OUGD406 DESIGN PRACTICE- Self Evaluation

BA (Hons.) GRAPHIC DESIGN		LEVEL	04
Module Code	OUGD406
Module Title	DESIGN PRACTICE

END OF MODULE SELF-EVALUATION

NAME	HARRISON PARK

1.  What skills have you developed through this module and how effectively do you think you have applied them?
I have developed my screen printing skills, before ‘speaking from…’ I had never screen printed at this college before which meant I learnt all the skills and techniques needed to get a dirty screen all the way to printing my own designs on the vacuum bed. I think I have applied this skill well because it has added an extra quality to my notebooks that would have been somewhat lacking if I had just digitally printed. Screen printing also allowed me to achieve colours I would never be able to achieve through digital printing. I have also improved my knowledge of indesign which have been applied to the ‘horse’ brief effectively, allowing me to have cleaner more crisp images through learning about linking.
2. What approaches to/methods of design production have you developed and how have they informed your design development process?
I have developed my bookbinding techniques these have opened up methods of how to create final pieces which has in turn allowed me to create more ambitious concepts that would before that I be unable to make by myself due to my lack of knowledge on the techniques. Another approach to design production is screen printing, this again has opened up my design process because I am now able to produce designs involving colours that are totally unreachable on the studio printer.
3. What strengths can you identify in your work and how have/will you capitalise on these?
I believe the strengths in my work is the ability to utilise the printer in the studio by printing on to my own stock as opposed to going down to the digital dungeon and wasting my money. It has and will save me a lot of money on printing. Another strength is my understanding of the computer software such as illustrator and in-design, this enables me to work more efficiently through projects and also produce a better piece of design aesthetically.
4. What weaknesses can you identify in your work and how will you address these in the future?
The main weakness in this module is my blog, I feel that my design is on a higher level compared to my blog because the majority of the time I’m focused on design, meaning my blog is lacking. Every self evaluation I say I will improve my blogging and I feel it has slightly improved through the year but no where near as much as my design skills therefore I am going to devote more time to blogging and keeping on top of it.
5. Identify five things that you will do differently next time and what do you expect to gain from doing these?
1.    Produce more thumbnails for layout and designs this will increase my options for development due to the vast diverse thumbnails. 2.    Not to be so negative when things aren’t going how I predicted they would. This will keep motivation and morale high which enables me to crack on without feeling sorry for myself. 3.    Not leave my blogging to the last minute, this will free up time towards the end of briefs for me to concentrate on the design sides because it does sometimes get slightly neglected because of the rush to blog. 4.    Not to leave screen printing too close to the end, I feel the pressure may have gotten to me slightly as I make a few mistakes rushing. Next time I’ll be able to concentrate on other priorities closer to the end of briefs. 5.    A major thing I’m going to do next time is to not procrastinate so much, this really holds me back and means I end up trying to power through everything at the last minute. I believe that this will give me more time to focus on the entire brief and vastly improve every area of my designs and research.
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.

OUGD406 DESIGN PRACTICE- final books

Below are my final notebooks fully bound, screenprinted and with belly band ready to hand to the first years next year. I'm over the moon with how they've turned out; the neon is so clean and crisp, and has printed perfectly with such tiny weighted lines. The belly band was a bit serendipitous because originally it was meant to be completely blacked out but because the toner is terrible on the printer in our studio, when I exposed it on the screen it didn't fully come through leaving behind a mottled effect which personally I think look a whole lot better than a plain black belly band, I think it adds texture and character to whole notebook. 

These are just a few images of the inside of my book, I feel the inside of the cover just adds something special to the book and an added texture to make it less boring. The front page instead of having a 'my name..' it now says '....@students.leeds-art.ac.uk' because from my primary research I found that a lot of people struggled with the email address a lot.

This is the saddle stitch on my book with the bees wax thread, the holes are a little too large and slightly scruffy because of the size of needle I needed to use. Next time I will probably use a thinner thread so that the needle doesn't have to be as thick.

OUGD406 DESIGN PRACTICE- Printing process

Below is the process I undertook to screen print and print the content of the notebooks documenting all my failures and learning curves throughout this process. 

First of all I address my failure of a day screen printing, I arrived at college bright and early and bought around £5 worth of stock and set about printing. I mixed together my neon orange and binder closely following the guidelines. After printing around 20 sheets I noticed that the neon orange wasn't taking as well as expected but I was reassured by a member of staff it should work but a student in there recommended I add more acrylic to increase the luminosity and make it take better to the paper. This worked straight away but I ran out of stock because I had previously used it all for my failure prints. Once i'd trimmed my paper ready for printing I returned to find out that too much acrylic had completely dried up and blocked my screen meaning i'd have to rinse my screen and start again the next morning. But i've learnt from my mistakes and I feel like it improved my confidence but also my knowledge and technique. Next time round I feel like I will be able to go in and crack on with it straight away. 

pile of misprints 

close up of poor dull neon orange 

This illustrates how poorly the ink took the stock

Even on the off white it still looked dull and could barely make out the images

Below are the belly bands I also screen printed, these again were a failure from the start because I printed from the studio printer for my exposed images meaning the toner was quite patchy meaning it didn't clearly expose on my screen. However this was quite serendipitous because I think if it would have been solid black it could have been to harsh and completely detracted from the fine neon detail. The patchyness adds an added texture to the whole notebook and the type is still readable which is a bonus. 

Below is the content of my book that printed either back to front, upside down or back to front and upside down. This was entirely my fault because of the way I had set up my indesign document to print; I had ticked 'flip horizontally' and long edge binding as opposed to short edge binding. This was a major mistake as I had printed off the document 4 times before I corrected my failings, luckily it was only black and white meaning i'd only wasted around £1 plus money i'd spent on bulky news print. 

This below is what all that effort screen printing was for, it doesn't seem like much but that's a whole day and a half put into 3 notebook covers. I'm  extremely pleased how they turned out because I was slightly sceptical about how the light weighted lines would come out because they could barely be seen through my screen. 

OUGD406 DESIGN PRACTICE- Feedback 3 Final crit

Today we had our final crit, this consisted of being arranged into groups of 6 and presenting our work briefly. Then we would go round and round down feedback based on our questions we had asked and wanted to be answered about our designs. I present my mockup books I had bound and asked the questions ; Which lightbulb should I choose for my final cover? How many stitches look better for my saddle stitch 3 or 7? Stock for covers and finally anything that could be changed design wise?

The feedback I received from this crit was vital as I am printing on Monday, so this will basically rectify my final design decisions ready for print and binding. The results were;

• Use the long lightbulb (that looks like a screwdriver)
• 7 stitches is best because it adds more detail to the side instead of having to boring lines, it shows more binding detail.
•  The stock for the outside cover people were torn between antique and pearl grey therefore I will screen print onto both and decide once I can see the end result.
• The only thing to be changed would be a slight offset in the detail around the crest, other than that I'm ready to print.

OUGD406 DESIGN PRACTICE- Resource logo variations

I have stolen the layout from the crests and logos design sheets I did and applied 'resources' to it to create another crest for the back of my book as a title page for the resources section. Drawing from my research into logos and crests I have kept the design simple and let the typography do the talking as opposed to filling the logo up with unnecessary illustrations that completely detract from the message and affect functionality. I kind of stuck with the same design as opposed to developing it further because I feel like I hit the nail on the head straight away, instead I experimented with the logo on different coloured backgrounds to differentiate it from the notes section. 

Below I have started with a black background and slowly decreased the opacity so it gets lighter and lighter. I think the 3rd one down works best because it's the least harsh but provides a sufficient contrast so it's easy to read the text. The text is not difficult to read but it certainly gets harder on the lightest of the greys, where on the true black background there is the highest contrast meaning it's read easiest but the black is too harsh and I want something more subtler because it's going to fill a full page.

I also experimented with the logo on coloured backgrounds to see what it would look like on colour instead of greyscale. The design looks a lot better on the colours and especially the yellow background, the white really pops off the page because of the high contrast. My only worry is that because the cover is neon orange and the belly band black the yellow might be one colour too many. Therefore I think it's better to scrap the idea of using colour and stick with greyscale. By using grey scale it also enables me to print black and white thus saving me a substantial amount of money because it'll be a 20 page document, so if I decide to print the the resource pages colour (2 pages out of the 20) it'll cost £5 colour or 60p black and white. It makes sense to choose the greyscale because i'm also printing multiple copies as well.

OUGD406 DESIGN PRACTICE- Mock ups

Below are mockups of my final book I have produced to get a feel for how my book will look fully bound, but also to present in the final crit so that people have a visual representation of what my final notebook could potentially look like.

I have printed the covers both on pearl grey and on antique because i'm torn between the 2, they both offer different qualities such as texture and colour. This a question I really want opinions on in the final crit.

crest

I have also experimented with multiple saddle stitches, personally I favour the multiple stitches as opposed to the 2 simple stitches, it adds more detail and you get more of a hand bound aesthetic.

saddle stitch

bulb design on pearl grey

different saddle stitch

 equipment layout front and back

second lightbulb design

belly band on and off the book