OUGD402: PPP Session (18/02/13)

1. What's your professional name and contact details?

• Ant White 
• anthonywhitegd.com
• antwhitegd@gmail.com

2. What 5 words best describe your design practice?

• Clean
• Minimal
• Simple
• Bold
• Blue

3. What 5 words best describe you as a person?

• Dedicated
• Determined
• Drained
• Blue
• Awkward

4. What are your 5 strongest design skills?

• Image Manipulation
• InDesign efficiency
• Illustrator efficiency
• Idea generation
• Design Process: Design Development

5. What areas of Graphic Design interest you the most?

• Branding
• Publication
• Web Design
• Typography

6. Who are your favourite designers/design studios?

• Saul Bass
• Neville Brody 

7. What makes these your favourite? (Where can you see their work?)

• Saul Bass
• His work on 1950s film posters, specifically Vertigo (1958)
• http://Saulbass.tv

8. What are your favourite design blogs?

• http://www.windowsofnewyork.com/

9. What are five things you want to be?

• More efficient
• More diverse 
• More traditional (not using the Mac as much)
• More to the point
• More professional

10. What five things do you think you need to do to be this?

• Focused
• Experimental
• Experimental
• Clear
• Experienced 

_________________________________________________________________________

TASK:

In a group of 3, design a THREE-ADS (3 Adverts) which will communicate the design practice of yourself and each of the other two people in the group.

• None A-Format, but to an A3 scale. 
• 50 words maximum. 
• It can be type, image, type and image.
• They have to be a different former for each one

What you produce for yourself, may look different for the other people. 

Look at their blogs, and look at their contextual references, it should reflect the design values of what they're intreated in. All work produced should be on your PPP blog. 

3 Printed Resolutions for 10am.

_________________________________________________________________________

Interviews

Laura

• Laura Tomlinson 
• LauraTomlinson@ymail.com

• Quality
• Innovative
• Fun
• Professional
• NO FIFTH D:

• Professional
• Easy going
• Massive foodie (Food lover)
• Happy

• Strong Design Skills
• Idea generation
• Screen print
• book binding
• layout design

• Publishing
• Editorial
• Print
• Retail Promotion

• Stephan Stagmister 
• Studio 8 (Defunct)
• Wall Paper
• Elephant Magazine
• William Egliston

• Google them

• Record of The month - creative review
• Design Week's - Book section
• Magnation

• Interesting
• Taken Seriously as a Designer
• Successful
• Good Cook
• More Creative

• Hard Working
• Focused
• Skilled
• Experimental
• Experimental

Caitlin Walsh

• Caitlin Wash
• E-mail: c8_4@hotmail.co.uk

• Through
• Precise
• Clean
• Reinterpreted
• blunt

• Stubborn
• Determined
• Funny
• Acting
• Fun

• Crafting
• Composition
• Photography
• Layout
• Colour

• Branding and Idenity
• Packaging
• Information and Way finding

• Lisa Nilson
• Johnathan Branbrook
• Zimmers Zool

• Google them

• Designspiration
• Lovely Package
• Behance
• Coolinfographics
• DesignWeekly

• Successful
• Happy 
• efficient
• Professional
• Wider Creative Field 

• Working Hard
• Cheering Up
• Focused
• Work on her execution
• Experimental

OUGD402: PPP1 - What is a Graphic Design Practice?

• "Graphic Design is an ongoing examination/conversation between the dynamics of personal exploration and professional practice" - Matt Owens, Volumeone.
• What is it that makes you, you? You need to establish the thing which separates you from the masses.

Three ways to determine an effective design practice

• Appropriateness of response,
• Quality of Resolution, - reflecting your ambitions
• Meeting the deadline. - a good brief is one which comes in on time

Appropriateness of Response

• What is the Problem? 
• Who is the Audience? 
• What is the Context?
• What is the Method of Delivery?

What is a Problem?

• Are you being asked to do something? Professional Standpoint 
• Is it something that you want to do? Personal Standpoint

It comes down to your own personal preferences

• Persuade, inform, ask questions, make a statement, give an order, deliver and instruction, make some laugh/cry?
• What function is it going to perform?

What is your Rationale?

• What are you doing, and why are you doing it?
• You're doing it because you want to do it? Or are you doing it because you have to do it?

What's the way you work, under the Rationale? 

• Concept driven 
• Idea driven
• Research driven

However, it's not always one, or the other. One is not always more important than the other.

Define what your practice is about, under the Rationale

• Audience driven
• Context driven
• Media driven

Creating Briefs and choosing work, under the Rationale

• Creative driven, a chance to create something extremely creative, and work with creative people
• Ethical connection, being able to associate with their aims and ambitions
• Commercially driven, soullessness - for the money.

Where do you sit within this? - if you don't position yourself within these, someone else will.

What are your outputs, how does your practice reflect the Rationale? What are your methods

• Handmade
• Digital
• Lens Based

What are your dimensional abilities work with the Rationale? 

• 2-Dimensional - Digital, flat
• 3-Dimensional - Object,
• 4-Dimensional - Time, movement, sequential development. a set series.

Quality of Resolution

• Depth of appropriate research
• Breadth of initial ideas
• Selection of potential solutions
• Thorough visual development
• Attention to detail/crafting
• Clarity of presentation 

Within that, we're also looking at Type and Or Image

• Do you work with one more than the other?
• You begin to develop your signature, something which is distinguishable as your own, using type and image

Is The Media the Message?

Tone of Voice

• Do you like humouring your work? Is it funny?
• Are you someone who is very authoritative?
• Is it appropriate for the situation? 

It comes down to two key things which makes it better, what makes you, you

• Try it,
• Test it,
• Make it better.

Remember to play, that is what will keep you moving forward.

Collaboration

• The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential.
• With other designers, with other people of different professions.
• Collaboration is not the same as group work.
• Using other people's skill sets to help you produce the best work possible.

Meeting the Deadline

• Time management,
• Project management,
• the is the key skill to develop,
• being able to hand in the best thing you can, however, when you hand it in, you know you could do better.

Message, Communication Clarity and Context 

+

Creativity concept ideas

x

Skills, organisation, discipline, and commitment - These three things will help you create the perfect piece of work. 

/

Boundaries, Limitations, Rules and Time - These thing will stop you getting there.

Are the boundaries, limitations rules and time set by the industry? or are they set by yourselves?

An Effective Design Practice.

OUGD406: Design Practice 1 - Design is About Doing (Final Crit)

Design Practice Post | Design Context Post

We had a group crit, following up a week of working on the 5 designs, based up the 30 design sheets. We presented all of this at the crit, explaining our process and thought path, which lead us to our final designs, from out initial 30 thumbnail sketches and how this related to our research.

We, the five participating in the crit, determined that the designs shown below was the best out of the possible 5, which I presented.

The feedback which I've obtained is listed below, I will apply this to the chosen design.

• Experiment with the patterns, use more from the website background, and text them with your work.
• Remove the 7" on the chosen design, and produce different ideas with the different patterns. 
• Colour variations of the designs, experimenting, to see which colours out of the colour set from the website work. 

People in my Group: Grace, Adam, Emily and Anna. (Joe - Absent)

OUGD402: STUDY TASK 5 - Where Am I Now?

10 things that you have learned about yourself as an individual and as learner. These should reflect your personal development and individual journey since the start of the programme.

• I have learnt that myself, as a learner, I am more leant towards the practice part of the process.
• I have learnt, since I began here, that as a designer, I'm into the clean style, the modernist-influence style, as aposed to the post-modernist cluttered style. 
• As learner, I have discovered that I use other mediums, such as film, rather than Graphic Design to influence and inform my design process.
• As a learner, I've begun to understand the importance of crits and feedback, and using this to inform your work, to make it better.
• As a learner I feel like I have improved my ability to collaborate with other members of the group, rather than undertaking the tasks myself. I think this is because the standard within the group is incredibly high, and I don't need to fear that the end product will look awful.
• However, in response to the statement above, as an individual, I do prefer working alone, approaching projects from my own unique angle, being able to experiment with my skill set to produce something different, rather than having to accommodate other's skill sets.
• As a learner, I think I need to start stepping outside of my comfort zone more, when it comes to creating the product, rather than dashing straight to Illustrator or InDesign upon finishing my design sheets.
• As an individual, I have learnt that I'm good at managing my time, to my surprise, I'm getting all the work done for it's deadline-date, and I'm able to have down time along side this. I'm pleased to say, I believe I've found the balance.
• As a learner, I believe that my weakness in terms of responding to a brief would be the research section, I tend not to narrow my searches into a specific point, I find I stay rather broad and get mediocre  uninteresting findings, this is something I hope to work at and improve in the current module, OUGD406: Design Practice 1.
• As a learner, I feel that I could also learn to develop me designs, from my thumbnail sketches further. By this i mean, that i could explore the concept more. I will develop this ability over the current module.

10 things that you have learned about yourself as a designer. These should reflect your growing awareness of your own interests within graphic design as a subject, discipline and profession.

• I have learnt, since I began here, that as a designer, I'm into the clean style, the modernist-influence style, as aposed to the post-modernist cluttered style. 

An example, above of my work, and how what I would consider to fit this style.

Above, is an example of some work which I think fits the clean style, which I attempt in my work, using shapes and vector images rather than drawings, paintings or physical artwork as the the image which I would work with.

• As a designer, I feel like I'm good at creating thumbnail sketches to generated and extend ideas, to create the best posible layout and plan for the solution.

• As a designer, I have developed in an intrest in the vector drawings, using abstract shapes and lines, rather than tracing for creating an image as you would imagine it, using traditional methods, with shading.
• As a designer, I think I developed an attachment to using a very small selection of colours within each piece of design. For example, in a past module, OUGD405 Design Process, I used few colours within my final product, using blue orange and stock colours. 
• As a designer, i have begun to use more simple designer, than rather artistic mediums, such as experimental water-colour pieces or paintings with custom brushes.
• As a designer, i have discovered a passion, that is working with body copy, in a magazine style, being able to use columns, margines, guides to wrap text around, and create a pleasing style, along side with images. 
• As a designer, I think that I have developed my ability to generate ideas, and create my own work in the style or in influence of another designer, using them to inform my work, and create a more visually dynamic outcome, in a style other than my own.
• As a designer, I have learnt that more does not mean better. Infact, I would almost go as far to say, less can mean better. Rather than cluttering the page, filling it with images, type and info-graphics, a much cleaner simple layout, with only the essential points, facts and ideas usually works better.
• As a designer, I have become reliant on the process leading up to the product, using the generation of ideas to the fullest, rather than designing things on the spot, based on one random idea I've summoned from no-where. Creating thumbnail sketches, development sketches, mock ups experimenting with concepts to create the best final product.