Tag Archives: Critique

Assignment Three: Reflections on Tutor Feedback

  By | |
Leave a comment

I wasn’t sure what to expect from my Part Three feedback because it has been an up and down section. I have found elements of the unit invigorating and exciting, while other aspects felt like a bit of a slog. It was good to read that my tutor felt that ‘overall your response to part three has been very good, with a number of excellent aspects to your practice.’

My use of Pinterest and other visual diaries were acknowledged, and I have been encouraged to cross fertilise my source of inspiration rather than leave them residing in separate boxes. This is something I will now explore further.

My tutor raises an interesting point about my symbols for ‘Reading Image’ being more like illustrations. This is a distinction I had not considered but having looked at them again I can see what he means. I may play with them further to see if something else emerges. I was pleased that my background research was recognised:

Undertaking primary research into the universality of symbols with the Thames valley Group was an excellent way of going about this project. This sense of enquiry was echoed in your sketchbook, which felt like it was trying to interrogate the subject as much as respond to it.

I find it interesting that my tutor has picked up on my thumbnails and the hand drawn quality of some of my work. I can see that this drops away when I start using the design software, so appreciate his comment that ‘you might want to think about how you bring more of this quality into your final pieces.’

I am delighted and more than a bit relieved that my ‘Abstract Cities’ was well received, as I noted elsewhere I found this exercise difficult so to know the outcome is acceptable is encouraging. I was also pleased that the montage was seen as a ‘sophisticated piece.’ It is one of the pieces I think I was most pleased with.

The feedback on Assignment Three is very helpful in that it has encouraged me to keeping testing, playing and exploring options.

The sense of fascination with the various permutations is evident in the work, and is pushing you towards a much more playful way of designing.

I do enjoy playing with different options but recognise I have to keep a balance between multiple iterations and finishing a piece! My tutor has also encouraged me to use my sketchbooks more to develop my work away from the projects, which I am sure will be helpful.

I am grateful for the suggestions to explore areas of interest in more work and to look at other designers, such as:

Particularly helpful are the pointers for the section on Typography, they encourage me to keep experimenting and to bring together my areas of interest to date. I appreciate this because I was concerned the next section would be quite ‘technical’ and therefore have a different feel to it.

Research Point: Critiquing my work

  By | |
Leave a comment
Design Council Double Diamon model two red diamonds showing product design process

Research Point (Page 44, OCA Graphic Design): Critiquing my work

How do you approach being self-critical? What issues does it raise? Do you have friends, family, colleagues or a group who will critique your work for you?

Thinking about critiquing my own work is not as simple as it might appear. There is obviously a process of decision-making and editing that occurs without which I would never be able to select a final design, but surfacing what at first appears to be an intuitive and not necessarily conscious process is not easy. Inevitably it raises aesthetic concerns about beauty, ugliness, and so on, my first response to the question of how I critique my work is ‘I know it when I see it’ and ‘it’s the version I like’. A response that I accept may be less than helpful and doesn’t necessarily give me, let alone anyone else, an insight into my design process.

Design Council Double Diamon model two red diamonds showing product design process

Design Council ‘Double Diamond’ model

In researching ways to describe the process I came across the Design Council’s “Double Diamond” four step model:

  • Discover
  • Define
  • Develop
  • Deliver

Although this seems to apply more to physical product design I thought the iterative process of diverging and converging seemed familiar, indeed it is very like a model I developed for my own research process in terms of my organisational studies. I find this awareness a useful part of my own reflective practice because it helps give me a sense of when I might be opening out (idea generating) and when I need to focus down (problem definition and solving). In getting to understand this process I can start to recognise times when I have moved through the process and narrowed things down too quickly or when I am spending too long idea generating. Sometimes this is when it is useful to bring in external feedback, as I may not always spot for myself how something might be developed further or focused down more.

After a bit of research there seems to be some common areas of advice around how to review your design work:

  1. Make sure you are answering and working to the brief: as a freelance consultant I am very familiar with working to a brief and also recognising that the contracting process can be iterative as a project develops
  2. Consider current trends: this to me needs to balance of what is ‘on trend’ and what is gimmicky or trying too hard. You don’t want a design that looks very dated or out of touch or lacking in ideas. Equally, it seems to me to reflect back to the brief – is the client looking for something timeless, fresh, traditional, contemporary and so on
  3. Try different perspectives: upside down, monochrome, stripped back to outline and so on
  4. Slow down and step back: this is something familiar to me from my work writing, I need to have time to review and edit (although this is not always within my control)
  5. Remember design theory: colour, composition, typography, balance and so on
  6. Make a storyboard: tell the story of the design. I have a preference to lay different ideas out on the floor or put them on the wall so I can physically see and live with them for a while
  7. Emotional attachment: there is another element that doesn’t seem to get mentioned very much, which for me is important and that is about emotional engagement with your ideas. I know there are ideas I become wedded to and all the rational analysis in the world makes it hard to shift from that idea

I think there are some basic questions that I follow that echo the process in the course workbook, they are not necessarily always in awareness and that is something to be developed further:

  • Have I answered the brief?
  • Is the design usable (I might add beautiful, funny, happy etc., if it’s appropriate to the brief)?
  • Do I like the concept at a glance?
  • Is the design trendy?
  • What is the message or idea? Does it communicate what I am intending?
  • Am I emotionally engaged (if so to what degree)?

I like the point made by Design Shack –

“Good design answers questions. It often answers them before users have a chance to even ask them.”

Interestingly, it is often the approach I take in my consultancy work too – my self-reflection stems from asking ‘what question am I trying to answer?’

In terms of wider feedback I have family and friends who are often willing to share their opinions. I also make use of two of the OCA Facebook fora (Photography Level 1 and Visual Communications). I haven’t shared anything through OCA Discuss yet, partly a usability issue because of accessing the site on occasion, and I think partly because of a need to build my confidence in a new field first.

Save

Assignment 1: reflections on tutor feedback

  By | |
Leave a comment
A large pipe painted on a cream background with the words Ceci n'est pas une Pipe in script underneath

Graphic Design 1 is both a new module and a new departure for me so getting my first tutor feedback felt like an important step. I was prepared for a degree of critique, I knew it was a fairly eclectic selection, but I hoped I had made it clear why I had chosen each approach. Even with that you can never be sure what others make of your work.

I have now read through the feedback several times and am really pleased that for the most part my intentions did come across as I had hoped.  My tutor made a number of interesting observations under each postcard and has provided some really useful signposting to help build my design work going forward.

Postcard 1

My first postcard focused on my interest in still life both in terms of its form and as a richly layered genre that includes politics, economics, social and cultural commentary. My tutor is right when he highlights:

One of your challenges ahead is how to imply these meanings within your designs, so your intentions become more embedded in the visual decisions you make.

I accept that not everyone will know the history of the still life genre or the symbolism of the tulip so this is something I will consider as I develop my ideas. In his feedback my tutor mentions Magritte’s Treachery of Images (1928-29), which I did not have in mind but the ‘Ceci n’est pas une Pipe’ image is one I have used in my work presentations so perhaps it was an unconscious influence. The reference to Patrick Caulfield is also helpful and not one I would have thought of so I will follow that up. I have also since come across this book on Graphic Design and Still Life, which I will also try and get hold of.

Postcard 2

This postcard is the most minimalist of the set and I was interested to see if someone else would understand it. I had asked my family which of the minimalist designs I had sketched they thought worked and it was the books they chose. My tutor suggests that it is not a problem if the meaning is not immediately obvious.

Your abstract book jacket design works very well in drawing the viewer into your love of books. It wasn’t immediately obvious that these were book jackets, but that’s not a bad thing. It invited engagement with the reverse of the card to decipher the motifs.

I am pleased to read my Tutor’s comment that ‘an active love of books goes hand-in-hand with many aspects of graphic design.’ I am conscious of starting to look at books with more of a design eye and it is probably no surprise that my favourite books (particularly those I use for my work) have a strong design concept.

Postcard 3

I was nervous about the Johari Window, I felt the idea was good but I wasn’t sure my execution worked. My tutor’s feedback suggests it did achieve what I wanted.

Another conceptually strong idea translated successfully into visual form.

He also suggests extending the idea to use four separate cards each representing a different viewpoint on myself, something I will explore further.

Postcard 4

I am really glad the sense of playfulness comes over in the collage. I had so much fun working on this set of ideas and I’m pleased that came across. It is important to me to have this playfulness as a counterpoint to the more serious work conceptually. Perhaps my next challenge is to see how I combine the two. It is good to know that this can be part of my work.

Playfulness is often overlooked as an essential element of creative thinking, so keep this approach going in future projects.

Postcard 5

I was delighted that my tutor found this ‘the strongest of the set.’ To be honest it was the one I wrestled most with myself about including. I really wasn’t sure that it sat within a graphic design brief. I decided I would include it because I thought it did say something important about me and because it took some time and effort to make!

Your human rights card is the strongest of the set. I really like how you have approached this card, especially in how you’ve kept your playfulness going by experimenting with cut paper.

My tutor highlights that the approach I took with this card ‘makes this a rich piece of communication.’ This is an important statement for me because although it is perhaps something that should be obvious this concern with communication is something I am starting to recognise marks out GD1 from my photography courses. That is not to say my photography isn’t trying to communicate something just that I am now recognising it has a different emphasis.

Sketchbooks

I am enjoying building my sketchbook and see the interlinking of my blog, notebook and sketchbook as an important part of my development. Developing my thumbnail sketching has been a key element of the process as it helps me think through my approach visually and has served to build my confidence with starting to draw again. I will indeed ‘keep this process going’ as suggested by my tutor.

Suggested viewing/reading

My thanks to my tutor for a wealth of interesting references which I will follow up:

I have joined various OCA fora as well as the OCA FB groups (photography, visual communications and history of art) to interact with other students and to get different perspectives and feedback.

I am very happy to have completed the first assignment and am keen to explore the different avenues I feel it has opened up for me in terms of my graphic design work.