PPD EVALUATION

Mozilla Firefox Start Page

PPD Evaluation

  Throughout the second year I feel I have progressed a lot - in my approach to answering briefs, the quality of my work and my confidence. Confidence was the main thing I wanted to improve at the end of the first year and I realise now that it was hindering my progress as I thought I wasn't good enough.
  I think I have learnt a vast amount of skills this year including the software we have been taught like Flash, After Effects, DVD Studio and DreamWeaver, as well as improving my existing knowledge of software like Photoshop and Illustrator, which I have used for most briefs through the year. I enjoyed working with animation as it is something I have always been interested and I attended Pictoplasma animation festival which I really enjoyed but although I love to watch it, the annoyance of producing it has put me off wanting to go into that area quite a lot and I think I would prefer to work with print based graphics more than digital.
  Also, through the print module, I gained some knowledge of the print process and colour management. This has been very useful to me so I can use this knowledge in my other work to make sure the end print is as best as it can be. It has also been helpful for the CD project I did for a small band (on blog).
  I chose image rather than type for the optional module but I don't know if this was the right decision because by the end of the module I wasn't enjoying it and I think it is more useful to know about type and I don't think I want to be an illustrator as I rarely chose to draw for my studio work (even though it is what I like to look at from professional designers.) Through the visual language module I became interested in digital collage and used it for several of my CD covers. In particular I looked at the work of Julien Pacaud

who does a lot of editorial work as well as for music. I think this came from feeling I wasn't very good at drawing so I tried to make images in different ways. Also, I have looked at illustrators who use plain black and white drawings such as David Shrigley         


and Edward Monkton whose work is more based on ideas than a good looking end product. This helped me in the Dig for Sanity brief where I learnt not to try to draw well if the idea was good and this is what I like about this type of illustration because I am more interested in concepts surrounding work than making things look perfect. I think my main strength is ideas and this is evident in most of my work, in particular, the postcards I did for Postcards2Print, for which I used straplines to inform about issues surrounding Tesco. I also think I am a fast learner and I have picked up a lot of skills this year and continue to teach myself stuff at home. I can tell that I am progressing because every project I do is a little bit better than the one before in some way.  
  The things I need to improve are the presentation of my work as it looks scruffy sometimes. This is something I am trying to look at with designed identity as I have took quite a lot of care over the final outcomes.  
  This year I have learnt that I work well under pressure and I have learnt that I can control how stressed I am with good time management and I have found it useful to do weekly plans of my time to the hour. This has been especially apparent in the last couple of months with the 203 briefs, designed identity and visual language all running at the same time.
  I have found that I can come up with ideas quite quickly and I am much better at making decisions than last year. This has helped with the 203 briefs where I have had to work quickly, but I perhaps don't try out enough ideas before deciding.
  I don’t know what my focus is as a designer and I hope I will know in the third year, although in my opinion it is not that important and I would rather not limit myself to one thing then realise I don’t like it further down the line. I like image, print and I like playing with ideas so these are things I will do more of next year.
  My work placement for two weeks in the Summer is Calvert and Pyrah (www.calvertpyrah.co.uk) in Elvington near York. I hope my time there will help me to clarify what in particular I would like to do. They appeal to me because they do print based promotional work for small and ethical clients like museums, schools and organisations and I think that is lovely.
  Overall I think my second year has been successful as I feel loads better than at the end of the first year in terms of where my work is at, but it has also been confusing as I still like everything and I keep being told to specialise.