Monday, 7 March 2016

OUGD406 - Studio Brief 01 - Evaluation

With this module I decided that I would experiment with a real variety of design methods. After completing my PPP module I discovered that my work I produced was at a much higher level after exploring a new technique. Throughout the year I have played it very safe and not explored new methods and wouldn't of even considered them. To avoid continuing digital work that I would of immediately jumped to, I told myself I would explore brand new techniques that I had not used in my work over the year. I also wanted to explore techniques that I haven't used in a long time such as illustration and photography. These were two of my favourite techniques before coming to university, but I haven't used them since.

I spent a long time conducting research to ensure that my work would be produced professionally. As this was a live competition, it was important that I produced the best work that I could. I stayed on top of the work and ensured that I kept to interim deadlines and critique sessions. I attended every tutorial that aided my work and encouraged me to explore even further with my techniques. The production of my work involved using the two university buildings available, which are a twenty-minute walk away from each other, so I had to ensure I worked quickly and efficiently so that it would not stop me from producing work within the deadlines.

The techniques I used are techniques that I feel most comfortable with and that I am used to working with. However, to push the work to a higher level I ensured that I experimented further with my initial material. Feedback was all incredibly useful when it came to producing innovative ideas as well as producing quality work. To ensure that my work was at a standard to be submitted into the Secret 7 competition, I had to make sure that the work was engaging and inviting. It is often the case that the work I would least expect to be preferred by others is more successful. I produced a huge amount of initial ideas, which allowed me to produce several quality final designs. Producing thumbnail ideas really helped me to put down my thought on paper and made it simpler to produce the design.

Many of my ideas have ambiguous meanings to each song. Because this is an anonymous competition, I tried to produce designs that wouldn't necessarily be obvious, but still hold a visual message similar to that of the song. Some ideas I managed to produce before producing any visual work for them but some of my ideas and ambiguous meanings were produced after experimenting with the work. This development has been hugely successful and actually, the design that was accepted into the Secret 7 competition, was a design that developed from my physical experiments with mono prints. I produced a real variety of album art styles, which I was able to do after producing a large body of research. The variety of album art is endless which meant I was capable to experiment and really go as wild as I wanted to.

My final designs are digital and would of been produced by the competition holders themselves so I didn't need to worry about the production of each sleeve. However I needed to ensure that the designs were 7 inches by 7 inches and were in CMYK colour format. One design I produced involved covering the front of a cover in black fur. For this I went down to the market and bought some quality fur. However I struggled to stick the fur to the cover as I was using PVA and the overall production of it was a little rushed so I would of spent more time and care over it if i was to create a design like this again. I did print off my winning sleeve for submission and used the fold machine to ensure it had a clean fold and was produced at a high quality.


I really enjoyed producing my mono prints and experimenting with them digitally. Once I had a body of work I found I could produce an endless amount of experiments. I think my most successful designs have come from this design technique and my winning sleeve was the result of a mono print. I enjoyed using my photography and experimenting with this technique. I would like to include this into my work a little more and have tried to in my design principles module. For me my least successful work was a result of my illustration. This isn't a strong point of mine and as much as I would love to be able to illustrate I feel as though my work was not at a good enough standard for the professional competition. I am really pleased with my final designs and happy that one of them was accepted into the competition. 

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