OUGD 602// End Of Module Evaluation

This has been a really interesting module for me this year. It felt like a lifetime ago that I visited 42 Square which market the start of this module. After that I managed to secure two live briefs with what I consider to be big clients; Propagation House Recording Studios and DHR International. These were both cases of knowing, or meeting the right people over summer. Securing these jobs was a great learning curve for me and this has definitely been reflected by the tone I use in my emails, shifting from being apologetic to more confident and assertive in my thoughts and ideas to clients and people who I have emailed alike. It was great to know that I can operate confidently as a freelance graphic designer, and I hope to continue finding jobs like this in the future, especially as I begin searching for more stable employment.

Its a shame that Deep Space Industries never got back to me, now that the course is over and things have been quieting down a bit I think I will begin to email them again. I'm sure they get hundreds of emails a day so perhaps one day I will get through.

My biggest regret for this module has been not finding out more about studios back home in London. I was comfortable working as a freelancer over this year, and I suppose that I thought that if I could get enough work in, why would I stop? In reality I believe that I need some more experience to do some of the bigger jobs properly, and I definitely need more contacts in industry, something that I need to start building on right now.

On a more positive note I am very pleased with my current identity and website, which is up and running perfectly. I will continue to add new projects to the page over summer and edit out the old ones to keep the ideas fresh. One thing I am particularly happy with is that searching my name gets the website as the top result in google, a definite advantage for my professional practice.

All in all I have had a good year of finding myself as a designer, perhaps more in the process and style side than the professional side. However I am happy with where I am at the moment, but cautious that if I don't start moving forward right now I could have some problems by the end of summer. I need to hit the ground running and the time to start is now.

OUGD 602// Thompson Brand Partners Feedback

The visit to TBP was great, easily one of the nicest studios I have ever been to and the people were very helpful too, offering to look at our portfolios again in the future and to help out in general. I have shown them my first portfolio now, I knew it needed some changes before hand but some of the stuff Jimmy said I should keep in and take out were opposites of what I had thought it would be.

Here are some of the notes I made during the portfolio crit:

Application:
-Talk through things on the page.
-Take the reader on a journey.
-Include more images of the WPP video.
-Use more work in progress images.
-Add more context to your identity work.
-The Ubergine looks great and more effort should be made to show off the logo.

Make more mac mockups with images on screens.

WPP images have to tell a story.
-Two or three lines per page.

Fedrigoni should be one page.

Target the portfolio to the studio you are visiting.

DHR- build this brief up some more. It looks great and should be expanded on.

Use the Text version of the UKSA logo.

OUGD 602// Porfolio 1 For Visit to Thompson Brand Partners

Ahead of my visit to Thompson Brand Partners I have put together a portfolio for them to loo at. This includes a few projects from this year and last year. I know full well that this will not be my last attempt at the portfolio before we leave but it is a start. The aim here has been to perhaps include slightly too many projects so that during its crit I do not have too little and I can learn about what to exclude and include in the future. I have gone for minimalistic boards with just images and a small title on each so that I get a chance to present my work rather than read text directly off the boards. Also this allows the pictures to fill the whole page for a larger format.