At the beginning of the year, the idea of producing work for outside of college and having other people look at my work made this a module that I was scared of. I felt like I was under immense pressure because I do not have the confidence to show my work in a college setting never mind trying to produce professional outcomes for people outside of the institute. The idea of being in control of my own briefs was daunting and the prospect of having to compete against other designers was over-whelming. I just didn't feel ready for it.
Despite this, what I wanted to get out of the module was an opportunity to try as many different types of design areas as possible as another thing I wasn't sure on was what type of design I wanted to go into. I felt that this module would give me the chance to have new experiences and further myself as a designer.
At first, I would shy away from doing any of the briefs but I knew that I would have to do something to try and get over the initial fear of producing work for an outside audience so I did work for a small christmas card competition which I think eased me into the module. This meant that I broke the cycle by facing this head on and made me feel more confident about trying to put my work out there.
The main element of my responsive module was choosing the individual brief that I would want to do. I wanted to do a D&AD brief because I wanted the experience of having produced work for something that is considered prestigious. I decided that if I was going to have to produce work for the outside world, I was going to pick the body that had a lot of respect within the industry and prove that I could do it. I knew that if I did this, I would have to produce my best work yet.
The reason I selected the National Trust brief was because I could relate to the brief and felt that, from my own experience, I would be able to produce something that would be relevant to the target audience. At the same time, due to the fact that I was familiar with the brand, I knew that this would be a difficult and very challenging ask to change the perceptions. At one point I did question whether I had picked the right thing but I persevered as I didn't want to give up and in the end I produced some of my best work to date. The only downside to it was it took at lot of my time to produce the work for it which meant that I couldn't commit any time to produce some smaller brief responses.
The hardest brief to work with was the collaborative brief as, despite the fact that the brief was incredibly fun and engaging which I would defiantly take part in again, I had a partner who didn't contribute to the partnership as much as there needed to be and the unreliability meant that I was constantly having to ask for contributions so that I could produce my work. Despite this, I was very happy with the result of the work produced and I am actually looking forward to the YCN briefs for next year.
My time management due to the time spent on the large individual brief meant that I didn't have a lot of time to produce lots of small individual briefs. The briefs that I did produce were varied and allowed me to work on a different aspect or area of design thereby allowing me to try them out and broaden my horizons as a designer. I did a range of competitions and live briefs so that I got experience in both areas, with live briefs allowing me to try and work to a client wants whereas competitions allowed me to be more imaginative but I still had to work to submission and format requirements. The one that I enjoyed the most was the Penguin Book Awards as I had free-reign for the design and found a topic that I was interested in. I am looking forward to next year as I intend to take part in both the adult and child awards.
Overall, I have enjoyed the module even though I have found it very difficult to balance this module alongside all of the other modules that are going on. I feel that it has helped me become more professional in the display of my work and has given me more confidence to try and get my work out there. I would have probably enjoyed it more if I was able to focus more of my time on this module. Despite this, I have learned a lot during this module, about what I enjoy designing, what work I want to produce and the way I should present my work.
No comments:
Post a Comment