Interim Self-evaluation...

List 5 practical skills that you have developed. When have they proved useful?

1. Screen printing: I screen printed once at college and really enjoyed it, after having the inductions at both college sites, it was definetly something i wanted to incorporate into a brief, which i did in the last group brief. I screen printed posters and they looked really good and i enjoyed myself.

2. Learning all the new software has helped me a lot throughout a lot of the briefs and my designs, i feel comfortable using almost all of the ones i have learnt.

3. Making hotdog books was fun and i think it is a good way to present ideas and work, i even taught my younger brother whose doing Art GCSE to make them, he thought it was a good idea.

4. I learnt how to cook for myself, sometimes it can be a mish mash of stuff, but it tastes good. I also make an amazing chocolate cake! :)

5.

List 5 transferable skills that you have delevoped. What have you used them for?

1. Teamwork: I dont always enjoy working in a group, especially when you dont know other people well, but i think as we've settled in i have been able to work better as part of a group and i do enjoy it. It's important in industry and any job i guess, to work as a group or with a team of people.

2. Speaking with confidence during crits and presentations has made me a more confident person in general, i think that when we started i was nervous about speaking in front of people i didnt know, now i know people, i can speak more confidently.

3. Time management: I have got better at managing my time, because you soon realise that there arent enough hours in the day or days in the week, so every minute matters, and i shouldnt waste them. It has helped because i now feel like i can manage all the briefs and still have time for myself because i've been using time effectively.

4. Learning Spanish: I went to the Spanish lessons for a while, and i learnt quite a lot which will be useful if i ever want to go there in the future.

5. Money management: I have realised that money doesnt grow on trees and i dont like being in my overdraft!

List 5 things that you have achieved. How have they helped you progress?

1. Making 100 pairs of glasses from card! Everyone thought i wouldnt do it, but i did! ha.. it has helped me develop my paper cutting skills!

2. Typogateaux was an achievement because i can now bake a mean chocolate cake! nom

3. Passing all the modules so far! It motivates me to work harder.

4. I can cook healthy meals, even though i make some odd stuff, its good for me!

5.

List 5 problems that you have had to face. How have you overcome them?

1. Disliking group work at the start, because everyone works differently and some people are strong minded. But the more we did group work, the more i got used to it, i tried to stay positive and enjoy working with people who had different skills to me, i learnt a lot in the end.

2. Printing downstairs in digital print became a problem when you plus everyone else try to print in morning drop ins on the day of deadline...deffo a no no, i have learnt you need to book print at least a week before you need it.

3. Managing time: when you start the course you dont realise how much work you get, so i did have trouble managing me time with graphic design time.

4. Flat mates: I had a big problem at the beginning of the year with my flat mates, they were noisy and dirtbags, so i moved flats and now im happy :)

5.

List 5 facts that you have learnt. When have they been useful?

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

List 5 things that you will never do again. Why?

1. Start a 6 week brief, 2 weeks after its been set, because i didnt do as much work as i could of.

2. The photography elective- it was not enjoyable!

3. Leave CTS till the last minute!

4. Leave updating my blog for more than a few days because it gets on top of you pretty quick.

5.

Which of these words best describes the way you work as part of a group?

- Vocal and critical

Which of these qualities do you most appreciate about yourself?

- Responsible, Ambitious, Punctuality and Humorous

Which of these attitudes best describes the way you worked at the start of the group brief?

- Organised, Focused and Direct

Which of these attitudes best describes the way you work now?

- Flexible

Communication is a virus...Final feedback...

Final Feedback

This is feedback we recieved on our presentation from group 7, aswell as from Jo and Amber

These are the questions the group had to consider while giving us feedback:
Was the concept clearly defined?
Was the context clearly defined?
Was the method of delivery clearly defined?
What methods were used to gather information?
What methods were used to evaluate information?
What methods were used to distribute information?
How was the problem resolved?
How could the problem be resolved more effectively?
Was the problem delivered in the correct context?
Did the problem communicate with an audience?

 - Liked the concept, think it is strong
- Might be better to challenge people rather than be too nice to them and guide them
- Fear motivates more than positivity, so could include facts and figures
- Posters are aesthetically nice but there isn't much depth and meaning
- More of a 'kick up the butt approach' could work
- Liked the posters but don't think they are motivating
- Would be worth creating other products that are more relevant to students
- It would be good to test the products now that you have actually produced them and to see whether they work
- The posters seem a bit girly so a different approach would be better for males
- Posters worked for Kirsty, she did think they were motivating
- Liked the logo, thought 'help yourself' was a clever title, could make more use of this logo
- Some of the type styles didn't relate to motivation
- The different skills of group members is useful
- How would you give the products out? Have you tested it? Does it work?

Communication is a virus...Development...Monday 21st group crit...

Monday 21st March: Group discussion

We started to look at colour and scale of our posters/ ideas today, we decided to stick to a fairly neutral colour palette, as we didnt want our posters to be too 'in your face', we want them to be almost poetic and our colours needed to reflect on this. Because our posters are typographic based and some of us are hand drawing them we figured that they would all have a different style to them, so we thought it would be a good idea to design a logo which help give visual consistency throughout the poster designs, we would also have them the same size and orientation, and using the same colours.

As a group we thought that it would be a good idea to come up with 5 final posters each, which would give us 25 different designs in total, because we each had a category to work with (mine being fitness). Because we are designing the posters to motivate individuals in our class we wanted a variety of designs and styles that would appeal to a large percentage of people, we want them to have an individual feel to them.

Communication is a virus... Crit two Friday 18th March...

The Crit

We had another crit with Jo and numerous points came up about our ideas so far.

- Should we be posing a question to our audience to try and get them motivated?

- Do we need to use a statement to get them motivated?

- Do we need to try and trigger guilt to motivate them or use a positive approach?

- Does there need to be additional information on our posters, such as advice on the poster content?

- We need to think about the colours we are going to use, for impact and legibility.

- We should look at self help books.

- How do we motivate people, what key technique can we use that would be effective?

- Could we put our designs onto objects such as t-shirts, tote bags and posters?

- Could we frame our posters to make them more valued than just a poster?

- How are we going to print our work, screen print, digital print etc?

With the feedback given i feel that as a group we need to discuss how we will apply the feedback to our idea in order to develop it. With the idea of focusing on the individuals needs rather than for a practical purpose, i think we need to decide what technqiue we are going to use, will we pose a question or include a statement to try and motivate the individual? It's important that we know how we are going to approach this.

With the designs that i had done, the feedback was that at the moment they were too practical and needed to have some kind of statement about running on it, like how running is good for you or why you should go running or to the gym. I think in terms of applying my designs to objects, it could work on t-shirts (because the inividual could wear it when they go running); water bottles (this is where i could design stickers to be stuck on things like this); gym bags (could use transfer paper to print onto a small gym bag).

I think it would be really nice to personalise out designs for our peers, hopefully it could actually help motivate them and give more to themselves.

What is a line?... Action plan...

Action:

Research ways of documenting skylines- look at photography.
Try out different media- paint, pen (different thicknesses), stitching, digital

Deadline: 18th March 2011

Action:

Photograph Leeds, also maybe Newcastle and Sheffield (money dependent)
I need a good breadth of photographs with different skylines

Deadline: 25th March 2011

Action:

Monday 4th April i go home to Cambridge- take photographs of a smaller city, i can also go to Ely and surrounding smaller villages for rural skylines

Deadline: 8th April 2011 (when i come back to Leeds)

Action:

On the 11th April i am going to Amsterdam for 2 nights- i can take photographs of the skyline there.
During the same week i will complete all my tracings ready to take to uni and to scan ready for digital manipulation.

Deadline: 15th April 2011

Action:

Continue to go into uni and develop ideas- make a final piece and complete work.

Deadline: 24th April 2011

Communication is a virus...self led group crit...

Group Crit

We discussed our ideas, after researching our initial idea of getting people to give more and came to a slight dead end. Our idea was to create a swap shop event where students could bring their artwork, materials and books that they no longer needed or wanted and they could swap them with other students. But we weren't sure if the event would come together and we didn't know if our idea was original, once we had researched this idea we found that everyone was doing it right now, there is the Papergirl event where artwork is given out free around Leeds. There was then an event TK Maxx were holding for Comic relief at the Town hall where artwork will be given away for free and they were asking for artwork from people. We also found websites that were swap shops, one was specifically a student swap shop online.

Another idea we had was to look at time and how some students waste time that could be spent giving. For example in the time it takes to watch Holby city, you could have given blood, and between a tv break you could have gone online and donated your organs. The idea was to make people aware of the time they were wasting and what they could be doing within this time that would be worth while.

What next...

We spoke to Amber about our ideas and discussed ways in which we could approach our problem in an original way, she said about focusing on getting people to give more time to themselves to try something new. For example Amber wants to start making lunch everyday but doesn't know what to do, how can we help Amber to make her lunches? We could motivate her, enlighten her with ideas or just come up with really simple ideas that we know would be practical for Amber.

We asked people in the class to tell us a problem they had that they would like some advice on, or even solving. A lot of the problems were to do with being active, like people wanted to go running or swimming but don't have the "time" or motivation. Our problem is their problem and our aim is to come up with a solution that will help them to give time to themselves to do what they need/ want to do.

Communication is a virus...first pitch crit...

Today we pitched our idea as a group for the 'communication is a virus' brief, we made 3 boards to show our idea, one for the concept, one for the content and the other for method of delivery. The pitch went well, we were told that the presentation boards themselves could be altered in terms of their design.

The main points made from the crit were:

- If we are trying to get people to give more then for our research we need to take part in an activity that is about giving, for example i am going to give blood and we could take something to a charity shop just as evidence that it is easy to give and to show that if we can do it then so can everyone else.

- We should look at the current market and try and approach our idea in a fresh, original way.

- We should look at free cycle and Leeds volunteering websites to research other ways of giving.

- We could look at the time it takes to 'give', for example how long does it take to give blood and try and tech people that if you have a spare hour what could you do in that time that would help someone else.

- We need to find out how many students give already (what and how much), what would make them give more.

- Following the crit we discussed ideas and what we need to do next, we made a list of things we could/ need to research and then split this into manageable do to lists, so we each had an allocated job to do over the weekend.

I am going to research giving blood and donating organs and i will also research how many charity shops there are in Leeds and where they are.