Module evaluation

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

I think mainly I have developed my work ethic for the better. Compared to the last module I’ve put a fair amount of more time to doing my work and I feel that from doing so I’ve got a lot more out of it. I think I’ve done this pretty effectively as the work I have managed to produce in my opinion is rather lovely. Better than my earlier work anyway.
I am now fairly confident with InDesign, before the module I had never used it and now I’m proud to say I can duplex print and have an understanding on the process of designing page and book layouts. With this skill I’ve shown I can do it with the 16 page booklet, however I did get the paper size wrong, oops. Furthermore my swatch book is evidence of duplex printing, just done without facing pages.


What approaches to/methods of problem solving have you developed and how have they informed your design development process?

Throughout this module I obviously came across problems and I feel that I solved them fairly well in line with the brief and in a way that compliments and fits in with the general design. I think What helped with this module is that it was really quite open and broad, which gave us the chance to really do something that we want to and can easily get excited about which helped me to personally put a lot of effort and time into, also finding the work more enjoyable but nevertheless more stressful. The main method I developed towards problem solving would be keeping in mind who and what I’m designing for and from this I found solutions, asking questions like what does this thing have to achieve? The answers come naturally, from their it’s a matter of bringing it to life.



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

A strength I can identify within my work is being able to produce ideas quickly, with this I can sooner find if that idea is any good and if it does or will work. To capitalize on this is to document clearly that idea straight away, whether that be a print out or a post on my blog as I find that I have to go back to find these earlier ideas to prove that I did actually have them.

I also found with the body of my work that I respond well to criticism and other peoples opinions, (I will however sulk for an hour) but looking back at crits and blog comments there’s evidence from there after of change and development of my ideas which reply to what was said. So I just need to keep the open mind to capitalize with this in the future and to respect everyone’s opinion.



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

I find with working in general I have my on and off days, and its evident that with some work from this module that my head or heart wasn’t fully in it and I didn’t get the end product that I feel I’m capable of, to combat this I have decided that when I’m working and feel that “can’t be bothered attitude’ to put that work away and just do something for another project. As I never have just one project, I did this once or twice during the module and I found it helped. It seemed to occur whilst sitting at a Mac for hours, so when it happens again I plan to just go away get a fine line out and draw for another brief.
I also found that within the project I felt I was doing the same thing over and over, just with a different cover. Looking specifically at the book project I was constantly relying on Illustrator to create images, this was a choice made really due to time and the quickness of it as I was designing page by page which became very time consuming. To address this I feel I need to remember that I am actually fairly confident in producing images and text by hand and can often lead to a better result. I feel that I was getting worried about not finishing the book and as I was putting a lot more effort in I wanted something to show at the end for it, so in my mind adobe was the obvious choice to getting it finished.

Another slight weakness I feel I have is to present work in a more neat and stylish way, I feel I lack design sheets which is a useful way to mount work and show in a decent way, so I guess to address this is to simply start producing more design sheets, with the intention of a slick outsome.



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

1. Use more drawn and original imagry; Having a more personal styled work
2. Document idea and development as I do it, blog/prints; a clear body of of work that flows from idea to idea

3. Stay later in Uni, come in on Wednesdays, come in on Saturdays more often; getting work done efficiently, less distraction, equipment available

4. Present body of work more neatly, slick design sheets; better looking work

5. Photograph with an SLR; better quality of images captured



Are there any things we could have done differently that would have benefitted your progress?

I feel pretty satisfied with the support given and everything so, nothing that I can think of! Well done

How would you grade yourself on the following areas:
(5=excellent, 4=very good, 3=good, 2=average, 1=poor)

Attendance: 5
Punctuality: 5
Motivation: 4
Commitment: 4
Quantity of work produced: 2
Quality of work produced: 3
Contribution to the group: 4

swatch update,

so another update on the ol' 100 book, i've produced 3 more pages, and also experimented with fastenings for the swatch book,

Main two being a key ring loop thing! and a washer and screw from the bindings of my snowboard, 

 

Both fastenings fit in with the topic of the book,  as one is a part of a snowboard and the other would be handy as a pocket sized book, attachable to all sorts etc 

Out of the two i prefer the screw/washer as its less bulky and also makes the pages easier to spin round and all that. 

As i said i've created what could be the front cover to the book and more pages, 

So this is what im thinking for the front cover, its not fully finished need to add the title and my own name, but it will look similar to this if other people like it,

The above two pages are for the flip tricks section, using the colour coded system of difficulty levels. Again a different style to any other section of the book, this one being quite simple, short effective? 

16 page booklet

This is my first post on this so yeah, just going to put some of the better pieces up here, maybe give a brief description, I'm just gonna freestyle it out as it were, see what happens, 

This is quite a simple image really, but i only found out how it can be done during the photoshop induction, using the single row marque tool, i just dragged a row of single pixels out, extending the colour this way, short and sweet.

Here i used a combination of selection tools, dragging them over to a canvas, paint bucket, bang. Aswell as creating my own paintbrush's from shapes and paint splatters, with an added background. Three layers of pure beauty!

100 book progress,

Again just posting some of my recently improved pages, 

so here we have three  pages for the 'jibbin' section and two pages for the spin trick section.

I've now chosen to stick to the font being mainly size 18 for the trick title and 16/17 for the description, as now i have also decided the size of the pages will be 13.5 x 19 cm so the type needed to be relatively large and obviously easy to read.

I've also come up with a cheeky idea of colour coding the tricks in terms of difficulty. Starting with yellow for easiest and black for hardest, all the colours being clearly stated in the beginning of the book. Take the Jibbin pages to be an example of the colour system in place. 

what if...

What problem did you identify?

As a group we identified that within Leeds is a well known crime rate within student housing. Mostly within areas of Hyde Park and headingly, which is where the majority of 2nd and 3rd year students live. 

What evidence did you find to support your decisions?

By asking students around the college premises we asked of they or someone they know(being a student) had been burgled whilst living in Leeds. We mostly asked 1st year students which looking back was a mistake as most burglaries happen within student housing which mostly concerns 2nd and 3rd year students, however from the people we asked most knew someone who had been burgled whilst being a student. This being evidence that it is a problem and is not a rare occurrence. 

What methods did you use to gather your evidence and what forms did it take?

primary: questionnaires, surveys, photo documentation

Seconday: internet research, police data, percentages, safety campaigns security advice

Quantitative: close ended questionnaires/surveys, police date and percentages

Qualitative:  Open ended questionnaie/surveys, photo documentation, safety ads and campaigns

What methods did you find useful and why?

The close ended questionnaires we conducted were very useful to simply establish our chosen problem was genuine without actually getting an hard facts or data. 

Another would be internet sites which consisted of data, % etc on burglaries through the past couple of years within specific areas of Leeds, this being useful as we could use facts t back our given problem and create visual aids from them.

What methods did you find problematic?

I found just trying to illustrate and visualise the problem in such a way that could have been used as a safety precaution say within an awareness campaign, and also just to be a visual aid to prove and solve our stated problem.

How did you overcome this? 

I took it upon myself to photograph my journey as a burglar, stealing from poor old students, which in the end gave me some visually interesting scenarios  and ideas as to what could be possible. As a group we mainly focused on typography as a means of getting our evidence across, in the form of stats and percentages and also to make it aesthetically pleasing. 

How will you address these issues in the future?

I guess i could use photo documentation as one of the first things i do within projects, 'visual aid production'.

What research didn't you carry out that would have proved useful? 

I suppose carrying out further open ended questionnaires to 2nd and 3rd year students that had been burgled since living in leeds. Overall i think we got a set of 5 answers from students for this, but with more time etc it would have been helpful to have gathered more, simply to give us a range and try to find if there's a reason why students are getting burgled.

What five things would you do differently next time?

. Not go on holiday half way through the project

. Done more open ended questionnaires with students who had been burgled 

. Use more imagery

. Ask a larger range of people for our surveys and questionnaires

. Take the photo documentation further

List five things you feel you have learned about the design process over the past two weeks?

. Not being there for half of a project doesn't help

. Learnt 3 colour codes off by heart

. The use of font. concerning opacity, size and colour

. Work makes me tired

. Group work is an effective means of producing more work in less time.

further production...

Okiecokie, just an update of my producing of new pages and all that jazz,

So here i've nearly finished the 'grab trick' section, with last things to add to the 3rd and produce the 4th, im pretty happy with the outcome of it and as a set or group i think there rather snazzy. 

The method to my madness is that each trick section will have a different layout and more importantly varying illustrations, keeping interest throughout the book by means of aesthetic qualities. 

 

100 book;

I'm proud to now be part of a heroic team consisting of will jonny and liam, so i thought id give them a chance to leave a comment and help me out, continuing with the book, concentrating on range of font, colour and illustrations i'm playing around with new page layouts, 

firstly,

so here i have two versions for the same page, the bottom is using two fonts, the title is NU_century gothic and the trick names and detail is Amsterdam graffiti all in white.  Also the illustration for the 360 is a simple vector image. Above I've changed the font around a fiar bit, the title is stylin' BRK along with the trick names and the description is a basic font named MankSans. Aswell changing the colour about a bit and using a block illustration.  I decided this as to make sure the detail which is the information on the page and what is there to be read is clear and easy to read, as on the bottom there's more clarification on the title than the description which i feel is wrong.

From here iv gone to this,

Keeping the font as it was, and choosing the vector illustration as it goes with the other one and also is in my opinion more clear as an 'How to guide'. At this moment though im not to sure on whether to use all white text, black and white or just black.

suggestions guys?

My idea atm is to, keeping in mind that my pages are a5 so this is a variation of 1 page, to have the top page all white, then bottom all black, again what you think?

100 book, progress etcetarahhhh

With my original intentions i started my research by looking into the equipment of snowboarding, boots, bindings and the board etc Then onto Destinations and resorts to go snowboarding, Professional riders, specific tricks and a general list of them, 

From here i went to produce mock versions of what a page may look like on the different areas of research...

Rough idea what a page could look like if the book was of a 100 boarding set ups. What i ideally had in mind was to produce a book of a 100 snowboards and their designs, however finding decent images of a 100 boards would be quite problematic and time consuming so i thought id try with focusing on type...

This was a sticker that i had made as part of a group for a previous project, I thought it was quite interesting as a way of making Text more exciting. So i took this cheeky concept and used it to create a page for book of 100 resort/destinations...

The outcome from this was i thought successful, bit lovely! 

First day back we were given a new deadline which was to create a 32 page bound book by the following monday, so i had to get my jog on...

It was around this time where the first group crit took place and we were to show our research etc 

The crit overall was really helpful and fairly positive, the main problems or concerns were that what the market should be, whether it be to enthusiastic snowboarders who already know the sport or aimed at people that might not know a lot about it but are intrigued to get involved. 

There was also comments made that the book of 100 boards would lack original personal images and with a book being mostly type could get boring.

so, i need illustrations, i need to choose a content which allows me to create images for.

After some thought i decided to go with a book of 100 snowboarding tricks, the market being anything from pro, recreational and brand new riders! 

The plan is to have mostly text but with illustrations depicting the trick mentioned.

This was the first draft page i made for the 32 page booklet, Its okay but nothing great, i like the minimal feel and am quite fond of the style of the title, 'Air Tricks'. As time passed, i found myself on saturday day finally starting to produce and design the book! So with little time i ran with this style of page and got on with the job. 

monday 7:30 am, 12 hour slog from sunday evening, excellent. 

Just another example of a page from the book.

Crit time again, Again i found it very useful, firstly i got some decent constructive criticism and its helpful to see what other people had and can produce in this amount of time. 

The main points that came up about the book were;

Negative

. Lack of illustrations

. A bit 'samey'

. The Process i took making the book 

. becomes dull due to similar pages

Positive

. Interesting subject/matter

. Illustrations made work well

. Genious trick names

Looking back at this i did a little brainstorm thing and decided what to concentrate on and figure out where to take this, the main things i've now started to work on are, producing illustrations for each of the trick category's, Grabs, jibbs, Spins etc

If there's a way of involving board designs as comments were made in both crits that the graphics of snowboards are highly designed and interesting.

Working with adding several colours and fonts. 

Also and quite importantly move onto printing the book properly using indesign duplex and binding etc! hello friday print drop in,

byebye for now 

Book of 100, SOI

1. State the title & focus of your work in response to the brief.

The general focus of my work is snowboarding and right now i'd say that the title is, 'A guide to...'.

2. Identify specific areas of research that you intend to investigate and methods that you will use.

As i want to produce a form of guide to boarding, not only as a sport or hobby but lifestyle i want to research into all areas of it, this means looking at boards themselves, the range and style of graphics, the sizes, the technology, the anatomy and type of board and what its made for, different brands of boards etc

The research for this will probably be in the form of lists, collected images from magazines particularly Document Snowboard,

www.documentsnowboard.co.uk 

photographs and figures, figures mainly coming from searching into sizes and the technology. 

Other areas that i plan to research into include resorts and places to go boarding, again this most likely to be lists, this also being easy to apply to the '100' idea. 

From here i can go to look at the fashion of snowboarding, similar to looking at the boards, focusing on range of styles and brands. The somewhat do's and don'ts of being a boarder, focusing on the culture. This however may be tricky to search into as its uncommon to find and well i don't know of any made guide to being a boarder. You'd just have to take my word for it! 

Then there's more list producing looking at the number and varying tricks you can do on a board, looking at professional signed riders making a living and turning it into a profession.

3. Identify specific practical methods and technical processes that you intend to use in order to visually develop your ideas.

One method i intend to use is to create images on illustrator using live trace on top of photos and drawn sketches and images, this can become very useful as they can become relevant and can used in different ways, whether being put into a larger image or on its own as the focus of a page or something of less importance. 

I also want to include drawing some perspective typography, maybe just the numbers 1-100, as i've just recently learnt how to correctly draw this way it appears to be a good way of practicing it and it also looks pretty sweet. 

Another method i want to use to visually develop my ideas is the use of slr cameras, from this i can get decent photographs of my board, all the parts to it etc and my clothing i have for boarding as well as practice using an slr camera. 

4. What methods will you use to evaluate the progress and success of your own work? 

The main method i'll be using to evaluate my work will be the ongoing group crits, which i've found useful with previous work projects, being able to have other people input their own ideas and opinions concerning my work and whether they see and understand what i try to convey within the work. I also plan to just refer to tutors as they seem to ask the right questions and give general advice on where to go next.

 

What is a Book?

To me a book essentially is a published piece of work that are made to be read. Mostly being a number of bound paper. 

This year santa bought me a book. so when i hear/see the word book i think of that! 

It was Russell Brands, articles of faith. 

which is a compilation of his column articles from the Guardian.

 

'Citin!

If you want to buy a book, why not look at this website.

www.amazon.co.uk

what is a book? hmmmm well how far can you take this, a stapled stack of paper, is that a book? there's justification for it as it is a load of bound paper what if it was unusual objects bound together? stones, cd case ruler??? thats mental but it could be forged into a book!

With my subject area being snowboarding, i thought it would be rather ruddy interesting to look at ski maps. Its main advantage in a way is that it's pocket sized but folds out to rather a large single piece of paper that is duplex printed. This is a form of book that im going to experiment with producing, i need a big piece of paper, and a blade! 

the only problems i see with this is the actual printing on a large piece of paper, print room..money? 

 It came to mind that with ski maps i've often found that they get ripped easily as they are prone to getting wet. so what about making something that is pocket sized like a piste map for someone to carry with them on the mountain, however making it water resistant by say laminating the pages and then to make them into a swatch style bound to help whilst handling and reading the book.