1. Reflection on my 'self initiated' brief
Writing your own brief can be a really helpful process should you have a
lot to get done with little direction, other than what you have in your head. I
find that by creating my own brief, I had a port of call whenever I needed it
to remind myself of any things I wanted to do were left over to be
completed. In my case, it kept me
focussed on the elements of design I wanted to concentrate on, for example,
typographics and advertising techniques.
I felt that I adhered quite well to my brief, and I know I feel
confident within myself that I’ve worked to it to create the results I planned
in the first place for this project.
The only way in which I may have possibly deviated from the brief I set
for myself was to make more posters than I originally planned; however, I feel
that they work strongly as part of the advertising and promotion of my
fictional documentary.
My brief was a way in which to explore my personal design style and the
possibilities that I could explore through urban exploration, which is a big
hobby of mine. Through this passion for the subject matter, it was easy to find
myself involved with the project and striving to do well and make the best of
each opportunity presented. I felt that I achieved the goals I’d set for
myself, however, due to time constraints there are certain extras that I
haven’t been able to fill. For example, having given myself more time I would
have made a functional website for the documentary movie.
Posters have been a large theme of this project, and I feel I’m really
getting to grips and enjoying print production a lot more than before. I found
myself being able to explore with the freedom of this project to create designs
and artwork I’ve always really wanted to.
2. Subject Research
My main sources of reference was an online design website called
Behance. I find that that’s a really good source of information and design work
since it maintains a high standard of work due to the member application
process, as well as the fact that it has a huge variety of design and artwork
available for viewing.
The most difficult aspect of research that I found was through urban
exploration itself. Apart from graffiti and photography, there’s not a lot out
there that represents urban exploration from a graphic design point of view. I
felt that was inspiring in some respects since it meant that I had a lot to
play with, however, I felt I would have excelled more with something to go on
that related more to my style of graphic design.
My graphical style was allowed to really experiment through this
project, which I really enjoyed. I wanted to maintain a clean and simple design
with focus on photography and typographics. Within urban exploration,
photography is a strong element, which I felt that I needed to involve in my
work. When designing my posters, I really enjoyed the process and the
challenges that were also involved. I wanted to keep things simple, but to
incorporate all the relevant information and keep the design clean and relevant
was a little challenging at times. I often felt the need to start again from
scratch to make sure that my designs weren’t getting too busy.
When designing for my guerrilla marketing, such as the installation, I
found that quite difficult since mock-ups are the only way that I can represent
my ideas behind it. Since my skills in using Photoshop to manipulate imagery in
that way aren’t the strongest, I felt that this was my weakest point of the
project – however, the posters developed for the guerrilla campaign, rather
than the advertising campaign, I felt they were strong designs with very clear
messages.
As mentioned previously, I struggled the most with the image
manipulation of guerrilla installations as advertising for my documentary. If I
could do things differently I’d probably attempt to create the installation
itself and photograph the experiment for documentation in my project. This
would be a challenge in itself and I do regret not thinking of doing that
sooner.
I’ve created self-initiated briefs in the past and have experienced a
bit of a love/hate relationship with them. On one hand, they can be a great
opportunity to experiment and concentrate on subject matters that you really
enjoy – thus keeping your attention at it’s peak throughout the design period.
On the other hand, it can be a big responsibility to create a schedule, keep
yourself disciplined and make sure you’re constantly on top of the workload and
organized to the best of your ability. However, these lessons are all very
important for the development of yourself as a designer and I do find myself
feeling a lot more pleased with myself after a self-initiated project has been
finished.
I feel that the final results of my project are strong design pieces. I
did find myself struggling at various points, for example, with the guerrilla
advertising design and to a certain extent, the original logo itself. I
personally struggle with logo design, as an artist and much prefer layout work,
such as magazines, posters and websites, so that was definitely a challenge for
me.
Despite this, I feel that the final images I’ve created convey the
message of my fictional documentary in the way I wanted it to be received. Throughout the project, I’ve constantly
reiterated the design elements I want to concentrate on to make sure that my
designs are a correct representation of the project subject.
When it comes to time management, I struggled to keep to my schedule due
to a number of things. I often found myself without motivation or the creative
inspiration to concentrate on the work, and found myself wanting to make sure
that I didn’t just put in minimal effort to keep to the schedule rather than
concentrate on the work itself and make sure I did the best I possibly could
design wise. I did find it a challenge to maintain the constant work structure,
however, despite these issues, I’m pleased with the results of this project and
I plan to include all of the work from this project in my portfolio.
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