Year Two Summative Statement

I did my final presentation of year two yesterday. I had planned it pretty well, knowing exactly what I wanted to say but when it actually came down to doing it I had to rush the end slightly due to discussing the early points at length. Shame. All in all though it went pretty successfully.

At this current point on the course and looking toward my career I feel that I feel my design practice has come on leaps and bounds since the first year. I am very confident with printing my work, whether digital or analogue, something I have strived to gain a deep understanding of since the day I walked into Leeds College of Art. I think I should stress at this time that prior to enrolling onto this degree I hadn't studied any art or design since GCSE (7 years earlier), meaning I had huge gaps in my knowledge of the subject that I knew I needed to fill to A. boost my confidence as a designer and B. improve my design practice to produce successful work. Throughout the second year I have truly surprised myself with the amount I have developed as a designer and the level of knowledge and insight I now have on the subject.

This development is due to the variety of briefs we had during the second year. Design for print, design for digital, image making. As i've mentioned I am very confident with print now, often getting asked for advice by many people on the course. This is by no means the only part of my practice to improve. 

The design for screen module was very good for learning the correct procedures when designing motion graphics - story-boarding, time-lining and After Effects skills (animation is something that I had wanted to get to grips with for some time). It also provided me with a good grounding to expand upon for web design - html coding, dreamweaver and Flash. 

The most important thing to come from the design for screen module however was that I allowed me to identify a major flaw in my design practice. I found that I had a tendency to push half-baked concepts and ideas for far too long. I would become blinkered into going with an idea that wasn't working - costing me time and energy that could be better spent developing a solid concept. Having identified this I spent the second half of the year working to rectify it and I pleased to say that I seem to have overcome it. My design practice is now much more harmonious with research, development and testing working together to create stronger resolutions.

I feel confident going into my third year. I have proven to myself that I do have real skills in both print and digital design as well as good people skills for collaboration and client led work (two things I am extremely keen to do in my third year). I aim to combine print and digital in my third year, bringing forward the skills learnt in our final module when designing for use across a range. Next year I aim to THINK BIG.

This summer I have already lined up numerous collaborations and live briefs. I am currently designing the identity, all of the promotional items and show publication for a friends third year graduate photography exhibition. As well as this I will be developing visuals to be mixed live to a DJ set my friend is playing in London (good excuse to produce motion graphics and use my VJ controller again). Probably most importantly I will be finalising and building a live website for myself. 

In industry news - I will be back home in London over summer so I will make a nuisance of myself and contact many many agencies / studios to see if I could pop in for a meeting, perhaps even fix a short placement or two. That would be great. Having missed out on the print visit a few weeks ago I am also interested in organising visits to printers of my own, possibly even organising a print placement. 

Finally, as mentioned during my PPD presentation, I will be joining Print Club London for the summer months as Nat Hunter at Airside said it would be a good
place to network and meet Creative Directors from London studios.
It will also help get some much-needed screen printing out of my system.