How you have developed from the first day you arrived. Outline strengths and areas for development; include any personal tutorial sheets and other relevant information.
Since starting Graphic Communication at Cardiff School of Art and Design I feel I have developed in a number of areas; before starting here I studied an Art Foundation course at Weston College, which encouraged me to take my interest in Graphic Design further. I was not overly confident with the use of computers in my work at this stage and focused more on creating pieces that looked beautiful in an artistic way but had minimal graphic elements to them. I was pleased when I saw work from previous students that this was a big part of the course and it gave me some confidence that I could produce work of the same standard.
The area of work that I feel I have improved most in is my working method. Before attending UWIC, I tended to go for the first idea that came into my head rather than researching and trying out a number of different ideas. I was always dubious about making a mess of my sketchbook but I came to realise that experimenting more and discarding some ideas that weren’t as strong was definitely the better route to take.
The first few days of being on the course were all about getting to know other people, something I always enjoy and this pleased me especially as I often imagined university as being a place where you sit in a lecture theatre and don’t build relationships with other people who are obviously interested in the same things as you.
The first year offered a range of graphic design techniques which were new to me. We explored typography in great detail, I have always been interested in typography and this was a really great part of the year for me. We also learned about modernism and post-modernism. I always preferred the post-modernist design style but after 3 years of studying design solely I feel I have shifted over to the modernist style, not necessarily in my work, but when taking inspiration from others work.
Contextual Studies was another integral part of learning in the first year. This consisted of some essay writing, of which I felt confident with. We learnt about the history of design, I found this especially useful as it was something I wasn’t so familiar with and may not have looked into so early had it not been introduced to us so early on. We were also asked to produce a presentation about a painting of our choice from the National Museum in the centre of Cardiff. This was a nerve- racking experience but something I found extremely beneficial. It encouraged us to research into artists and improved our presentation skills as not only did we have to present in front of our group but any members of the public that happened to be in the museum at that time. Doing the presentation made writing up the review afterwards a much more appealing task.
Going into the second year made the experience all seem a bit more real. The briefs we were given were a lot more challenging than the ones in the first year of study. And the opportunity to work on ‘Competition Briefs’ really made me want to produce some great pieces of work. The idea that my work could be featured in a design book seemed like an opportunity not to miss. We were also given the opportunity to work with people in the third year which was daunting at first as I felt they may have looked down on my work because I was not as experienced as they were but in fact it proved a positive experience as they were able to offer criticism and seemed to take on bored constructive criticism I offered them. We also looked into producing websites. I found this project extremely challenging as there were a number of codes and techniques to be remembered but support was always on hand. Also, it was a live project which meant, we had to produce things that were appropriate for the client and not necessarily decisions we would have taken- this prepared us for the real world and also was a group work activity which I took a great deal of interest in. At the end of this project (producing a website for Splotlands) we were given the opportunity to present our website to the client, this was the first big presentation we had done and I felt it was a brilliant experience. We also had tutorials and learnt about production for print, with a trip to a local printer, Hartley Wilprint, it was great to see the process it all goes through and the size of the printers used!
The end of the second year saw the start of the dissertation module, a topic that had scared me since the start of university. However, on hearing that we were able to write about a topic of our choice that could be completely unrelated to Graphic Communication really got me thinking about where my interests lie. I had previously written an essay on Reality Television and I had really enjoyed it and this was reflected in my grade so I decided to stick with this route and I decided I would look into the history and modern day forms of Variety Entertainment. Regular tutorials enabled me to hone my topic to something suitable for the word length and encouraged me to keep working regularly.
Over the summer, I tried to do as much work as possible on my dissertation in order to prepare myself for lots of hard work on projects on my return to the final year.
The last year of Graphic Communcation has been an extremely challenging one, with the pressure of achieving good grades as well as impressive pieces of work. The only way to overcome this was to focus on producing impressive pieces of work for my portfolio rather than for a grade. The live and competition briefs, again were a really great experience and we were given the opportunity of working with a mentor from a design company in Cardiff, again it was nice to gain some criticism from someone outside of CSAD. Group work, again worked well for me and enabled me to build new relationships with people on the course I had not had an opportunity to work with before. The introduction of audio feedback proved very positive for myself, as tutors were able to go into more detail when offering criticism and the fact that it was more like a conversation made it easier to understand their points of view. I took part in an interview on audio feedback and this showed that many other members of the course also found it a beneficial move.
Overall, I feel the final year of Graphic Communication has been a very impressive and challenging one. It has really allowed me to realise that criticism of my work is not a personal one, but one to help me improve my already creative ideas. There are a large amount of things I will take away from the course and writing this reflection has reminded me of all the brilliant projects we undertook in the first two years as well as the third.
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