portfolio Evaluation

When looking back at my portfolio I feel quite content with it. I feel it really portrays me well as a designer. It shows clearly what direction I have taken with my creativity and my design ambitions. Advertising is a career path I want to take, so I feel the majority of the work I have shown within my portfolio are aimed to portray that.

 

I do feel that some brushing up still need to be done, with the later part does suggest it has been rushed and just thrown together at the last minute. The explanations of my work I do feel need to be tweaked slightly, but this is something I will review over the summer. After sending my portfolio to professionals the feed back has been extremely positive, with them giving my feed back of how it is very clean cut and professional looking, portraying the quality of my work, something I really wanted to portray when putting it together. This is the reason I decided to go for a white background and limited text as I think my work really speaks for its self.

 

I do feel when looking back at my portfolio examples of promotional design, packaging design, branding and corporate design are very limited, all things that I am extremely interested in. As for this, these are things that I will be concentrating on within third year, which I will hopefully be able to tie in with advertising campaigns as I have done previously. I am unsure at present whether I should remove things like my photography and book designs, and make it more specific as me as a designer, or whether I should leave it to suggest to industry that I have a range of abilities and interests.

 

I have sorted 3 work placements out, and possibly a forth. My 1^st one is working for a freelance graphic designer, where I will be working alongside her producing websites, packaging design and just getting a better understanding of ideas I come up with and design going to print. Adveritisng or publication is a possible career path I want to take. I have a 2 work placement confirmed for physocolgies mgazine where I will be learning the general run of the company, and also I will be deisgining simple magazine pages for them on in design. Another confimred placement is for a week for Heat magazine.

 

I have an interview on Thursday in London for a possible placement for Elle magazine and FHM. This will be a great learning curve for me as it is the first professional interview I have had in industry, and I aim to take a lot from it and hopefully get some professional feedback from my portfolio. Also I have spoken to Saatchi and Saatchi, and they have no more availibilty over the summer, but they have kept my details on file and said they I need to contact them nearer Christmas and hopefully they will have something available for me.

 

 

I feel that my strengths I can identify within my work are now the ability to grasp the concept of a brief and develop my ideas quickly. Throughout all the briefs, Illustrator has been the software I am most confident with, and I feel this shines through in my portfolio. I do feel even though over the two years of being on the course I have grown so much as a designer, I still have a lot to learn. Even though I know where my nieches are within design at present, I still want to challenge my self more as a designer, help my self to develop into a professional designer, a place I can see my self getting nearer to, the more I manage my time and keep my self organized.

 

 

 

evaluation

1. What skills have you developed through this module and how effectively do you think you have applied them?

 

 

The first thing I have learned is how to manage my time a lot better, enabling me to produce a lot more work in a quicker amount of time. I have also learned how to be a lot quicker with my decision-makings, enabling me to become more inventive with the ideas and creativeness within my work. I feel that I have worked a lot harder, enabling me to be a lot more productive with the time available.

 

Advertising and branding is something I really wanted to try and even though it was a massive challenge thinking of unique and eye catching ideas, I feel with the time span I had with the 3 briefs I have achieved this to a certain extent.

 

Illustrator has always been my strongest point, but through these briefs I feel I have taken my ability to a higher level.

 

2. What approaches to/methods of research have you developed and how have they informed your design development process?

 

With this competition brief having such a direct target audience, my first initial response was to produce a questionnaire for ASOS, and see where men shop on the internet, if they do, and if they dont how come they don’t. Euro Millions, I looked into existing promotional material, but found there wasn’t much, so collected all the information available from the lottery, such as the entry forms and information booklet. For Wagamama, I looked at existing campaigns for their ‘eat out’ range, and also went into the Wagamama restaurant in Leeds, and go all the existing products if you got food to take out.

 

3. What strengths can you identify in your work and how have/will you capitalize on these?

 

I feel that my strengths I can identify within my work are now the ability to grasp the concept of a brief and develop my ideas quickly. Throughout all the briefs, Illustrator has been the software I am most confident with, but even so I have always said that there is much more I need to learn, and throughout these YCN briefs, I have learnt so many more applications and tools within illustrator. I feel my drawings within illustrator are a lot more professional looking, and I can see a huge improvement in these.  Concept design and advertising is something I have always wanted to have a go at, and now I think I can think of concepts a lot quicker to such a higher standard, and this has now made me think of a potential career path.

 

4. What weaknesses can you identify in your work and how will you address these more fully?

 

The weaknesses I can still see are in my development. I still have the habit of just jumping straight on to a computer and start designing, but not showing my idea generations, making it hard for me to put pen to paper and draw, don’t get me wrong I feel I have made a slight improvement within these briefs, but I still feel a huge improvement is needed. I also decided with ten days to go, to change one of my briefs from AA to ASOS, I feel I did leave this too late to actually read through the AA brief, and therefore I do feel all my 3 briefs did suffer a little due to this

 

Even though my vectorized images I drew up on Illustrator for all 3 briefs, are of a much higher standard than images I have drawn up previously, I did not account for the time it would take me to do so, and therefore I do feel my idea generation for all 3 briefs did suffer as of this. As time went on, I do feel I became a lot quicker, producing images to the same quality, but I think this is something I will naturally get quicker and better at the more I do it.

 

5. Identify four things that you will do differently next time and what do you expect to gain from doing these?

 

1. Even though my time management skills have improved a vast amount since the beginning of the course, I still feel that it is something that can be improved on still. Coming in at 8 am every day and leaving no earlier than 5, I feel I have been able to make the most of the time I had available, but I do feel if I had done this throughout the 5 weeks though, that the work I had produced would be at a much greater quality.

 

2. BLOG….BLOG….BLOG!! I need to focus more on this in the future, it is a MUST, not only for assessment reasons, but will also allow for personal reflection as well as releasing my work for the world to see.

 

3. I need to stop thinking of marketing ideas, and remember I am a graphic designer and stop over complicating briefs. I do realize I have a tendency to over complicate things when I am attempting to tackle briefs, but this is something I am starting to concentrate more on, avoiding this happening again.

 

4. I need stop letting personal things in my life effect my ability to work, I have had a lot that has happened over the last year, and it is something that over time I get better at handling, and I do feel that over the majority of the 5 week period I have been a lot more focused and dedicated to my work, but it is obviously something that over time I will get better at dealing with, and this will reflect within my work.

 

 

6.How would you grade yourself on the following areas?

(Please indicate using the number corresponding to the words below)

 

                              5= excellent, 4 = very good, 3 = good, 2 = average, 1 = poor

 

Attendance 5

 

Punctuality 5

 

Motivation 4 

 

Commitment 4

 

Quantity of work produced 3.5 

 

Quality of work produced 4