OUGD503 | Module Evaluation

On the whole I have found OUGD503 to be a very difficult module. When we were first briefed I was really looking forward starting all the different briefs and choosing what I could work on and deciding for myself what I would get out of each project. The fact that the work I was going to produce was going to be seen by people outside of our university and in the real world was a big incentive for me to produce the best work I possibly could.

The first brief I started on was D&AD’s Monotype. This brief set the task of finding an issue we felt strongly about or felt like need more awareness and create a type-focused poster campaign for it. From the start I had a few ideas as to what I would choose; NHS funding, student costs, immigration and refugees, but I eventually got to police brutality. I chose this issue as out of all the ones I had thought of, this has the least time on the news and headlines compared to the others. Yes, a police shooting will make the headlines for a week or so, but after that, everybody has forgotten it’s a problem until it happens again. I wanted to reflect this in my work by making people realize they need to ‘look closer’ at the issue in order to see the full scale of it. I believe I was able to do this by using different opacity for different parts of my poster, making some more visible than others upon first glance.

My peers really seemed to like this concept and the message I was putting forward so this is the idea I ended up using for my final resolution. Although I do like the concept and idea and how my posters turned out, I feel if I presented more ideas and asked ‘which one is the best?’ rather than ‘here is one of my ideas, what can I do with it?’, I would have had more potions and possibly come out with a better outcome.

In the middle of this brief I also started working on Secret 7, which I was very happy about as I had enjoyed it a lot when doing it in level five. I knew this module would have a lot of overlapping briefs and commitments from the start, and I was hoping that this would help me get my organizational skills up to scratch, but rather than help me I believe it affected my work. As I have said many times, I need to improve my time management, and it was no different in this module.

I am quite pleased with my Secret 7 outcomes as everybody I have spoken to about them has really liked the design and the concept behind them. Although I had to explain the concepts; I, along with others, like how abstract they are. At the start of the brief I did want to maybe try some more experimental designs as this was the perfect brief to do so as it had very lenient rules.

When it came to Brief 2 in OUGD503 we had to collaborate with at least two other creatives. I knew from the start that I really wanted to work on the Design Bridge brief, but thought it was a big project to bite off if I were alone, which is why Brief 2 was the perfect opportunity to work on it.

My group consisted of me, Aaron Major and Alex Robertson. I wanted to work with two other graphic designers as I thought this brief was a lot more suited to a graphic designer’s skillsets rather than an illustrator or an animator. The three of us all worked really well together and we all contributed the right amount to get a good final product. I leaned a lot from this brief as it was only the third time I have ever had to work closely with a group. I learned how to communicate my ideas in a clearer manner, negotiate ideas and designs and most importantly for me probably making sure I am organized. I felt more organized with this brief as I didn’t want to let my team down by giving them work late or not doing it at all as that would make all of us just fall behind. We used Google Drive to share our work instantly which was a great help to us.