Summary Post

As a designer I feel that I have developed my time keeping skills really well and have become more self-driven. Last year I was also at the London College of communication studying a foundation course and was really used to tutors checking up on the work more and reminding me about deadlines and there was more of a structure to the lessons and work we had to do.

At the beginning of the course it was a shock for me that we had so much of our own time to do the work and develop it all ourselves, and even though the tutors were all there to help us out when we needed it, it was us who had to make the initial contact with them and not the other way around.

After the first term I decided to keep my own diary and this helped me keep on top of all the deadlines and keep track of when certain exhibitions were. I made myself prepare the work and have it finished before any actual deadlines so that I have time to change bits if it needed it.

Following the collage project when we were asked to design something to go in an exhibition, I volunteered to help out and organise it. This gave me more responsibility and kept me more busy, because of all the free time we had I got into the habit of thinking it was actually free time and not time to do work but I started to plan out the days and had something to be done on each day that was either relevant to the project that I was doing or the exhibition.

Halfway through the course I got the hang of generating ideas really quickly, that was one of the main problems that I’ve always had. I usually spent so much time thinking about the idea and whether or not it was good enough and not enough time on the actual finished thing. The very first project was to make the collages and in the workshop Darren asked us to make as many as we can in 5 minutes, and because of the pressure of the little time that we had I thought less about what was going where and why it was going there, I ended up making about 8 different collages using cut outs from magazines and newspapers and after the 5 minutes was up, I looked back at the rough ideas and was able to improve or extend the idea into something better. This is when ‘the penny dropped’ that I should just get on with the ideas and should have something physically in my hand to show I’ve done something rather than just an idea in my head.

For the Making the World Seem a Better Place project, I decided not to worry about the idea too much and see what I could come out with and I was pleased with the end product because it answered the brief exactly and wasn’t an obvious thing to do. If I had spent more time thinking about the idea I probably wouldn’t have had enough time to create the bin and would have ended up making a poster.

One of my weaknesses was actually keeping up with the blog itself. I had never done a blog before and wasn’t used to writing in entries about my work and other things that might interest me as a designer but got the hang of it towards the end. It helped me out a lot because it was a visual thing that had all the work I had done and designers I liked so I could always use it as a reference when I wanted to show someone something or remember which exhibition it was that I went to that helped with ideas for my work as well.

For next year I want to improve more on keeping a blog and making sure I do entries as often as I can, and to make more use of the people around me that can help me with things and help with ideas for work and steer me in the right direction. I also want to try and design things for people that will actually make use of it and get more experience working, even if it is just for a week or two. Overall I have enjoyed the course and even though keeping up with some of the work and other things I am doing is stressful I like the way it has given me the confidence to be independent on my work. I am also really glad that I have learnt to be able to generate ideas really quickly for any project no matter how hard it might be to come up with a good idea, I have realised that even if I come up with a idea I can always improve and work on it to make it the best I can do.

Wenlock & Mandeville : 2012 Mascot's

The mascot designs are attempting to tap into the fact that the mascots will be used by a wide range of media, but it generally just ends up looking pretty awful and don't really represent the icon for the olympics needed after the logo had been debated over so much.

Visit to the Design Museum

This is the exhibition visit I went to at the design museum. This sort of relates back to my final project in the sense that David Adjaye used images to record the different countries in Africa.

Pattern

In this workshop we were asked to create a pattern using something relating to London or found in images we have of London. This pattern can then be used in the book as an inside cover. I liked this workshop and creating the different patterns. Some of the patterns that I have created so far arent exactly the way I want them to be so I will continue to experiment with shapes and ideas found in the images I have taken of London. During this workshop I also started looking at simple images in a different way that wouldnt have been as obvious to me as before.

London High Street

In this workshop we were asked to take images of two contrasting high streets and then 'mash' them up together so it creates an intresting image. This can also be linked back to the 'theme' I have running through my book because it shows the diversity of london in general. I liked the idea of using tracing paper to pick out certain bis of an image.

A to Z

In this workshop we were looking at maps. This linked in really well with my basic idea that I had at the beginning about my own journey from Sutton to Elephant and Castle and how I could present it. It was only after this particular workshop that I decided that the wrap around cover for my book would be a map of the journey, but it would all be illustrated so that you get more of a 'feel' of the area and what its really like there. I havent started the actual map itself, I have been concentrating on the layout and extending the workshops at the moment, but I do know it will be drawn out by hand and possibly screenprinted after to give it a more 'finished' look.

Tourist Souvenir

First we looked at what each other had brought. There were a wide variety of souvenirs, typical things really. Then we got into groups and used the Kipling Method (also known as the 6 Thinking Men or 5 W's & 1 H) http://creatingminds.org/tools/kipling.htm to generate as many questions as possible about the object. The questions all start with either: Who, What, Where, When, Why and How. The aim was to start with obvious questions and then keep going till you're asking stranger and stranger questions. We didn't try to answer these questions -we just wrote down as many as possible. We then combined 3 of the more interesting questions together to create a 3 Question brief. By asking questions and putting them together you can co-create a brief with the client to give you a framework to work within. The final thing we did was to choose either the 3 Question Brief or one of the Concept Challenge ideas to generate visual ideas of a new way of designing, making and thinking about London Tourist Souvenirs. We generated a quick yet professional visual prototype to show each other. You then showed these to each other and provided feedback on the ideas presented.



(look at the pictures along the bottom to explain what it is and how it works)