OUGD301TypesofCities Finals & Mini Evaluation

Brief Evaluation

1. Your ability to select, develop and evaluate a range of appropriate source material gathered through a breadth of appropriate research methods.

Inspired initially by the online magazine NeueMag it was very easy to find initial source material to use and get inspiration from as I could navigate to designers websites as well. After exhausting this resource I chose to look at typographic image libraries, in particular I looked at www.typograpyserved.com, this proved a wealthy source of visuals to get inspired from, using a range of different approaches i could select different elements I liked and translate them into what I needed/liked.

2. The level of investigation and experimentation into appropriate production media, processes and technologies.

Initially as an online magazine based brief i set outcomes to be A3 RGB poster format visual interpretations with hand-printed outcomes as A3 CMYK screen prints. As the brief developed I became more interested in the aspects of typography as oppose to image making, looking towards the letterform make-up and looking less towards the image making and composition of the words I intended to display. This was critical to brief and so I decided to change it and so did the deliverables of the brief. The brief changed to a personal typographic response to the three given cities London Paris and Berlin (of which I have visited) and the outcomes were now defined as typographic outcome and associated travel based media on which they are to be applied.

3. The breadth and quality of practical skills, ideas and development.

I explored initial ideas well using design sheets whilst reviewing inspiration sources and also sketched some typefaces using sheets of squared paper to help gain perspective on proportions. I then moved onto digitalising my ideas and again i moved in several different directions before settling on the elements of each of the typefaces.

For the layouts of the posters I did find it initially very difficult to decide on what i wanted to display producing a large variety of layouts. After speaking to various colleagues I settled on some designs for the posters and by printing them large scale I could see what worked well.

For the design of the postcards and the greetings card I initially chose to produce hand-made designs but after producing samples the clarity of some of the lettering became hard to view and unfortunately I spent too much time and money exhausting something that would not work. I did however move back to working with digital print and successfully produced good designs for the printed media including book covers for travel guides.

4. The documentation, organisation and presentation of the work for this module.

This brief once I had the initial concepts for each of the typefaces seemed to slow and the brief in the end ended up taking over twice as long as what I initially had intended. I also spent far too much time exhausting screen printing which in-spite of advice I kept on pursuing.

5. The success of your final products in relation to the briefs.

Overall I am very satisfied with my final outcomes of this brief. I have produced something I would not normally produce and exceed my expectations. In relation to my umbrella statement it is exactly what I imagined my work to look like, High-end, typographic led, minimalist and layout focused.

I intend on taking the typefaces further by producing font file so they can be distributed for free* as a promotional piece.

5 Things I will do differently next time and comments:

01. Make a personal brief like this more open ended to allow for personal development

02. Hinder to a stricter timetable

03. Try and realise when specific processes are a dead end.