OUGD404 Module Evaluation

BA (Hons.) GRAPHIC DESIGN		LEVEL	04
Module Code	OUGD404
Module Title	Design Principles

END OF MODULE SELF-EVALUATION

NAME	Johnathan Pell

1.  What skills have you developed through this module and how effectively do you think you have applied them? Type design. I have developed skills within principles of type design. Having limited knowledge before hand in aspects of type frameworks and guidelines, type anatomy, readability and legibility I took these new skillsets and placed them into practical design outcomes that I feel I carried out reasonably well creating a typeface design taking into account the principles of type design I have been taught. Colour theory, I had basic knowledge of colour theory before but this module really helped me advance my knowledge set within this are of design. Layout design. I had no basic knowledge on aspects of basic layout design, grid, hierarchy and these aspects were new too me. Developing on them helped me understand how to arrange type & image in a way that aloud me to experiment with other areas of design like hierarchy and readability & legibility. I feel within my double page spreads I applied basic knowledge of layout design into my work. Readability & Legibility. I have learnt how to manipulate and choose type to make individual glyphs appear more legible, in turn this recognition of individual glyphs results in overall readability when the glyphs are gathered together into words and sentences. Taking into account weight, pt size, tracking, kerning, leading, paragraph spacing etc. helped me effectively apply basic Readability and legibility skills. Documentation. I feel I have done well with documenting each and every stage within the design development process. I have documented group sessions, seminars and presentations in a detailed way.
2. What approaches to/methods of design production have you developed and how have they informed your design development process? Experiment, repeat, and repeat. When creating design outcomes I have learnt to experiment and try out all possible angles before going ahead with visual developments. This has helped me produce more thought out design outcomes. Use of grid. I have learnt new ways in which grids can be used for positioning design elements, the use of grids have helped me arrange elements of type & image in a logical and structured way rather than them feeling out of place and confusing. Thumb-nailing, scaled down ideas. This was my favourite aspect of the design production stage, we were taught how to quickly make a vast amount of rough ideas through the thumb-nailing method, this then gave us the opportunity to select the best ideas and advance on them into scale drawings, these scale drawings were then turned to digital development. This use of chronological design stages allowed quick idea generation and fine tuning of compositions before you got to the digital stage this meant I had a clear understanding of how everything was going to work so when it came to the digital stage it was just a matter of fine tuning and adding more detail to obtain better aesthetics. Instead of wasting time making mistakes on screen I made them on paper in a quickly and more efficient way learning and editing constantly. Pantone colour matching. Although I didn’t use it much learning how to translate a physical objects colour into a digital colour code meant I could translate colours I liked in everyday aspects and place them into my design developments.
3. What strengths can you identify in your work and how have/will you capitalise on these? Attention to detail within final resolutions, I really am quite picky in little aspects of my designs I will carry on with this attention to detail making even finer adjustments in the future to create finally polished designs. Terminology, although not something to do with design I feel I have made good use of the terminology I have learnt through the different areas of design principles. I will carry on and continue to educate myself on different terminology to help analyse, and critic work in a more professional manner. Design development, I felt I went through the design stages quite well, starting with rough ideas and trying out new things to achieve a stronger final outcome. Good use of layout, I really enjoyed the use of grids and created reasonably well-composed design layouts through grid and layout experimentations. I would like to advance this skill and start to experiment with modular grids and more advanced layout techniques. Readability and legibility. I took all the basic design principles I learnt (Colour, type anatomy, layout, hierarchy) to help create readable and legible typography in my layouts and when creating my own typeface I considered basic type anatomy and created well produced legible glyphs.
4. What weaknesses can you identify in your work and how will you address these in the future? Use of colour. Be more experimental with colour choice and consider why im using colour a little more. Hierarchy. Need to experiment more with the basic design principles to create more unique hierarchy’s instead of just simple generic hierarchy’s. Time management. If I considered my time more and organised my time for specific tasks I would have created a more consistent body of good work.
5. Identify five things that you will do differently next time and what do you expect to gain from doing these? Don’t leave long tasks till the last minute; don’t take for granted the long timescales to carry out the work. As the long time allowance is there to create a large body of considered and developed work rather than lots of last minute and unnecessary content. A better overall outcome can be obtained by spacing out and prioritising tasks. Try out more experimental visual alternatives; all visual possibility can be exhausted this way resulting in a stronger final outcome with all areas considered. Be more daring, not subtle changes. When creating practical work look deeper into visual inspiration to help spark a wider range of visual responses and ideas to create a more considered and stronger outcome. Take tasks further, don’t just do the minimum requirements, go further to create more unique out of the box solutions rather than literal solutions derived straight from the task at hand. Expand on all aspects of a task, if it says research one thing, research that but start researching sub category’s, it will all benefit your arsenal of inspiration. Be more conceptual, the briefs we had didn’t really allow much room for idea generation but I could have incorporated a concept in there somehow rather than just creating design work based on aesthetics and purely just to meet the tasks set. Having a concept for the work gives the design more meaning than just been an aesthetically pleasing piece of design.
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.