To London and back…down to earth!!!

It has been quite action packed this week with plenty of things going on, starting with our trip to London on Wednesday and the start of our “as and when” tasks for the A6 Revert to Type assignment on Thursday. Even though there is plenty to do on the A5 Builder assignment I found that it was nice to have a little break from the routine and enjoy a day out. I was a little nervous about visiting London as the only previous time I have been was to go to Wembley in 1996!

It was certainly different from my expectations and the pleasing thing was that I found it to be a little less hustle and bustle than I imagined it to be. For the morning part of our trip we visited the Tate Modern museum, I was looking forward to this as I felt that there would be plenty of inspiring pieces which I could relate back to which would benefit me for the more creative aspects of this course. Because of this I was extremely disappointed to hear that because of recent strike action the museum exhibits were closed!

We were then given the rest of the day to explore the city which I enjoyed as it allowed me to sample some of the shops on offer! We were planning on going on the tube to visit several places but to our frustration we could not find an entrance to the tube stations anywhere and could only find the stations that stated “No Entry”. This meant that we spent quite a lot of time meandering and trying to find our bearings. To avoid this we could have returned to Leicester Square and got on the tube there and if I were in that situation again I would definitely do that. I do feel however that this trip was a good experience and even though the Tate Modern was closed I am glad that we made the trip.

After having around 6 hours sleep on Wednesday night due to the trip I along with the majority of the class was feeling pretty tired on Thursday morning. I soon realised however that I needed to get myself back into the right frame of mind as there was to be several “as and when” tasks throughout the day. I was quite looking forward to participating in these tasks because after my trip to The Design Mechanics last week I realised that this would be how tasks would be distributed in the workplace.

The first two tasks that we were given were pretty simple and I felt quite happy about what I had produced. The third task (typography design for a paint tube) however was much more complex and needed much more aspects to be taken into consideration. I was quite worried about this task at first because the brief was pretty strict and I felt that I would struggle to come up with enough thumbnails that were different from each other. I feel that this was a good experience however as it took me out of my usual comfort zone and forced me to work a little harder to get things right. I feel that I could have improved on my developmental work but due to the time restrictions on offer I did not find this to be possible. I do feel that if we were to do this task again with the experience that I have now gained I should be able to do it quicker and my developmental work will have improved.