DESIGN SKILLS. SELF-EVALUATION.

1. What skills have You developed  through this module and how effectively do you think you have applied them? 

ans: I have developed illustrator skills. I have never worked with illustrator before and already  feel quite confident though I know I have much to learn in the future. I also never worked on design sheets and I think it's a new skill as well. I now know how to prepare files for printing and where is the digital printing dungeon. As well I learned about different colour modes and how they can effect the final piece and how to use envelope layouts for designing and how you view them  on screen in order to print them out  logically. (when folded are in a logical viewing order)

2. What approaches to/methods of idea generation have you developed and how they informed your design development process?

ans: Well, I learned that well stated problem is half -solved. And the best way to start your idea generation is brain storming. Than researching in order to dig deep and I guess trying out ideas. We did a lot of workshops in order to start our idea generation and I think they helped a lot: linking words to simple phrases or the other way around, drawing images that describe an adjective, doing a short list research about something, searching for meanings and definitions, questioners...

3. What strengths can you identify in your work and how will you address that in the future?

ans: I think I'm quite neat  and I have the patience to spend hours going into details. In the future I'm hoping to be the same, though I hope I'll improve the timing of doing stuff. Because now some things take ages to produce.

4. What weaknesses can you identify in your work and how will you address these in the future?

ans:  I need to get used to working in design sheets and doing my blogging daily. Maybe improving  my time management would be useful. And organising everything - that's really important to me, because if at any point I loose my organisation skills it just becomes really hard for me to track everything down and reorganising takes me ages. 

5. Identify five things that you will do differently next time and what do you expect to gain from doing these?

1. Get used to blogging daily no matter what. Blogging really helps putting your thoughts together and also developing them by doing more research. Looking to other people work helps you start analysing and building your own understanding about graphic design. 

2. Improve my illustrator skills. I think I want to learn to draw images with a Wacom tablet so that I could have more variations to produce  imagery needed for the designs, not only the pen tool.

3. In the future I will do more experimentation and variations before completing my final piece. That would develop the design further. 

4. Start using the design sheets and no more sketchbook (I still have a sketchbook). The sketchbook is taking too much time to work in, the design sheet have more space and their easier to work in. Having design sheets is good for the final easement because it shows the development of your idea/design.

5. Manage my time better. If your timing is good than you will never have problems doing stuff late or being late with your final pieces or any of those. 

6. How would you grade yourself on the following areas: 

Attendance - 5

Punctuality - 5

Motivation - 4

Commitment - 4

Quantity of work produced - 2

Quality of work produced - 3

contribution to the group - 3

DESIGN SKILLS. BRIEF 5. REVISITING.

Basically I used the same design, just redesigned the piece so that it wouldn't need an envelope.  I thought that if somebody would buy the design and wanted to print it out, they wouldn't buy this one, because the envelope is really useless, well I like the idea, that it opens up layer by layer, but still. If I could design one example without an envelope it would be better. So I did. 

I thought of the sticker, but should have used a bounding or thiner paper, because it keep pop-ing out . That's obviously not good. Well, at least I tried it, the next time I'll know better. 

DESIGN SKILLS. BRIEF 3. ILLUSTRATOR. FNAL PRINTED PIECES.

It's always so amazing when You print out Your final pieces. It's so nice to see them in 'REAL' life.

I chose CYAN, because it suit's with my word condense. 

I tried it on black as well, though on screen it worked well. After printing the white piece looked better.  And while printing I had some problems with this poster, because on screen You could see blue lines bt when it came out of the printer there was no CYAN colour at all, just black and white. 

This one was with a square, triangle and a circle, that suppose to show condensation. Didn't really work as well as I though it will. 

DESIGN SKILLS. BRIEF 4. REVISITING.

I design a new set of series for my posters. I wanted to try different stock, so I printed them out on different types of paper. I done the posters in context. It's a last minute change. And quite relevant to what's going on now. Everyone is talking about the submission deadline and how much work they need to do and how little time they have, so I did a set of posters that I included my pro-verb. 

only text. used different  typefaces, used the same colours as for the brief 5 and the previous posters.

only symbols, did some illustrator work and produced simple imagery for a computer, than used some forms from photoshop:

 Image and type:

Poster in context. I think the best place and audience is the first and second years who have the module deadline next week.  

Some of us came to the drop in times because everything was booked for last week. And we came half an hour earlier so we wouldn't need to wait in a huge line that appeared just five minutes later. That's how busy it was this week:

The final pieces. Three posters:

Every cloud has a silver lining even during the busiest week ever.

DESIGN SKILLS. BRIEF 5. MESSAGE AND DELIVERY. DESIGN DEVELOPMENT.

STEP 1: Experimenting with tablet and drawing to illustrator on saturday. Actually really liked it. Developing my illustrator skills. ( as if had any:D) I couldn't use this so I made it to some fun poster about lines and cars, that doesn't really make sense. I couldn't use it for my final piece because it was too detailed and the brief was about communicating trough simple drawings.

made it simple:

made the cracked bumper sticker as well:

Took a while to trace the tool kit: 

Oh, actually at the beginning I printed out some pictures from the web, traced them by hand on paper, using the light thing (cannot remember the name for it) and did some experimentation and good old line drawing. I have to reconsider this pleasure of mine called 'lines' because they take me a lot of time to do. Well, anyways somebody (can't recall who it was) from the course said that the picture 2 look really interesting it's like a combination of beauty and simplicity. A good contrast. I couldn't use this illustration for the same reason i couldn't use the previous one. 

My layouts that I chose to design to:

I will revisit this brief tomorrow, because I don't really need the envelope. I like the idea that You find the information layer by layer, but it's really inconvenient and if somebody really wanted to print this massively it would cost them a lot of money. I'm going to redo the design of the folded piece and make it possible to post by using thicker paper and a sticky poster (with a car illustration)  that You would tour by opening, so if Your car is broken (torn) and then You find all the information about mechanics in leeds inside the folded piece (when unfold).

FIRST IDEA (that didn't happen) I tried to illustrate Henry Yunick that was the best mechanic in the world. I did some colour consideration , traced everything using the pen tool in illustrator. Thought trough the type that I actually used for the final piece. i used bebas.  I actually liked this illustration more than the tool kit, but the tool kit was more suitable to the whole idea of where to get your car fixed. I would have used this one for the NASCAR hall of fame invitation.