Christmas Cake. Typoghetou

DESIGN PROCESS. 'HOW TO' Final piece mock-up

We did a mock-up of the final 'How To' product to show, how is it supposed to look if bind and have a platform to stand on.

DESIGN PROCESS. RESEARCH TASK. STUDIO WORK. with Fred.

 

                                   

This whole session though really confusing and hard but I guess we just need to work on it. If we'll be able to understand the whole process of research than it's one step closer to becoming a professional graphic designer. It's a bit hard to get You're head round things, when it's such a massive flow of information. And this whole session led us to the new brief, for me might be the most challenging brief of all. Because half of it I need to do it during christmas, that means at home. I'm really bad at organising my time while I'm back in Lithuania. I think one of the problems is that I haven't seen my family and my friends for 4 months now.  The other problem is my family. They don't like me sitting in front of pc for ages. They can become really distracting and annoying after a while, my mom specially. Though I already have a small plan. If I did some work for at least 3hours in the morning I should have quite a lot of research done. Or I'll just need to find a caffe and sit there whole day doing my work. I did a small plan of what I need to review/redo/revisit throughout Christmas holiday. 

and the new brief description:

DESIGN PRINCIPLES.Image and frame. Circle/Outside

Today we had to go outside the college and take some pictures relating to our previous theme (circle). It was really cold outside today, that's why I only have three contact sheets. We decided on 6 pictures in the group that we're going to develop for the booklet later on- after christmas. The task that we have now  is to experiment with the pictures and produce something interesting out of them. You're allowed to cut them, photoshop them, trace or whatever You can think of. It's quite a lot of work awaiting for christmas , not looking forward to that. I guess I'll need to learn how to manage my time better. That might be really useful in the future. 

  

DESIGN PROCESS. BRIEF 1. 'HOW TO...' self evaluation

Review the work produced in response to the 'How to...' brief identifying the following:

• What problem did you identify?
• What evidence did you find to support your decisions?
• What methods did you use to gather your evidence and what forms did it take?
• (categorise your research using terms primary, secondary, quantitative and qualitative)
• What methods of research did you find useful and why?
• How did these inform your response to your problem?
• What methods did you encounter as problematic?
• How did you overcome this?
• What research could you have carried put that would have proved more useful?

Answers: 

• How to prepare a christmas dinner without stress
• We did some surveys,looked at books, found a lot of tips online, also some recipes and asked people (our families)  about how they prepare their dinner.
• We did design sheets, blogged everything, took some pictures, did some folding, wrote down some tips or ideas in notebooks. 

• I think secondary qualitative research was really useful considering our problem. We couldn't do that much primary and quantitive  research weren't that easy to do - we are talking about cooking.
• Basically we started off  doing a lot of research about 'How to prepare a meal without wasting time and money'  and throughout the whole process of research we realized that this topic is to broad and only based on research and studio crit we decided to narrow it down and  ended up doing more focused final idea and design. We didn't know where we're going to end up and that's why as Bruce Mao said we ended up with something we all were glad. Only because of the research we were able to make a decision that time is the one problem everyone has during the holidays. 
• Primary research was a bit more harder for us I think, it's better do bas the final piece with wider numbers or more calculated statistics, than just asking people around. Though I think all the methods are good - it only depends on the topic that are given which research methods are going to be more or less useful.
• We balanced the quantitative with qualitative, primary with secondary. 
• I think doing surveys are more useful if you have a more focused audience, lets say: students or course mates. Than again statistics that are gathered throughout a country or a city might be more helpful for a less focused audience. 

Five things that I learned about the process:

1. I realized that research is a never ending circle. It's not all about making one decision and going for it. In any point you might need to revisit the research or do more research that will help you to develop your final piece.

2. Research is as important as the final work.

3. Primary and secondary research may also be categorized in quantitative and qualitative.

4. The best way to start thinking about the problem is to ask yourself: HOW? WHY? WHAT IF?

5. Also I learned the strategy for thinking through a problem:  

1. assimilation

2. general development 

3. development

4. communication

List five things you would do different next time:

1. Start doing the final piece a bit earlier

2. Organize the research a bit better and clearer 

3. Don't get stuck in the 'research' zone for too long. 

4. Organize my time better. 

5. Decided on tasks for each group member so we wouldn't get the same research stuff and doing the same things. 

DESIGN PROCESS. BRIEF 1. Group: cooking. Final designs.

This is a printing version of our final design. We met up yesterday and decided with who's designs are we going with . We chose Lizzy's and Stef's designs. We all chipped in and did the prints I prepared everything for printing (colours, layout, setting up on the page) , Nigel and Kathryn organised the stock and the format. I think we did pretty well as a group, I'm really glad. We were so glad when we saw the final piece finally 'alive'. We really didn't know how's it's going to end up. Really glad of our piece though, the only think that is still missing is the bounding, but I did the design for that and going to print it out tomorrow. We have the presentation as well. Did it on www.prezi.com <--- Lizzy's idea ;DDD  

You can watch the presentation here: 

Our final printed piece ( Still needs bounding):

And for our presentation we all had some Christmassy decorations.