Brief 1 - Yearbook Evaluation

Brief 1 – Yearbook Evaluation

This Brief entailed designing the Yearbook for Printed Textiles and surface pattern. The aim of this brief, for me, was to work with a live client and produce a publication that would end up going to print. By the end of this brief I had managed to achieve this, whilst learning a lot about working with clients and the problems that can arise from this. Due to the fact that I was nominated as the project leader, this left me in charge of contacting the course leaders and arranging the meetings with both leaders and the design team. Initially this started out quite well but as the brief progressed through the module it was becoming very difficult to get the work from the course leaders, which was extremely frustrating. Originally I wanted to work alongside the students but was reassured that it would work best working with the tutors, in hindsight I wish I had stuck to my guns as when I started working with the students later it worked a lot smoothly. I had set quite big ambitions for this brief, creating mock-ups etc for the course, but due to the lack of co-operation on their behalf this brief had to be put to on hold while I focused on my other briefs. As I mentioned, this was a huge learning curve because once we did manage to get the information we needed, with the help from the students as opposed to the tutors, we had to turn the brief around extremely quickly. Which meant this initial stages I wanted to go through couldn’t be met, due to time frames.

However, with regards to the design team I feel we did work very well together. Bringing together our ideas and delegating roles so that we could produce the best yearbook we could, reflecting the concept we wanted and the style of book the course wanted. Working collaboratively is always a challenge and I think that 5 people was too many, but I think we managed to get a balance between what people wanted to achieve and what we could achieve. Playing to each others strengths, and working together to generate the design. I think with regards to my own skills, I learnt a lot about time management, patience and co-operation. As well as learning technical skills, such as; setting up documents to print, going through the stages of producing something on a mass scale and I have defiantly improved my skills in Photoshop and In-design which is something I was hoping to do.

All of these skills, working and communicating with clients and technical skills will defiantly help me with my future career.

Out of all my briefs this has been the most frustrating and challenging, I am also a little disappointed at the progression of it because it was so difficult getting the information and images and I was hoping to get more out of it. However, due to this I have learnt a lot and it makes me feel more confident about working with difficult clients in the future. 

Ougd303 Brief 1