OUGD504 - Design Production - End of Module Evaluation

This module has been very rewarding to me in terms of progressing as a designer, and learning what creates an effective piece of design work. I faced many challenges in this module but also learned many lessons on how to maximise my efficiency, choose the correct stock and production methods and how to properly liaise with clients. Starting with the things I feel I did well, I feel all of my work has had clear reasoning behind it and there were design choices that always suited the content I was designing for. I would always look at the main points of the brief and go from there on how to effectively convey the correct messages to the audience. Compared to beginning this course where I simply designed things because they looked good, I feel this is a huge step in becoming a professional designer. Another element I was good at was my primary research. I feel that I always had atleast two opinions on all of my work which helped me spot mistakes I wouldn't usually spot otherwise. I wouldn't have been able to do this without being in a college setting and this gave me an insight into why working in teams can be benificial for everyone involved. 

One of the things I could improve on would be my time management. I feel like I need to be able to consistently work instead of only being able to work efficiently when I feel some form of pressure on me. This will haunt me in the future as needing stress to work well can only lead to disaster in my opinion. I should start writing in a diary of what I should accomplish for the day as I feel that I work well when I have a list of what to do and when to complete it by. I also feel I need to work harder to broaden my design skills in illustrator, as I feel making things such as vector art is still alien to me, and I feel quite intimidated by the thought of having to draw my own art. Finally, I should think about diversifying my idea generation. I do create more ideas than I did last year, but they are usually all similar concepts to eachother if not the same altogether. This makes it difficult for me to expand on ideas and I still have the problem of going for the first idea that pops up in my head, albeit more developed than I used to create. I feel it would help if I made sure I didn't get attached to any of my ideas and simply came up with as many concepts as I could, because going with the first idea in my head can sometimes leave my blog looking empty because of the lack of idea generation. 

Overall, I feel that this was an extremely rewarding module and although challenging, I definitely learnt a lot with the main elements being creating a concept and taking into account my methods of production informed by the context of the design and I will definitely use this in my future design work.