End of year reflection
Hey tumblr,
The end of my second year at university is finally approaching and I’ve been asked by my lectures to discussed on tumblr how I think I’ve been progressing and how second year as a whole has been.
I’d like to start off talking about the first large assignment of the year. It was a difficult task and consisted of building and designing a website. I initially was hesitant about starting the project due to my previous experience working with dream weaver at college (In other words, I hit a brick wall). I started the project by going to the library and looking at designing for web and branding. This was the first step because without a design and a basic idea of identity I wouldn’t be able to create the site. After a few tutorials I was starting to find my feet with the project. My choice was to avoid dream weaver and to use Smultron and write out the entire code for the website. I felt I learnt a lot about web design by coding it by hand, but after looking at the presentations of the other student and seeing how amazing their websites looked I was disappointed by my own. I felt from an educational point of view hand coding it was the better idea but by doing this, my final outcome wasn’t spectacular.
The identity brief was tied up with the web design and as someone with a love of all things print based I enjoyed this aspect of the course. It was ideal because I could express all the things I love about design and the way I design things and it couldn’t be wrong because it was branding myself.
The second major project we started was the theory-based essay. We could chosen a topic within design and discuss our ideas in an essay. This year we had a different theory teacher and as much as I miss our old lecturer I was delighted with the endless help and support of our new lecturer. In first year I struggled with the essay (if you haven’t guessed already I am a terrible writer!!!) and my confidence was down with a low mark but I hope this year I get a better grade as I really tried and was enthusiastic about what I was discussing.
Our final major project was our professional project. This was the toughest. We had to create our own brief (which when your giving someone with a big imagination an open brief its hard to choose just the one thing!) I choose to create a clothing brand based on how the irony of fashion (everyone wanting to look different but in turn we end up looking the same). This later developed into a department store called tribe 7 based on Rubican and Young’s 4 C’s – it basically talks about their only being 7 types of people in the world. I divided the store to create a new shopping experience (shopping by your ‘tribe) and have been creating the identity, leaflets, and brand directory and shop layout.
Second year has been a challenge and has taught me a lot about thinking for myself, making fast decisions and designing for web. I have enjoyed the experience and believe all that I have learnt will help me in industry.
