A6 Evaluation

When we were first given the A6 Revert to Type assignment my initial fears were geared totally towards the presentation that we had to give at the end of the project. I felt that this would have been the most difficult part of the assignment by far and did not feel that I would struggle too much with the rest of the assignment. However, I soon began to realise that this was not the case.

As I began to do the “as and when” tasks I soon realised just how difficult they actually were. I was quite excited about them at first because I knew that jobs in the industry require you to work at a very fast pace so this would be great experience for the future. The first timed task we did was to produce an article on musician Jonathan Gee using a given set of elements. I was quite happy with the design that I did for this and I felt that I benefited greatly by getting the whole design done with quite a lot of time to spare. This meant that I could spend time thoroughly checking the work and improving it. I could have spent more time on the planning process for this design but this may have left me with little time to spare meaning that I wouldn’t be able to check it as thoroughly as I would have liked. If I were to do this task again I would certainly try to get everything done with time to spare so that I could make the necessary amendments which would lead to a higher quality of work. This was something which I tried to do for every practical task in this unit but unfortunately this was not the case for all of them.

The next task we did was to design a paint tube for a range of oriental paints. Again this task involved working to a set brief which I immediately felt at ease with. I enjoyed this task as I felt that it was quite a challenging brief due to the small amount of space available to put the elements. I felt that this was a good experience because you cannot always expect to be given large amounts of space to create designs so being able to design on a small scale is a key skill to have.

We were then given the task of creating a job advertisement to a given brief and again this was something that I did not really struggle too much with. I felt that this task had a much more commercial feel to it compared to the tasks we had done previously and again I was pleased to see that I had left myself with plenty of time to check the work and make any amendments. I felt that this was possibly my most effective design out of the tasks that we had done and if I were to do the design again I would probably stick to the same design.

The next task we were given was to create a grid for a newsletter article and then design all of the content. As there was much more to do in this task compared to the previous tasks that we had done I knew that I had to try and work a lot faster. This has not really been a strong point of mine in the past as I tend to spend quite a lot of time dwelling on things and changing things. Due to this I tried not to dwell on things too much and just try to get it done as quickly as possible, I was not really entirely happy with this design as I felt that I might have rushed it a bit too much even though I only just managed to meet the deadline with minutes to spare. Due to this I decided not to submit this piece of work as I did not feel that it was designed as well as the others that I had done. If I were to do this design again I would definitely try to speed up the rough design process as I feel that I spent much more time than I need to on this.

The last timed task we did came as a real surprise as we had to design multiple fact sheets and supply all the material. This was the first time that we have had not been given the content for a task and this was something that I really struggled with given the amount of time that we had. I was quite confident that I knew the majority of the content so I decided to write as much down as I could and then save it as a text file ready to be imported into PageMaker when I needed it. I was quite disappointed with my performance in this task as I had planned to make 5 sheets at first and then when I realised just how much time I had left I amended this to 3 sheets. In the end though I only ended up with having just over 1 and a half sheets finished before I ran out of time. I feel that I ran out of time purely because of the way that I had designed the sheets. I had designed the sheet to have roughly 10 definitions on each page and bearing in mind that I had to create the illustrations for each definition I just did not have the amount of time to create them. I felt this was a good experience however as I realise just how important management of time is and I feel that if I were to do this task again I would only put around 5 definitions on a page which would save me a vast amount of time.

One part of the assignment that I am happy with was every aspect of the presentation that we had to do. This involved creating a visual presentation along with an accompanying handout. After spending quite a lot of time on the design of the handout I am very pleased with the end result. I felt that everything that I had learnt from doing the “as and when” tasks really helped me with this design as I had a clearer knowledge of all the different typographic techniques. I was also quite happy with my design of the visual aides as I felt that they contained a good balance of information and images. If I were to do these tasks again though I am sure that I would be able to improve on them due to the experience that I have gained throughout this assignment.

The actual delivery of the presentation at the end of the assignment was something that I was worried about the most. Due to this I wanted to try and know the presentation inside out and also give myself cue cards to remind me of any important pieces of information. I felt that this was a good technique to use as I felt that I did quite a good job with the presentation and my nerves soon disappeared. If I were to do this task again I would certainly use this method as I felt much more confident compared to presentations that I had done in the past.