for just before my presentation. I felt this was a more proactive way of gaining some advice on my designs. We discussed about how I could take the salt and pepper concept in my work and develop it more so that it is more understandable to the Chinese market. The advice seemed to be simple ideas that I would never have thought about doing, but this is the benefits of having feedback sessions. I came out of the session with lots of new ideas which will allow me to continue on with my work as I've been feeling quite stuck with it.


So overall, I feel like this was a good morning, lets hope the rest of the day pans out the same!

Researching the essay

Whilst researching for the Beatrice Ward essay, I was searching for opinions on the essay and how many people disagree with it. Whilst doing this, I came across this image:

This is a piece of art by Able Parris called 'Letter Collage' that went against everything Beatrice Ward was about. Ward's main philosophy was that type was meant to be read and to be read clearly. Parris transcends this school of thought and uses type as a texture for the the background of her collage.

This piece of work was a refreshing thought to me when looking through the same opinion of Warde's work. I do agree that text can be used in other ways in order to create a pattern, but only when the audience is right and the text is not necessary to the message. The message in this piece of work is the text all jumbled up, it's the statement that the letters altogether make.

Getting on with the essay and making good progress with it, hopefully by the end of the day I will have all my notes and thoughts collected ready to try and write a conclusion and hopefully the rest of the essay. I am going to try and write the main points on post-it notes and have thoughts from there. This was some advice given in the essay seminar yesterday.

Today..

Today we had a lecture about what we should already know about using software. I was shocked at how much a learned from this and it reminded me that since the start of the year, 6 months ago, I have improved my technical ability so much. The first piece of work I created for  the Visual Communication module I did using Microsoft Word, because of my lack of experience in Photoshop and other programs that I hadn't even heard of. Now, to say that i'd never even heard of Illustrator or InDesign and now I can create basic documents in them, is a big achievement. I feel like i've grown so much in the last six months, even more so than when I was at school. 


Also today, I had an essay seminar that allowed me to see what everyone else had been doing in their essays as well as receiving advice on my own. I got positive advice about my essay as I said I was basing it on ideas such as club flyers and book covers. I think what the advice I found most important was how to start the essay and set it out. The only thing I wish could have happened is to of received some advice about my book cover as I feel like I can't carry on with it unless I know I'm doing the right thing. Will try again tomorrow!

Add+Vantage Module Presentation

This week I have to prepare a presentation with 2 others for my Add+Vantage module 'They don't bite.. How to work with Creatives.'


I thought that choosing this module would help me next year when I go for a placement with an agency as it shows the process in which people present to creatives. I've found that this module is not a game, you have to dress and look professional for the presentation, something which I am not used to but will allow the tutor to take me more seriously.


This week I met with the others in my group where we discussed the content of our presentation and how it would be set out. We are doing a presentation raising awareness about fake Ugg boots and how damaging they can be to your feet. I agreed with the topic as it would be interesting to research into, the medical aspects and the social implications. We decided which topics we would have which I was pleased about as I got the social implications part. Then the 'leader' of the group wanted us to have slides next to each other which meant I was left with protests and conclusions which were the smallest categories. I did protest about this but the other girls had to leave so I decided to take it, and make it amazing!


Now after doing research I have placed it into a powerpoint presentation ready to show the other girls, if they do not like my design of the powerpoint they can have it their way because arguing the other day just got me no-where. I will just write everything about being controlled and forced to do sections that I disagreed with in the final report. I have tried my best to produce something that I am happy with, hopefully the others will see the effort I have gone to with this topic and appreciate it.


I'm glad i'm doing it this week, wouldn't want to change it at the last minute to please them. I will also Facebook these girls now with my designs and content to see what they think.

Website with tables..

Here is the website I created using tables in the HTML session this week, it's not the most visually appealing website but it shows that I have used all the coding correctly. I am proud that I have been able to produce a website that actually looks like one which means I will be more positive when creating my own pages for the website.

Essay Advice

Today I wanted to go into the studio practice time for some advice about my book cover and any other suggestions that would improve it.


However, instead of this I managed to seek some advice on the essay about transparency and comparing different sources. I wasn't part of the seminar group, but I found that listening in to Phil's point of view about the essay will give me some interesting pointers for my essay. Then my seminar with Simon next week will offer me more information which should allow me to complete the essay easily.

Peer Review Day

Yesterday we had to show the rest of the group all the visuals created on Photoshop, all colour schemes and some of the writing that would appear on each of our pages. I printed off everything we have done so far so that others could see the development that we had undergone for the final design.


For the last few days, we've all been comparing ideas and what we were thinking of doing for our own pages over our Facebook group. I felt that we needed to talk about ideas and gain opinions on each others work so that we could make important changes before we showed the work today. Our ideas so far are to each have the same left hand navigational system and border but with different colours which represent the tube line - This will make each of our designs different and unique.


We even managed to generate new ideas the night before, from this I was able to create another sample of a page to show today. Here are the samples of our latest ideas we came up with, incorporating station tiles into the design using my first individual page idea of using a train ticket and displaying the information and pictures inside:

This design used white bricks in the background with the opacity changed
so it blends in.

This one uses the distinctive green tiles found in a station in London, there
is no opacity change which makes the design look garish.

Our peers said that the idea of the tiles in the background was better than the original plain white background and agreed that the green was too much in the background for the design.


When they were commenting on my page, they described the red theme of my page to clash with the train ticket in the main section. I never really noticed the clashing before and am going to choose a different colour for the final design. They also commented on the clever idea of using a sideways scroll bar, this made the page seem more journey-like.


The other idea was to make it seem like the viewer was watching a train journey, the images and text would scroll through the window using some HTML coding.
Here is the sample that I showed today:

My peers seemed to prefer the other idea, as it would be hard to get this looking professional which I definitely agreed with. I think I will be sticking with the other idea.


Today has really helped us develop our design, hearing feedback about what needs doing and how people see our website was really useful. All the feedback that they have given us will definitely be used, since these are the people who are going to be looking at our website, it cannot be poorly designed otherwise people will not stay and appreciate the rest.

Winners of the Poster Competition!

In Monday's lecture, The Spine Team were announced the winners of the Poster competition which we were very pleased about. It means that our poster will be displayed all around Coventry promoting the Fashion Show and can go in our Portfolios. We have seen the final version of the poster on Facebook, and by the looks of it they've made it a bit lighter and added a few more logos to the bottom which shows they liked the design as a whole - Here is the final design:

It will be really good to see our design around Coventry, and will definitely be looking out for it. I have already seen the design featured at 54 (The SU) on the door for people to see when coming through the door:

Other Updates:

For the website, I have come up with a few ideas to show to the team tomorrow for us to discuss. I think this meeting before Thursday will be a good opportunity for us to discuss the  main theme and colour schemes. This is what I have so far:

 Hopefully from this, we will be able to decide on a design that we can use on all our pages. Or develop it further to work for everyone.

General Updates..

We received a phone call the other day about our poster being shortlisted with another in the competition!
I actually didn't think our poster was going to get this far but looking at ours and the competitions, I can see why they have chosen them. Both posters follow the brief, they include orange and black and show that it is a fashion show. Ours has followed the brief more by using continuity and the same fonts they requested but still, I am proud. Now it is up to people on Facebook to decide which poster wins, I'm going to make sure people vote for ours but I do think it is fair that the public decide as they are the people who are going to see it.


Speaking of Facebook, I like the fact that our group has its own Facebook group so that we can ask questions and share ideas. It's almost like having our own little discussion group without everyone else seeing.

Even got our own symbol saying Spine Team on it in an underground sign style. I feel like our group works really well together, this showed in the poster competition and I am very happy with our work and ideas so far!

Also it's study week this week, I have to admit, I have come home but as there is nothing to do during the day I am getting lots of work done! I find it easier to concentrate here than back at uni, think my room is too small and distracting! Maybe start doing work in the kitchen? Although there is no internet so that might be a bit difficult :/