EVALUATION
MEETING THE BRIEF - How well did you meet the brief? Did it meet your standards of success?
The project brief was to "produce a body of coherent, sophisticated research that culminates in a media product that shows off your technical ability, talent, vision and knowledge." I believe that I created a sophisticated media product that exhibits my technical ability, talent, vision and knowledge. I included relevant research, a development of ideas, and a selection of sophisticated outcomes.
My standards of success would be a product I am proud of and wouldn't mind showing to anyone. I am particularly proud of the final outcome of 'Sol' and 'Hermes' because of the way the aesthetic was developed.
THE EFFECTIVENESS OF YOUR WORKFLOW - What did you do well? How would you change it? Did you reflect using the Gibb’s cycle, was it useful?
I think that my research went very well and in the context of my past projects, it has vastly improved. There are some aspects I would have changed such as the colours for some of the titles as they blended into the paragraph text so the reader may have a hard time reading where some of the titles are. I reflected using the Gibb's cycle on my research page but I did not find it as useful as peer assessment nor having a teacher look at it.
SCOPE OF THE PROJECT - Did you feel challenged? Did you stretch yourself?
I felt very challenged when creating my 'Hermes' advertisements as I initially thought of it as just a single picture post but I had a very good idea which lead me to create it into a short video. This challenged me as I did not use a tutorial of any kind and used my existing knowledge of After Effects. There are some things I would've changed like the timing and speed of the shoe but I am still proud of the final outcome.
Creating three designs and then creating an advertisement for each design definitely stretched my capabilities as I was not able to give more attention to some areas. Particularly in the development of the 'Divine' advertisement.
MANAGEMENT - How well managed was your time? How did this impact your final piece?
During the project, I adopted a basic timeline where I state when I should have certain sections completed. This helped out more than I thought as it kept me on track. Knowing this information proved vital to my final piece and I believe without it I may not have completed this project in time.
IDEAS - How did your ideas develop as you progressed?
When creating 'Sol' the whole idea behind it was having the sun as the main centre piece or at least having it influence the design. On my first rendition I designed it so that the clothing was eclipsing the sun on the advertisement. However, this did not work as a website advertisement due to its narrow size the sun would be hidden behind the clothing. So I moved the sun to be at the top of the advertisement shining down upon the clothing. The 'Divine' advertisement has gone through the most ideas and has progressed the most as I wasn't too sure every time I created something for it.
PRIDE - are you proud of your work? What will you do with your work now?
Overall, I am proud of my work! I am especially proud of my 'Hermes' advertisement because I like the overall appearance. This also applies to the 'Sol' advertisement.
I could use most of this project in my portfolio and hopefully get a job in a graphic design.
RESEARCH - describe your research process, how successful and useful was it? What would you do differently to improve your research?
I firstly looked into a target audience and aesthetics. From aesthetics I looked into art where I found the renaissance period and Greek mythology. Looking into this proved to be rather successful as it gave me ideas and names for my designs and adverts. I then decided to look into other graphic designers just to get a gist of what the production process should be like. This lead into researching successful brands and how they got their logos, such as Nike's $35 logo. Upon finding out the extremely humble beginnings of Nike I was inspired to get creating but I went to research into other advertisement campaigns to see how it should be done and what types of advertisements exist. After that I looked into possible design ideas for the adverts I wanted to create.
The research was very useful, it gave me inspiration and formed possible ideas. Ideally more time was needed to be spent on the tutorials on how to achieve some tasks such as 'how to skew text in Photoshop'. Searching for them while in production slowed down my work quite severely.
SKILLS - What soft skills have you developed? What hard skills have you developed?
The only soft skill I really developed was my organisational skills. With my previous experience in creating graphic design pieces my work has gotten more streamlined and easier to access.
I've continued to develop my hard skills in Adobe Photoshop and Adobe After effects throughout the production of my advertisements. More so in Photoshop as that is where most of my work was done.
AUTONOMOUS LEARNING - How did you cope with being self-dependent? What did you learn about yourself? Where do you need to improve? When were you tested? How did you overcome issues by yourself?
I work very well independently. This skill certainly helped with the quantity of remote learning during this course. If I needed to know or understand something regarding Photoshop, After Effects or anything else; Google searches helped find it. Also having YouTube tutorials at hand made this project a lot easier. As stated in SCOPE OF THE PROJECT I would have changed the timing and speed of the shoe. I was tested when creating my 'Hermes' project as I feel I maybe was too ambitious for what time I had. However, by planning more and knowing more technical names for things I wanted to do in Adobe helped me regain back lost time.
DECISION MAKING - Did you make informed decisions as you went along? Did you change your mind at all? What affected the decisions you made? Were they the right decisions, or in retrospect would you amend what you decided?
I feel that I made informed decisions as I went along with my project. I changed my mind quite a few times as with 'Sol' I changed it from a billboard advertisement to a website advertisement as I feel that the aesthetics and general looks of the piece suited it more. I also changed my mind during the 'Divine' advertisement near the end. I felt that the first rendition had pieces scattered around and looked a bit messy hence why the second rendition adds some symmetry to the piece.
Aspects that affected my work and the decisions I made generally include the aesthetics and general looks of the final piece. If something looked off I would drastically change it and put it back together to see if it was better and if the piece didn't seem exciting enough, I would ground myself with the themes of stars, space and mythology to get a better understanding with were I wanted the piece to go. I believe the decisions I made were the right ones and I wouldn't have it any other way!
FUTURE - What is the next stage, what are your future plans, how has this project altered or affected what you want to do next or in the future?
I could use most of this project in my portfolio and hopefully get a job in a graphic design. I intend to study graphic design at University and already have a unconditional offer. It has also opened the opportunity for designing clothing and or a job in marketing. This project hasn't really altered what I want to do but it has given me a new look into graphic design.
REFLECTION
WEEK 1
01/02/21 - 05/02/21
Spending time thinking and investigating my initial ideas. Created website to present work.
WEEK 2
08/02/21 - 12/02/21
Deciding to proceed with creating an advertising campaign for clothing designs. I was inspired by 'GriffinGFX' and decided that this would be a fun project. Working on the project concept for the proposal. Receiving teacher feedback on the concept.
WEEK 3
22/02/21 - 26/02/21
Working on the detail of the action plan and strategies for the proposal. Along with the creation and development of my presentation and initial research.
WEEK 4
01/03/21 - 05/03/21
Completed and gave my presentation to a teacher. Researching into art and forms of aesthetics along with logos of famous brands and how they began to get a better understanding of the industry. Updated presentation following feedback given.
WEEK 5
08/03/21 - 12/03/21
Following the feedback from my presentation I looked into other advertising campaigns and updated my research document for submission. Also developing the 'Celestial' idea for the clothing side, which inspired me to create 'Sol'. Iterating ideas for the company logo.
WEEK 6
15/03/21 - 19/03/21
Making a mock-up advertisement to visualise my ideas. Receiving feedback from my research submission and amending where necessary. Gathering some base materials such as: blank t-shirt mock-ups, images and fonts. Making rough designs.
WEEK 7
22/03/21 - 26/03/21
Making rough designs. Starting production phase.
WEEK 8
12/04/21 - 16/04/21
Due to previous weeks work on rough designs, I already had ideas for what I wanted to create to start production. I had the idea to make 'Hermes' into a short video instead of just an image. As I made consistent progress I completed this by my timeline.
WEEK 10
WEEK 9
19/04/21 - 23/04/21
Production of my second advertisement is an updated look on one of my rough designs 'Sol'. I took the most time in the aesthetics of this piece to get it just right.
26/04/21 - 30/04/21
Production of final design 'Divine'. It took some time to find out the correct pixel dimensions for a billboard. Upon finding the correct dimensions, I needed to find out the correct Dots Per Inch (DPI). There was some split decision between having 12 DPI or 10 DPI. I went for 10 DPI. Apart from finding the correct dimensions the project went well. Production completed.
WEEK 11
03/05/21 - 07/05/21
Writing up the evaluation and finalising the reflection work.
WEEK 12
10/05/21 - 14/05/21
Fixing any mistakes: grammar, typing, design, links etc. Realised that 'Divine' 10 DPI was too small and changed it to 12 DPI. Final visual check, publish and submit my Final Major Project. The End!