Module 2 Self Evaluation.

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

Throughout this module I have learnt new skills and developed old ones that have contributed strongly in the work that I have produced. Previous to this module I had never used InDesign and now, I feel confident enough to produce a variety of things using the software, for example, my A6 booklet and my final resolution for the book brief. It has proved very important in my work, as it was what I depended on to layout the pages of my final book and to print it out in the correct order. In addition to learning how to use InDesign, I have developed my skills in Photoshop, especially with the use of layers; I don't think I would have been able to produce work like I did without the help of the workshop. I had already practiced book binding before this module, however, after the workshop it made me feel more comfortable with the process which encouraged me to make more in my own time. I used perfect binding for my final resolution in the book brief and athough I didn't experiment with different types of book binding, I think this method looks the most professional.

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

Due to the nature of the module being very research driven, I definately feel that my approach to research has developed. If I hadn't done this module, I feel that I would still go about my research in the obvious way and produce somewhat boring work, however because of the freedom that we were given and the length of time we had to complete the work, helped me to see that I didn't have to just think of one idea and go with it, even I got bored. Getting feedback on initial ideas from others benefit the group work as it helped us come to an informed and joint decision. The interim crits really helped me with my individual work, in terms of idea generation, because it made me realise that if I find an idea boring, my audience will do too, so scrap it and move on. I don't have to stick with something predictable, I shouldn't think so literally.


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

I think that I have got better with evidencing the development process of my work and evaluating it along the way, although I feel I could still get better at it, I am pleased with the progress I have made in this area. By getting better at this, it has informed my work more because I can remember the design decisions I have made. The use of my blog as a way of documenting my work has become more evident in this module. I think that my crafting is a strength in my work as, in my opinion, when work is well crafted it gives a more professional and aesthetically pleasing finish. Finally, as my research has developed in this module, it has proved much more useful to the work that I have produced therefore I feel this is now a strength.

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

The most obvious weakness in my work is time management. Due to the length of time we had for each brief being a lot longer than we were used, I seemed to be very laid back for the majority of the brief and then as the deadline approached I paniced more. I intend to address this by using the methods shown to us in the time management sessions for examples, making timetables for the week ahead. I have also identified that my contribution to crits etc. is quite weak. Although I concentrate on the work they are presenting, i find it hard to give constructive feedback. I feel I am getting slighty better at thinking of research suggestions and so on, but I still feel it is a weakness.

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

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

1 - Write action plans for the week ahead - Better time management.

2 - Document work with photography as soon as it has been done - More documentation and I shouldn't forget to do it as much.

3 - Be realistic about the amount of work I can do in set time - Time management.

4 - Contribute more to crits - I give them better feedback, they give me better feedback.

5 - More contextual research - a better understanding of the contemporary graphic design world.

7. How would you grade yourself on the following areas:

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

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

Patent pending.

Well! I was just gonna make 2 books to use as notebooks but to demonstrate book binding aswell...However! After I had bound them and got to putting the cover on...I decided to incorporate my theme as carrier bags.
I got rather excited when I finished them! :D

Bin Book!

The pages are made with my favourite pearl grey colour paper...which is lovely.
And the cover is...a bin bag lol.
My mum thought it was 'pleather' haha.

I don't usually get 'excited' by my own work.
But this just makes me smile.
I should totally Dragon's Den this beauty haha.

Carrier Book :)

The paper inside is a pale sugar paper, I don't usually like sugar paper but in a book it is Nice!
I like it.

Joy.
x

Hmm, Carrier bags...

Well, after the crit I got some really good ideas on what direction I could take my project in...

Because I found the idea of doing 100 of something to do with carrier bags quite daunting, seen as I was supposed to make it interesting...I was kind of lost. 

Then I was given the idea of splitting it in to chapters (i.e. 20 things in each chapter) to make it less scary and then I could do different things in each chapter.

Some ideas were;

A day in the life of a carrier bag.

What not to do with a carrier.

What you could do with a carrier bag.

Peoples opinions on carrier bags.

Unusual places you find carrier bags. (and so on)

SO! I decided to do some secondary research...(seen as I had no idea what I could research before)

And I found some Interesting things! 

^^^^

Dacca Boots - Designer; Camilla Labra's.

Boots made of plastic bags? I'm guessing not the heel and soul of it but the rest is.

I found an article on them in the daily mail. Strange!

_____________________________________________________________________

(Below)

Sandals made of carrier bags...not the most attractive of things! But a very eco-friendly way of getting a new pair of shoes.

I found this on a 'craftzine' blog, it is simply a selection of carrier bags fused together to make a stretch of material and sewn together to make a dress.

This is a piece of work by Virginia Fleck who recycles things by using them in her artwork...and she does use carrier bags!

This is...crazy. But So good.

Joshua Allen Harris.

He uses carrier/plastic bags to make street sculptures in new york. By putting them over a grate above a subway, when a train/tram? goes through the wind inflates them.

Click here (a link to his youtube videos)

Below is something I found on flickr...its on a page called 'Ruby's Re-Usable's Ephemeral Folks'

Some of the pictures are really funny because of the actual humans that are around the 'Folk'.

Carrier bag beads...credit crunch?

Plastic bag photography exhibition in London.

These are the sorts of images I was thinking about for 'unusual places you find paper bags'.

On the first day when we presented our work in small groups, the people I was with thought a book on environmental issues with carrier bags would be a good idea to take but I thought it would be...boring, because (even though I should) I don't really actively think about the environment and ways to help it.

HOWEVER, after doing some research I like the route of ways to re-use carrier bags which in fairness would be quite appropriate with current view on plastic bags and our environment.

100 Ways to re-use a carrier bag?

(Links for some of the work I have mentioned above:

www.myrecycledbags.com

http://blog.craftzine.com/archive/2007/08/plastic_bag_crafts.html

www.virginafleck.com

http://craftdaisies.com/2007/07/18/recycling-plastic-bags/   )

x

ABC bags...

One week brief...produce an A5, 32 page booklet based on your subject of 100.

Therefore - an A5, 32 page booklet based on 100 carrier bags.

At first I thought, ok this is fine...but then when it came to actually doing it I thought - how?

Regardless of how much I like carrier bags, when it came to producing Something with them, I was confused to say the least.

However, I thought about how much I like typography and the idea of branding and typography on the bags. 

Hense, I produced a booklet on the shapes of 100 carrier bags and the brands that appear on them.

After I produced it my reaction was somewhat underwhelmed.

BUT, it was a learning curve of - Not to do it again.

I was necessarily negative about the idea but a book of 100 of this same thing would be quite boring.

I produced it all by hand and the stock I used really let this down (you could see the ink through the pages)...I should have realised this before. Another learning curve.

The feedback that I got on the book was that the idea was quite good but I could take it further...develop it on illustrator and maybe add swatches of the bag and some more information.

I went on to do this...and unfortunately did every single on of them on illustrator and transferred them onto InDesign etc.

Outcome? Not much better.

So...I went to the Crit on thursday completely lost as to where to take this...But I can now truthfully say, thanks to crit I am Excited again.

But thats a whole other story (well...another post).

x

100...

Ok, So! I collected 100 Carrier bags :)
The main reason I did this is because I have a weird obsession for carrier bags and I have kind of collectd for a few years i.e. I have a bag from 2001 in there AND one from the 80's I think, one of my Grandads.
Anyway, Below is a collage of my 99 of my bags in alphabetical order. When I got right to the last picture...i realised I had no more left, so I obviously left one out along the way but this was mainly to illustrate my collection of bags which I think it does nicely.
(Hmm! The image uploader isn't working properly and when I upload a Jpeg it inverts the colours? Weird. So I had to take snapshots and its all split up now. Annoying! Anyway...moving on)
After I took photographs of all my bags, I drew them all which turned out to be quite a nice little book.
Then...I came to somewhat of a stand-still...what do I research now?
Hense, on the presentation day I didn't have a great deal of secondary research.




Well! There ya go. I have a couple of other things i.e. books to put up on my blog but I got a new memory card for christmas (SDHC) and my memory card reader doesn't read it :| so I need to buy another. But It won't be long!

So long!x

Book of 100...

State the title & focus of your work in response to the brief.
Carrier Bags. The focus of my work from this point is to make an interesting book of 100...about carrier bags. I am not completely set on what direction I will take it in as I need to do a lot more research.

Identify specific areas of research that you intend to investigate and methods that you will use.
Research will be a big thing from now on as I didn't gather much 'information' to do with carrier. I currently have 200 pictures of 100 different carrier bags (front and back), 100 drawings of 100 different carrier bags and a list of the bags and colours. I feel that, from looking at other peoples work, I need to do a lot of secondary research on the subject of carrier bags but I don't really know What research will be appropriate or, more importantly, useful.
I would like to find out: artists/designers whose work has appeared on carrier bags; information on the materials used; information about enviromental issues around carrier bags and so on. I would also like to gather appropriate statistics about them.
My main interest when looking at the bags was the type and image used so this could be something that I explore.

Identify specific practical methods and technical processes that you intend to use in order to visually develop your ideas.
I hope to keep photography present in my work, however it may develop further than this. I will use photoshop for the photographs and possibly take them into illustrator to look at the imagery and typogaphy. As I already have 100 drawings, I may scan them and play around with them too in photoshop.
Typography will be a method/technical process present throughout my development.

What methods will you use to evaluate the progress and success of your work?
I will continuously evaluate my work through my sketchbook however, I have found recently that crits and group input tends to be the most effective form of evaluation of my work as I get to see other peoples opinions on it, not just my own. For my final evaluation, I may evaluate it against other books on...not particularly interesting subjects.

Wow, that was harder than I expected.
x

Everyone has a story to tell and that is why everyone is a potential book maker...

What is a book?

'A book is a set or collection of written, printed, illustrated, or blank sheets, made of paper, parchment, or other material, usually fastened together to hinge at one side. A single sheet within a book is called a leaf, and each side of a leaf is called a page...
In library and information science, a book is called a monograph, to distinguish it from serial periodicals such as magazines, journals or newspapers.'
Wikipedia.com

First the worst, second the best.
^
I say this because, I find the second half of this blog entry 1000 times more interesting than the first, however...I still thought the first half was important, but the second is inspiring (to me)

The Librarian - Giuseppe Archimboldo

'A lover of books is usually referred to as a bibliophile, a bibliophilist, or a philobiblist, or, more informally, a bookworm.'
Wikipedia.com

# Subject: What is a book?
# From: "Judith B. Kerman"
# Date: Mon, 10 Apr 1995 12:49:25 -0400 (EDT)

"...the intimacy of the book - that you hold it in your hands, you touch the medium...
...the interaction between you and the page is so private..."

"...a book structures the reader's attention in time, in a way that's
like performance...it's like theatre, dance, music..."

A Book

by Adelaide Love

A book, I think, is very like
A little golden door
That takes me into places
Where I've never been before.

It leads me into fairyland
Or countries strange and far
And, best of all, the golden door
Always stands ajar.

Epitaph for Benjamin Franklin

"The body of Benjamin Franklin
Printer,
Like the covering
Of an old book
Its contents torn out
And stript of its lettering
And gilding
Lies here, food for worms;
But the work
Shall not be lost,
It will (as he believed)
Appear once more,
In a new
And more beautiful edition,
Corrected and amended
By the author."

Romeo and Juliet - William Shakespeare

"Read o'er the volume of young Paris' face,
And find delight writ there with beauty's pen.
Examine every married lineament,
And see how one another lends content,
And what obscured in this fair volume lies
Find written in the margin of his eyes.
This precious book of love, this unbound lover,
To beautify him, only lacks a cover.
The fish lives in the sea, and 'tis much pride
For fair without the fair within to hide.
That book in many's eyes doth share the glory
That in golden clasps locks in the story.
So shall you share all that he doth possess,
By having him making yourself no less."
^^^
Lady Capulet talking to Juliet, compares the young lover's face
to a most captivating book and invites her to read in it with delight.

Edward Hutchins -
"Heaven knows I've tried to make conventional books, but every time I start, illustrations pop off the page, pages unfold like origami, and letters take three-dimensional shape."

"...We need: shape books, counting books, puppet books, unfolding star books, journals, diaries, action books, books with pockets, tunnel books, collage books, single-sheet structures, non-adhesive bindings, slab books, stab books, rotating wheel books, Egyptian name scrolls, Pre-Columbian time lines, cloth books, dos-a-dos bindings, and the ever ubiquitous: codex."

I found a Lot of quotes about books...but I found only a few that interested me...
________________________________________________

"I find television very educational. Every time someone turns it on, I go in the other room and read a book." Groucho Marx

"There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts."
Charles Dickens

"It is with the reading of books, the same as with looking at pictures; one must, without doubt, without hesitations, with assurance, admire what is beautiful."
Vincent van Gogh

"Only in books has mankind known perfect truth, love and beauty."
George Bernard Shaw
_______________________________________________

So...A book is...?

...A Collection of sheets
...A Librarian
...Intimate
...A Performance
...A Golden Door
...Benjamin Franklin
...Romeo and Juliet
...Art
...Educational
...Backs and Covers
...Beautiful
...Perfect Truth
...Love

But...?
"...Every book is a failure..."
George Orwell

What if...?

What if...? Self Evaluation.

Im gonna go the easy route and just answer every question off the brief in order :) lol. Laze.
I've just realised, this post is gonna be HUGE!

Soooo...My group was Chris, Paul and David.

What problem did you identify?
People are afraid of the dark in Leeds.

What evidence did you find to support your decisions?
- 35 out of 50 people surveyed said they felt threatened in Leeds at night.
- Leeds had 12165 recorded assaults between January and December 2005.
- Stats from West Yorkshire police found that crime against students in Leeds happened most frequently on the A660 corridor.


What methods did you use to gather your evidence and what forms did it take?
Primary:
- We began with a survey (done by Chris) primarily identifying whether people were scared of the dark (in leeds). (Mainly quantitative.)
- Another survey on the internet for further research...

These images are pretty poor of the survey but this is a link to the actual survey:
http://freeonlinesurveys.com/rendersurvey.asp?sid=itz2akk5wlao8t2523396
It wasn't done by many people however, it gave us some qualitative research.
- After some secondary research, David took some pictures along the A660, of where we could put our solutions into the public.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmgasi/sets/72157610901207559/

Secondary:
- Research into existing (related) campaigns.
i.e. Stay Safe, Stay Secure booklet from Leeds university, Get home safe campaign from Stella, Get home safe in Belfast etc.
- Crime figures for Leeds. (Quantitative)
- Maps - of the route.
- Sticker artists (The london police was one that stood out)

What methods did you find useful and why?
All of them! Because they all contributed to our development and final outcome :)

How did these inform the response to your problem?
Secondary research showed us what sort of campaings were successful and as we intended to produce stickers, it showed what sort of stickers were popular.
Primary research gave us evidence that it actually was a present problem.

What methods did you find problematic?
To be fair...the surveys for primary research were somewhat problematic because we didn't get a huge amount of responses, however...it gave us an ample amount of information which was good enough!
Main method I found problematic...working in a group haha. Im terrible.
I don't blame the people from my group at all, we all produced a lot of work but I am such a control freak And find it hard to communicate with some people :s sooo, group work sometimes proves pretty hard for me. Sorry.

How did you overcome this? How will you address these issues in the future?
Hmm, for primary research i should probably just try and become more confident.
The other thing, i don't know? Maybe just shut up lol. Moving on.

What research didn't you carry out that would have proved useful?
I think we researched in a good variety of ways however, i think that maybe due to the nature of our problem...maybe actually going out when it gets dark and asking people of the public...on the A660 route (or near the universities). I think this would have been useful butttt, i wouldn't have done it so i wouldn't expect anyone else too :)

What five things would you do differently next time?
1) More primary research.
2) Be more organised.
3) Do the research more systematically.
4) Hmm.
5) Erm.

List 5 things that you feel you have learned about the design process over the past 2 weeks.
1) Importance of research.
2) Variety in research.
3) How well research can guide a project.
4) How research can change what you expect your outcome to look like.
5) Erm...that most crimes against students happen on the A660 :)

SOOO! Here's some visuals.

For my work, I looked at different types and taglines we could use for our 'campaign'
I thought I would make it look visually engaging, lol.
I went on to produce these. (i've already done a post on these so I don't need to say anything really.)


These are the only examples of Pauls work that I have. He wanted to go for a "cute" approach. Its not really my style but Paul developed it to look quite good.

As this is the only thing I had...I just put it on illustrator and simply traced it and added colour, it reminds of the MTV characters lol.
Davids work...I thought these worked quite well. I liked the one with the two figures on best as I think it portrays the messages best, but David didn't think it was needed.

Chris' work - To be fair, I feel quite bad because Chris did SO much work and I don't think we paid it enough attention/took it into account enough.
I really liked the graffiti teddy bear, I think with time we could have incorporated this into a different solution. The footprint idea is really good aswell...but I never saw that? I just stole it off his blog...like the other pictures lol.

Then we experimented with adding David's work into Chris's drawings and it works quite well! We would have used this for posters.

In the end, after doing a survey on which solution communicated best, we decided to use my Silhouettes and Davids type to produce a sticker.
I am pretty happy with the sticker...I think we could have looked more into the type because I'm not really sure about the one we used; as a group collaboration we decided to use this as a final sticker.
Soooo, we cut around the shape to make a...strange shape? Lol. But I liked it.
Then we decided to be naughty (tut tut) and go stick them on various surfaces alone the A660.
David took these because I didn't have my camera on me.
Noice pictures...
I want to go take some more though. There are only 3 of mine left up (or there were on friday) lol, Obviously people ripped them down because they wanted to keep such a beautiful piece of art :D
Chin Chin! x

What if...

Soooo, on monday we decided our problem is People in Leeds are scared of the dark...and to solve it we would produce something to somewhat inform people on how to get around leeds safely.

I didn't go in to college today (wednesday) because I was busy in the afternoon and it seemed too much of an effort to go in for a couple of hours, so i kept in contact with them through email...
I was kind of working blind. But at least I made an effort...and I came up with these.
First off, I came up with some...tag lines? Or whatever you may call them.
- Don't be scared, be safe
- Travel safe
- Walk safe
- Stick together, stay safe.
- Stay safe, stick together.
bla bla bla.
I went with the Stay safe, stick together/Stick together, stay safe...
Here's a few of the visuals.
I like the idea of using silhouettes because....well, basically, im crap at making up characters? lol. And i like the characters you can portray through a silhouette.

Here, I was thinking about bus stops and feeling safe...being on your own etc.
This is pretty self explanatory...group of people walking...weirdo following them.

Here i just thought of type...because i love type :D
I quite like it....

I did more, but i wasn't gonna post Every single thing lol.

Because its group work it probably won't be used, but at least I have it for my records :D

night night.x

Categorising.

So! With our 100 photos, we got into groups of 4 and laid them out in a certain way...in some form of categorisation method.
Firstly, we did it with our own photos.
We simply categorised them into 5 groups, the subjects that we were supposed to take photo's of:
Textures, Places, People, Words and Objects


Then...in our groups of 4, we got into pairs and went on to categorise other peoples photos.
I don't know who did mine...but this is what they came up with. I believe its in colour order. I like how they set it out.
Me and Leigh categorised Pearls and Ross'. We categorised Ross' in Time...Day to Night.
(The picture below is Terrible quality because I changed the perspective on it. But it is simple to illustrate what we did.)

We catergorised Pearls in Alphabetical order.
We determined what letter the image should go under by looking at the subject matter.

It sounded so easy when we were told what we were doing, but it was suprisingly hard to decide how to categorise the images and what order they would go in. Crazy...

THEN! We had to write down 10 subjects that were represented in our images, then we went around and ticked 1 subject on each persons sheet that we thought was best represented in their collection of photographs.

In the end, I chose Winter...and that was the one that had most ticks on it.

Now. I need 10 A4 sheets of primary research on winter and 10 A4 sheets of seconday research.
Go go go...
x