Design Practice

5 Successes, Fails and Improvements

5 Successes
1. Working on live briefs, although it has influenced my work I have gained valuble knowledge into dealing with clients and has led to further commissions, freelance work and industry contacts.
2. Using tutorials effectively, i found these very beneficial in initial research stages to discuss thoughts and ideas with someone else than just myself. These were also documented well and could be referenced later.
3. The success of my final products in relation to the briefs went very well, I felt I set out a number of briefs and produced not what just was set but went beyond what was expected.
4. Showing work within context was something I really did in my work, having the opportunity to work with clients made me look more at what not just I or the client wanted but the target audience. This led to lots of my work being shown in context, I would however like to produce more refined photographs that show the detail of what I have produced.
5. Creating typefaces in the types of cities brief, overall I like the concept and wish to take this further as part of my personal practice to document other places I visit by creating unique typefaces.

5 Fails to Improve
1. Documentation, organisation and time management, although I did use timetables I did not stick to them. I at times took on too much work that was expected and in the case of live briefs, amendments made by clients also took up extra time that was not planned for. The first type based brief I felt I aimed too high and producing 3 typefaces would have needed more time to refine them.
2. Clients also took a lot of influence in the design, this may be because of several reasons. Myself not showing and explaining how ideas could work so that they do not understand my point of view as a designer or suggest to clients there’s too much of a idea of what the final outcome will look like.
3. Suggesting ideas to clients but not negotiating payment. I have done this in several cases with the pop-up shop where I should have either negotiated payment or said no.
4. The levels of investigation and experimentation into appropriate production media, processes and technologies could have been improved, I feel although i have learned a lot particularly with live briefs i have been less experimental with my approach and should think outside the box on some briefs instead of going with something conventional.
5. Polishing and photographing final products for my practice should be considered next time.