OUGD102: End of Module Self-Evaluation

1.  What skills have you developed through this module and how effectively do you think you have applied them?
I have done the book making induction, which from that I tried to produce the final box and cd cases using the same technique. However It ended up a bit of a mess because I didn’t think about the thickness of the card so next time I will take more time to design and produce a final using these techniques. I have learnt to look for new research and information that I never knew before and these drove my project to then end. Also I learnt that you can look for other ways to communicate your idea rather than photoshop illustrator flash or hand made as I ended up using playlists on itunes.
2. What approaches to/methods of research have you developed and how have they informed your design development process?
From the first research on reggae I grouped everything to find out what each object ect had in common and compared the groups. From the chosen group which was artwork I then research more into the reggae vinyl’s I had collected then moved onto album artwork being designed by famous designers or interesting information on the album cover and thought this process one thing lead to another into the development which lead to the final.
3. What strengths can you identify in your work and how have/will you capitalise on these?
I thought and enjoyed the research side of the project. I think that it worked well as from my research development it lead into design to final and made it a lot easier than projects ive used research before without developing it. I also learnt that the communication doesn’t have to be photoshop… or hand made look for other possibilities. I thought the iTunes worked really well conceptually and was then adaptable to iPhone as well.
4. What weaknesses can you identify in your work and how will you address these more fully?
I need to take more time on thinking how to produce the final outcome, as in hand made. This became a mess first time I should of made a quick mock up to see it work first and design and think about the technical areas of the design.
5. Identify five things that you will do differently next time and what do you expect to gain from doing these?
Produce more ideas as I only had two that I actually went into detail, this will allow me to understand what I want to produce. Take more time making hand made items, as I need to work out the technical side of the outcomes. Go for one idea/ style as I went for two different ideas into one and it turned into a nightmare. I was still in two minds what to produce as it took me a long time to collect my 100 artwork covers. Try to use folders and notepads that are from the same company as in my folder today it looked all odd. Random sized folders and each part was presented differently. This will add identity to the project as today there were two projects in one folder. Some times I over complicate things when sometimes a simple design will look more effective. I could have more of a balance.
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.

OUGD102: Self Evaluation

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

Opinions, Facts and objects. Then books and internet and word of mouth.

What methods of research did you find useful and why?

I found the 100 opinions and facts interesting because I learnt a lot from them and enjoyed talking to people to try to understand other peoples views of Reggae music/ culture.

How did these inform your response to your problem?

Eventually from the crit the group liked the idea of album artwork rather than the reggae music/ culture and i also used the idea of the older audience saying they used to buy the record because of the artwork.

What methods did you encounter as problematic?

Finding 100 album artwork where I could get enough information on it and 100 that i found interesting. Also creating the packaging and CD turned out to be a bit of a mess.

How did you overcome this?

Learnt for next time to try to keep the packaging as simple as possible. Eventually collected 100 but needed to put a few in that were less interesting to get to 100. (around 15ish)

What research could you have carried put that would have proved more useful?

 Reserch the product design more I thought I could apply the book making to the box/ CD cover but should spend more time producing it as well.

List five things that you have learnt about the design process over the last Five weeks.

1. I don't have to use flash, photoshop, or hand make for final ie-iTunes.

2. Take more time on producing hand made box

3. Spend more time on finals

4. Collecting and processing research- how the research influenced where my project lead to.

5. Learnt loads about album artwork and designers- Got a good research resource for future use

List five things you would do different next time.

1. Take more time on finals

2. Research packaging design

3. Logo designs- iArtwork relates well but looks abit of a rip off.

4. Be more experimental with ideas/ processes because I spent that much time researching

5. Idea generation maybe because from my research i kind of went along where it was leading to and didn't really have a back up idea.

OUGD102: iTunes example

Example of the the iTunes playlist working for final product.

This is an example of Biggie Smalls album.

When on the cover a track from the album you are viewing plays whilest you can press the right arrow to view the information the cover art.

Right arrow to the information. The music from the previous track still plays because you have selected to play the information track which is just a beep because there needs to be a sound to be a track so I could add the cover of information on.

I was really happy with this outcome and it works better than what I thought it would. This is a strong part of my project. I also made different playlists that apply to the iPhone and iTouch. It took a while to put together and to understand how it would work but at the end seeing it working it was rewarding. Shame the packaging didn't live up to this part of the final product.

OUGD102: Box/Packaging

The final box.

I wasn't to happy with the final, but I know for next time. The box was really tricky to put together because of the strength of the card and the folds. The title in the middle was to relate to the Apple products so people would know what the product relates to ie. iArtwork. Above the i the dot is changed into a heart like I Love Artwork influenced from I Love N.Y.
The inside packing again relates to the itunes playlist layout with instruction. I just wish i would of printed to Vinyl on the CD rather than sticking them on looks very tatty if i get chance i will try to change them.

Outside cover, the circle relates to the circle you get with record sleeves so you can read the label on the vinyl. But the material was to hard to cut both sides into a circle. A good example of the card and folds trouble I incurred.

OUGD102: Review Week 3

After moving on from Reggae to the record information about the Reggae vinyls I had gathered at the start i moved onto album artwork. The 100 album covers took me a week and a half/ two weeks. I knew this would take me the most time of the project because I wanted each cover to offer something that I found interesting, learnt and different.

On Friday I had a crit with Fred. I wasn't looking forward to this because I had only just finished the day before collecting my 100 album covers. On Thursday I tried to prepare using the A2 presentation board to show where I was up to. I basically put on a few examples of the 100 I collected, the artwork picture, artist, album, genre, year of release, label, designer and information on artwork. This filled up two thirds of the board and the other third I wanted to put some ideas of where I wanted to take the information I had found.

I knew i didn't want to make a book because at the minute I am really poor and couldn't afford to print the work off, so I wanted to tidy up my Flash skills seeing as i haven't used it for over a year and wasn't to clever at the start. On the board I included the Itunes players and windows media player. So at the presentation I explained what I had been doing and where I wanted to take the project, and on the A2 board I had artist, album, year ect I had collected and the itunes player, and Fred said why don't you make it as a playlist for the iPhone. I was kind of gutted because it was a winning idea but i hadn't had chance to really think to much about what I was going to produce. However I would of never of thought of this anyway. Usually I would think of producing a final either with photoshop, flash, illustrator or hand made, it opened up my creative mind as I can look for other alternatives rather than the ones I just listed. 

Another reason I didn't want to make a book was because as I thought I might of produced something on CD format I could take what I learnt from the book making induction and try to evolve it into making a CD case because I felt I would learn more from this.

OUGD102: Idea

One of the ideas was to make a stop animation using 100 photographs, which a vinyl to each letter of Vinyl is dead.

This was three photographs of the letter V.

This was just a quick experiment with only three pictures however the vinyl is hard to crack and little bits fly everywhere and I lost a few. I was going to make the level of colour pretty dark, with photos taken from different angles and over the top I was going to download some audio of people debating is vinyl dead, with crack sounds . The debate were going to be fast energetic so it felt alot was happening at the same time. But in the end the vinyl was to hard to smash and i moved on to a different idea.