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.