Design Boards and Time Management Workshop

Design Boards Workshops:

For this Studio Session, we were asked to bring along the Design Boards we had produced for the previous OUGD504 Module Briefs and the research boards for this current brief. For this Module, we will be focusing on Presentations and how we show our work.

As a year group, we discussed what shouldn't be on a Design Board:

• First Person Writing
• Initial Sketches
• Unreadable and Illegible Font
• Life Story
• Selling Mistakes and Typos
• Food Stains and Watermarks
• Too much Text and Paragraphs
• Print Problems
• Poor Image Quality and Image Resolution
• Scrapbook (Too Little Text)

At the same time, we discussed what should be included on a Design Board:

• Board Number
• Your Name
• Titles
• Images of your Work
• Decent Photos
• Some Type
• Board Consistency with Layout

We went onto criting each others Design Boards from the previous module, picking out any mistakes and improvements that needs to be made.

Amy's Design for Print and Web Boards

I was criting Amy's Print and Web Design Boards where I was writing feedback based on the large amount of text and the amount of typos and spelling mistakes. 

Emily's OUGD504 Design Boards

After doing Amy's Design for print and Web boards, I went onto going through all of Emily's boards so that she was able to get a second opinion. A lot of Emily's boards were already good but there was a lot of text on them that could be condensed down. 

After doing this exercise, we were able to get our own birds back to be able to see what feedback we had been given.

Feedback Notes on Final Piece Design Boards

Amongst all of the comments that were given, there were the main pieces of feedback: All of my boards have the point of including my name and page numbers onto them. This is something I never think about because I think they always have a clear order and, because for hand in, its in my own folder I never think to put my name on because its with all of my other work which is named. Another point that was made was my layout of pages as the gaps in-between the images could do with being of equal spacing. A point of interest was to try and include my text at the top of the page rather than at the bottom of the page. This is something I have tried before with layout and felt that it didn't look aesthetically pleasing at the top of the page but this will be something I consider and try for the next ones I produce. Another main comment was that my images were too dark or that I could do with taking better images so this is something that can easily be improved on.

Feedback Notes on Research Design Boards

The problem with my research boards was that they could do with some more text on them. What I had done wasn't a problem when I was presenting it myself but when they are by themselves, the images do not have any context so this would need to be worked on. The other main points given just repeated the feedback from beforehand with basic information and spacing between images.

This workshop was good as it meant that I would be able to determine the relevant information for both research boards and own work presentation boards so I know when text is appropriate and when it isn't. If you compare my first board (Designing for Web Brief) to my latest ones then you can see that I have greatly improved over time and practise but this workshop defiantly highlighted that I still have a long way to go.

Time Management Workshop:

In order to be prepared for the Module and to manage our time better as a year group, we each had to produce a Calendar plan so that we could attempt to manage our time better.

A2 Original Version

I put the data in of what we had already knew what we were doing so that I would be able to plan around that. I didn't see how I could plan my time however, when I didn't know what I was doing so I decided to fill it in as I went along so that I would be able to plan it as I sorted it out.

Not only this but, as is widely known, I don't like working on a big scale. Plus, I didn't see how I would be able to refer back to it daily and actually use it being this side so I made a small A4 version in my notepad and used it.

Used A4 Verison

By the end of the first brief finishing, this is the state of my timetable where I filled in all of my print slots and other briefs and sessions as well as my shift times on a weekend, highlighting crits and deadlines so that I knew when things were happening. It didn't help my time management but it did help plan my week.