Presentation

I didnt think that my presentation went as well as i'd hoped. From nerves I missed out a lot of what I wanted to say. Public speaking is definitely a big weakness of mine, but it is something I will keep working on as it will be a very important skill in the future.

- I have always had no idea what I wanted to do.

- I studied Economics, ICT and Textiles at A-Level and did life drawing on the side.

- I then went on to do a foundation, which was where I was first introduced to graphic design.

- Through my foundation I was introduced to a lot new things and had the chance to try a lot of things.

- Indesign is something I have never used before this year. 

- At first I really struggled with it, but from making a lot of books this year I was able to get the hang of it and see just how much of a useful program it is. In the future I hope to get much better and have a greater understanding of all of its features.

- Type was something that I never knew much about, being able to look into things such as the anatomy of type was very interesting.

- Over this year I have experimented with both hand rendered and digital type, and created three of my own typefaces which i was very pleased with. 

- Design principles was a module that I found very useful and fascinating. 

- I really enjoyed all the workshops, I got the chance to try some new and very useful things.

- Screen printinging was something I has never been given to opportunity to try before and although I thought it difficult at first I am very pleased with my work and it is something that I want to keep working with. In future I was to try working with more colours and more complex designs. 

- Personal branding. Because type has been something that I have benefitted most from this year I have created these made up out of some of my favourite fonts and the fonts I collected in my type journal. 

- I will be going to Paris in the summer.

- I researched some studios I would like to visit.

http://www.playgroundparis.com/

http://www.mosne.it/

- I will also be going back to my job at a cafe in a park.

- And will be spending my time in my local pub.

Evaluation

Self Evaluations:
Design Principles

Design Practice

New Skills:
InDesign
InDesign is something that I have never used before and have really found it useful throughout this first year. I have created multiple booked in InDesign, and although I found it very difficult at first I kept working with it and have found that my InDesign Skills are improving. In the future I want to have more of an understanding of all of the function in InDesign and to have more confidence when I am using it.

Screen Printing
Screen printing was something that was completely new to me until this year. It is something that I enjoy doing and hope that it is something that I will improve in next year by trying much more complex designs and adding more colours to add a challenge.

Book Binding
Bookbinding was a very useful skill that I was able to acquire this year. In the future I hope that I will be able to create a lot of good quality books.

Group Work
Group work was again pretty now to me this year. I found working in a group to be very useful to see how other designers work and approach problems. However I found it to be a challenge to equally balance out the workload, people seemed to do some that others. In future I will make sure that the work in allocated fairly and equally.

Weaknesses:
Regularly Blogging
I found that I usually left my blogging until the last minute, this means that what I am blogging about is not fresh in my mind and could be from a few weeks ago, so certain important aspects could be forgotten. I want to get into the habit where I try to update my blog once a week at minimum. This will hopefully improve the quality of my blog.

Too much digital work
This year I think that I focused too much on digital work. Hand rendered work was such a personal feel to it. Next year I want to include much more hand rendered work into my briefs.

Research
I think that my research could be greatly improve. Especially primary research. I think it is vital that I collect my own research and opinions rather that just using the internet to look at other peoples research. From this I will gain a greater understanding of my projects. Research impacts my designs, so better research will lead to better final outcomes and stronger concepts.

Time Management
Time management was a big issue for me this year, and I think that some of my work suffered because of it. In future to work on this problem I will create to do lists and make time tables to manage my time, to insure I am using my time efficiently and nothing is rushed.

My first idea was to make a series of business cards and each one would have a different font. I want the cards to be very type oriented because type was something that I  enjoyed over first year, but it was also something that was very useful to learn about. I wanted to express this through using some of the fonts I collected in my type journal and some of my favorite fonts. 

While experimenting I tried including a circle and working with the negative space on the glyph.

I liked the negative space but decided to drop the circle. The negative space represents how I don't know what I want to do within graphic design, and how I am unsure on the future. I created a background out of letter R in my favourite fonts and fonts I discovered through my type journal, again something I font very useful during first year. I have used the letter R because of my name. I did want to have these screen printed, to represent another know and useful skill I have acquired this year. However due to bad time management I was unable to get it done. In the future I will insure that I set aside just as much time for the production as I do for the designing and digital work.

I also decided to create a poster to accompany my business cards. 

Business Card Research

For my personal branding I want to create a business card. I have researched existing business cards which I think I different and clever.