JOHN WATTERS PPP2// Task 2

Areas of Practice:
- Video Games industry. Working online for a games magazine or publishing company, in product packaging design or in game; either user interfaces or game worlds.
- Web design for more reputable news outlets, designing a modern delivery of news in info graphics imagery and a clean layout for the article, interactive stories, maps and graphs.
- Social or political artwork. For example helping private eye enter the 21st century with better design in both print and web without loosing its magic.

3 Strengths:
- Layouts, I think that I understand the hierarchy of type and image well. As well as the rules of a grid.
- I am very computer literate; meaning I know how to use computers very well, can pick up most software very quickly and now I understand the principles to coding.
- I can do good presentations. Not always a strength, this last year and a bit I've really found its something I can do well. I have lost many of my old inhibitions in public speaking and put effort into delivering something a bit different.

3 Weaknesses:
- A lack of desire to document my work. This is a real drain on my work, mainly because it gives the impression im not producing anything. I do generally complete blog tasks and do document work for final crits but often its a week after it was set.
- After working on something for a long time I loose a level of enthusiasm for the work, I can get too self critical.
-

3 Goals For the Year:
- Make my own business cards.
- Make my own website.
- Print a book on a risograph.
- Use a 3D printer to make some amazing 3D graphics toys or a modified print press.

3 Wishes
- That the college had a riso printer.
- That the good screen printing facilities were up here, not down the road. (I mean that I didn't have to carry fresh prints back in the rain.)
- That I could control time and space.
- That college had a 3D printer.

Tutorial Preparation Form

BA (Hons.) GRAPHIC DESIGN	LEVEL	05
Name Luke Rossiter	Date 31/10/12

PROGRESS TUTORIAL

ATTENDANCE Are there any issues that you wish to discuss regarding your attendance?	Comments NO
List any General Issues relating to assessment, grades, feedback, workload etc. -       I have no issues regarding any of these points. I feel that I generally understand how the system works now. -       Workload has been fine.
BLOGS. Are there any issues that you want to discuss regarding the content and use of your blogs.	Comments Is the design/ layout of my blog acceptable?
CURRENT PROGRESS Are there any issues regarding your current work / workload that you would like to discuss.	Comments Will it start to pick up speed the next few weeks? (not that im complaining)

Student

Staff

ACTION PLAN
Action	Deadline	Completed
Complete blog posts, update blogs and finish any leftover work outlined in notebook. Look over blogs and update/ continue work that could be inproved.	4/10/12 Continued

STUDY TASK 3// Industry Experience Seminar

Fred held a seminar which introduced us to the principles of industry experience, We discussed the benefits of experience as well as how we could go about getting getting it, and worries we may have and essentially what it consists of. We produced the following lists:

What is Industrial experience?
Being Involved with a studio
Seeing Designers in a professional workspace
Understanding of studio hierachy
Seeing your own practice in context
Applying and building knowledge
Putting the proverbial foot in the perverbial door
Getting advice
Becoming more aware of how professinal relationships are formed and maintained
Developing an understanding of limitations
Working on Live Briefs

  
What can you learn from industrial experience?
Learn about payment and payment processes
Costing and expenses
Management skills and responsibilities
More professional studio etiquette
How to work together and respond to briefs as a team


What form/format could industrial experience take?
-Visiting a studio to have a look around, talk to the designers and management.
-Paid placement, where you become part of the team for a short period of time, and get paid for you troubles
-Unpaid experience, where you have the opportunity to experience live briefs within a studio, however you will be unpaid.
- Working on competition briefs, I suppose that working on live competition briefs will give you similar real world design challenges. Experience will come from overcoming these
- Experience will also come from simply approaching studios in the first place, pitching yourself and having interviews with them, making phone calls with people in industry.
 

What areas of industry are you interested in?
-Games industry, I am interested in working with the games industry either in the publication and real world advertisement of games or the in game application of graphic design in game-world environments or user interfaces.

 

-Web design, for publication and editorials, displaying larger amounts of text, pictures and information as well as the opportunity to design information graphics to accompany articles, for display on the internet. 

- Brand Identity, creating a brand identity, working in the black-art of advertisement. I'm interested in how people think, and how you can make money out of them. I also like the aspect of growing a new brand from scratch and creating a market for something new, inventions, products, people. 

-I would like to be involved with the production of an app for the IOS or android market, designing user interface, branding and advertisement, as well as visual styles of the app itself be it in layout, character design, illustration or delivery of text and image. 

-Social or Political design or artwork. Something which has slipped down my interests in the last year but something I have received positive feedback for in the past from designers and tutors I respect. Although this may contradict with some of my other interests for some people, I only express interest in many of these issues and find that the art of social and political commentary is not to express your own views but to deliver the facts of a situation without being forceful or arrogant, by being satirical and not belligerent.

What are your concerns about industrial experience?
- That I will be too inexperienced for my industrial experience.
- Going to work in a place which is wrong for me, or reciveing the wrong sort of experience.
- Being taken advantage of, large amounts of work for no money or being made to make coffee.
- Not getting a good range of work.
- Messing up contacts, making a bad name for myself.  

50 DESIGNS// The Final 10

 These are the final 10 images that we felt represented a wide range of graphic design in multiple fields.

 This is a huge list of specific areas of graphic design that we could find within the collection of 50 images bought to the table.

We worked together to work out information about each design from the final list of 10.

STUDY TASK 1// Why Am I Here - What Do I Want To Learn?

Identify and explain 5 reasons why you chose to study on this programme.

- The course structure and content appealed to me when I applied. The course covers all the aspects of Graphic Design I thought I would like to cover when we started and is structured to push you in the deep end whilst also easing you into the industry simultaniously. 

- I enjoy living in Leeds. I lived in Leeds for a year before joining the course and decided that I would like to stay.

- The reputation of the course is good. I feel that we have a reputation of being some of the best which I feel adds to our professionalism in the studio and our renown when we leave.

- There is a good course community. The year is friendly and professional, makes a really nice studio environment.

- We have to work hard. Again, the course pushes us in the deep end and keeps going. This is good for me because I feel without the hard work I would quickly become very lazy indeed. 


Identify and explain 5 things that you want to learn during your time on the programme.

- Website building. I think that this would be one of the most important aspects of graphic design for me in the future, as lots of the industry is aimed at web design today. 

- What to charge. One of the most important aspects of being a professional is what sort of money I can make. This is something I have very little knowledge of at the moment so is something I really need to learn.

- How to hold a professional presentation. Presentations have been fairly easy for us so far. Talking to fairly small groups or nice people who don't ask questions. It would be good to learn more about the sort of questions we could receive on the spot during or after presenting to professionals. 

- Branding and Packaging. Luckily this is one of the things covered this year, branding and packaging is generally avoided during first year because it is conceived to be boring. Not true, I would like to really experiment and get to know good product design. 

- How protect my work from copyright and other legal stuff. Id like to know how I go about protecting my creative products in the future, to make sure none of it is ripped off and I don't loose money. 


Identify and explain 5 things that you want to improve.

- More of the intricate options in the Adobe CS. My knowledge grows every day and there is always more to learn. This should increase my design options and also efficiency. 

- Better knowledge of trends. I would like to cut down on random searching and following the same sites and blogs and start finding efficient ways to discover what is currently in trend in graphic design.

- Use of gradients/ colour. I would like to use more gradients of colour in my work and for my work to be more colourful in general. I sometimes say that I have a good appreciation of colour but I always rely on black or white to fill the spaces.

- Blogging. Blogging can be boring and slow work. Last year I would do lots of work and then blog it all. This year I would like to work and blog simultaneously to reduce last minute stress.    

- My workspace at home. I do a lot of work at home after college and I would like to make sure it stays a good clean work environment this year. This should improve my efficiency and quality of work when done at home. 



Identify and explain 5 ways that you will evaluate your progress.

- Talk to peers and friends. Some can tell white lies but I feel I know who can give honest opinion.

- Blogging, blogging means I can talk openly about my own work, explain its context and what I like and don't like about it. When I look back through I can see where I have been and were I could develop and go next.

- Crits. Crits help a wider audience give feedback to my work. This is beneficial because the mixture of opinions usually means that personal taste is left out and real issues with design are not ignored. 

- Images, Im going to collect all of my designs final copies in a folder on my computer. This will allow me to look back at a glance at all of my work so far for inspiration and common themes to find some stylistic direction. 

- Evaluation Tasks. Writing about briefs and modules as a whole gives some perspective on my work from a new angle, and also links my work to research work. Not only on design but also process and perspective. 


Identify 5 questions that you want to find the answer to

- How well funded is the college compared to others?


- Can I enter competitions and enter them as coursework for marks?

- How do we specialise, what is the process?

- How much help will we get with Easter and summer placements?  

- How in depth will the webpage workshops be?


Identify and explain 5 things that inspire you.
 
- Others in our year. We all push each other to create better work. Partly out of constantly trying to better each other and partly from the way we talk and crit everyday. 

- Other designers. Seeing other designers work on the internet and in everyday life inspires us to create work at their level.

- My family, having a brother two years younger than me but at the same level at university pushes me to work hard. Also my parents invest a lot in my future as well as being inspirational in their own rights.

- Political and social issues. Before our work became focused in first year I based the vast majority of my work on social and political issues. These things inspire me because of my general interest in them. This also applies to History, cult film and gaming, and music to a lesser extent. 

- Travelling around has developed my personality to a degree. I believe that this has genuinely inspired my outlook.


DESIGN THAT INSPIRES

 AUTO DESIGN AND LIVERY.

 LAYOUT.

 SPACE.

 ALTERNATIVE FILM AND MUSIC POSTERS

 3D TYPO

 2D TYPOGRAPHY

COLOUR PSHYCOLOGY

 INVENTIVE COVER DESIGN ON OLD MEDIA.

 INTERACTION ON ENVIRONMENT

INFOGRAPHICS

OUGD 402// Self Evaluation

BA (Hons.) GRAPHIC DESIGN		LEVEL	04
Module Code	OUGD402
Module Title	Personal Professional Practice

END OF MODULE SELF-EVALUATION

NAME	Luke Rossiter

1.  What skills have you developed through this module and how effectively do you think you have applied them?
I have mainly gained a greater appreciation of how large the field of graphic design is, and how many branches and sub branches it has. For example, there is branding and identity design, then logo design or business card design as braches of this. The world of graphic design as a whole has really opened itself up to me. I have also found dozens of new designers and websites that I can follow and gain inspiration from in a variety of fields from poster design to information and wayfinding. I have also learnt the basics for Indesign, a superb program that has opened up publishing to me, something I have never really done before but have based many major project on this year.
2. What approaches to/methods of design production have you developed and how have they informed your design development process?
Having learnt some new skills in InDesign I have be producing many, many more publications. I have also improved my skills in Indesign to level where I can help others when they are stuck, especially when it comes to sending the files to print correctly and adjusting large amounts of text. With a greater knowledge of the different classifications of design I have been able to be more sure about what I want to produce, new areas of design that I had never considered before have become areas I have great interest in, for example alternative business card design.
3. What strengths can you identify in your work and how have/will you capitalise on these?
Once again I have gained strength in the technical aspect of design, I usually understand technology so I tend be fairly proficient with the new software I am introduced too. In the future I hope to move into a higher level of understanding in the three main design tools provided by Adobe, especially Photoshop with has un unbelievable learning curve.
4. What weaknesses can you identify in your work and how will you address these in the future?
A weakness I have is lack or urgency or speed. I am fairly good at getting tasks completed on time but I always seem to spend twice as long and provide the same amount and quality of work as me peers. This was something I discovered during some of the study tasks when we were asked to evaluate ourselves as designers. I have also developed a messed up balance between my social, work and domestic life, some weeks I work too hard, other weeks I spend far too long socialising. The good news is that next year I will have a house full of graphic designers, so they will keep the same schedule as me instead of how things are at the moment; where I am persuaded away from my work by my friends on less intense courses.
5. Identify five things that you will do differently next time and what do you expect to gain from doing these? 1)    Live with graphic designers so my social life can be the same structure as them. This way we can all work on projects at home as well as at college and dedicate similar time slots to social and domestic activities. 2)    Spend a greater amount of time caring for my PPP blog, it has been neglected compared to my context and practice blogs. I feel that this will not happen next year as I believe PPP takes up a bigger chunk of our time table. 3)    Work at posting more work than is expected or set, I always realise that the more work I do the better I will become at design. And the greater understanding I will have into the principles of design. 4)    I will try to do more personal work and post it to the blog, this ability to generate your own work is something that the most respected designers practise so is something I should do too. 5)    I would like to develop a more personal style. At the moment I tend to find inspiration from book and the Internet but I really don’t want to always conform to safe design styles. If I can do this I believe that I will earn more respect as a designer and have more confidence in my own creativity.
6.How would you grade yourself on the following areas: (please indicate using an ‘x’)  5= excellent, 4 = very good, 3 = good, 2 = average, 1 = poor
	1	2	3	4	5
Attendance					x
Punctuality					x
Motivation				x
Commitment			x
Quantity of work produced			x
Quality of work produced			x
Contribution to the group				x
The evaluation of your work is an important part of the assessment criteria and represents a percentage of the overall grade. It is essential that you give yourself enough time to complete your written evaluation fully and with appropriate depth and level of self-reflection. If you have any questions relating to the self evaluation process speak to a member of staff as soon as possible.