Personal Presentation Evaluation

I believe this presentation truly reflects me as a designer to this date through its design choices, content, and typesetting. The title page immediately introduces me as a designer interesting in organic forms, while also introducing me as a type designer. This typeface was chosen because it relates to many projects I reference within the presentation, while also representing me to date as it's my latest typeface. The organic, floral forms I use throughout the presentation represent my playfulness, and also relates to my current personal brand that I'm building as a response to my project in OUGD503 Responsive.

The topics I covered in the presentation really allowed me to reflect on my professional practice and consider important elements I hadn't thought about before such as what my aims are for summer and L6, which has resulted in me setting myself briefs for the summer and a plan to get an internship. Including and being reflective of projects I had not found very successful was important, as it allowed me to be able to communicate my skillset in a more refined way which would be very beneficial for when I apply to jobs.

This project was a good end brief to L5 Professional Practice as it allowed me to understand how my professional practice has progressed, and what current aims and aspirations I have to work on.

Final Personal Presentation and Script

1. Reflection on who you are as a designer and learner - how do these intertwine?

Emotional designer - anxious.

Visual leaner - naturally seek out justifications for what I'm doing and see relationships/patterns within work.

General feeling of failure throughout L4 even though my grades were high seconds made me realise being a visual and analytical learner wasn't working for me. Although good it didn't make me feel any sense of self-achievement. 

Shift to kinaesthetic learner - being more hands on. Using analog processes, using visuals that don't have a 100% functional purpose but being symbolic. Built confidence and relationship with my work.

I want all work to be my own - can't use other people's images, etc.

l4 maps project is when i realised fully that i enjoy the happy accidents that come along with analog processes and to stop being such a control freak - screenprints went wrong but i turned it into something i enjoy. i also began exploring ways type can be used - the lines are actually one of the typefaces i made, and i made the other. all images were based on what images i used. 

2. How have the things I've learned and experienced over the past two years informed my current aims, ambitions, and practice?

I aim to trust my practice more - don't need my work to tick all the boxes and just do what I want to explore. Not putting as much academic pressure on myself - moving forward being more creative.

Want to collaborate more with other creatives - really enjoyed 

Want to find professional practices I fit into - want experience as an intern/work experience. Somewhere that will want a more expressionist approach.

Aim to continue with twilight sessions and learning many techniques - did ceramics so far. Next want to do welding to hopefully begin selling jewellery. 

Want to create my own brand - intertwine my personal life with my practice and create a brand on instagram most likely as my friends do.

- trust my practice more - don’t need all the academic pressure, don’t need to tick all the boxes. learnt this especially in second year.

- skills - animate which i want to explore more, how to biuld my CV (employability week), screenprinting, letterpressing and especially twilight sessions.

- collaborations - ive always hated group projects and wanted to be in control of all my work until now - responsive has been an amazing experience and life’s a pitch was quite enjoyable since everyone put effort in. want to continue to see how this can improve.

- creative report - learnt the most from this. found someone whose professional practice i identify with which is important to me as ive felt confused about my place in design. her interview encouraged me, gave me realistic ambitions, and taught me how to make my own bespoke typeface. 

2. How have the things I've learned and experienced over the past two years informed my current aims, ambitions, and practice?

I aim to trust my practice more - don't need my work to tick all the boxes and just do what I want to explore. Not putting as much academic pressure on myself - moving forward being more creative.

Want to collaborate more with other creatives - really enjoyed 

Want to find professional practices I fit into - want experience as an intern/work experience. Somewhere that will want a more expressionist approach.

Aim to continue with twilight sessions and learning many techniques - did ceramics so far. Next want to do welding to hopefully begin selling jewellery. 

- want to build my cv more in response to emplyability week by doing a live brief that i don’t particularly want to to push myself

- i want to get work experience during summer or l6

- i want to continue inductions into all workshops - fabric dyeing and metal welding. want to create products i can use within projects and also sell.

- want to build my personal brand e.g 

- i want to set myself 5 briefs over summer to encourage myself to keep researching and producing.

3. Identify creative concerns if any

Accessing facilities when I leave - not sure how I'd be able to progress.

Finding a place to intern at that would be right for me - don't want to feel beat down by real life work - want to do this is L6 as I want to build my portfolio in summer.

Skillset - don't think I'm as strong and well versed in graphic design softwares out of Photoshop and inDesign.

-Accessing facilities when I leave - not sure how I’d be able to progress. this is especially why i want to do those briefs over summer.

when im so analog. even the library as it specialises in design

- think i’m not as skilled in softwares as i should be - especially in making type as that seems to be my main digital skill at the moment.

 6. Reflect on my personal aesthetic and showcase me as an individual practitioner.

- lola dement myers - documentation of her
- flosskees
- leah maldonado
- silkscreen printed

7. Include briefs that I excelled in and ones I wasn't as successful in - BE HONEST

Successful: L4 Type and Logotype, L4 Music, L4 PPP, L4 Map. L5 Book poster, Postcard, L5 Responsive, L5 Creative Report. (Select a few only)

Not as successful: L4 Book cover, L5 Book brief, - almost as great but feel disappointed in not letting it achieve its full potential.

l4

- target audience - having to design a book for children on a topic i havent chosen was especially challenging. this combined with it needing to be commercial therefore appealing to a large audience and appropriate is way out my comfort zone.

- i didnt enjoy this brief in general - didn’t like any of the books and i learnt i should’ve tried to make it enjoyable for myself instead of overthinking its function and it may have turned out better.

l5

- i was proud of this book when i made it as it was my most refined piece to date so i finally learnt the feedback i would constantly get on spending more time on the final production.

- i also feel now that i wish i included type and typesetting, but i instead forced myself to not resort to that. now i know i do really enjoy type and typesetting.

- made my first completely custom typeface - before ive only modified type or used figures to create type.

- got to experiment with layout - i didn’t know how much i enjoyed this

- analog processes - i screenprinted, used fabric, flower pressed to create the floral outlines, and relief printed.

- i built a brand by experimenting with merchandise. 

- layout - different approach to typesetting which i really enjoyed - feedback from leah maldonado was that she specifically loved the typesetting.

- pushed myself out my comfort zone to use images that aren’t mine

- the production of this book i think is the most professional ive done. binding is clean, paper cut well.

- i learnt alot from this that has been one of the biggest iimpacts in my professional journey as i found a personal connection to a designers practice that yadada.

Personal Presentation Design Choices

As this presentation is to reflect who I am as a designer to date, I used my latest typeface that I created to introduce myself as a type designer, and also convey what I found as my most successful/professional project to date (using imagery from OUGD503 Responsive). 

I used the flower illustrations to represent my playful and organic aesthetic, and incorporated it as bullet points within the body of the text to not overcomplicate the slides the same way I designed the title page.

I used Georgia as my body of text typeface as it's both rounded, exuding a sense of friendliness and playfulness, while also providing an "old-world charm" that is part of my personal aesthetic.

I considered replacing the tittle of the "i" with the rounded shape from my bespoke typeface, however didn't want to over design and take away from the content.

Life's A Pitch Evaluation

Overall, I think this brief was really successful and a strong group effort. I feel as though I took a really strong leadership role, along with Mel and Leon, which I am proud of. In the initial stages, I wasn't as much of a leader however during group meetings that I consistently attended, and during stages of planning, note-taking, presentation formatting and design boards, I began adopting this role. I think my main participation within this project was keeping everything organised as I would summarise our plans on A3 sheets, send it to the group chat, keep up to date with the Google Drive we shared and my biggest leadership role was in ensuring everyone's design boards were done on time so that I could format them into a large inDesign file.

There were some difficulties that arose throughout the project as people didn't attend group meetings, which meant there were slight communication issues on what point we were at, and what roles each person was to adopt as we always distributed roles to individuals to keep the workload even. For the presentations, each person was in charge of one section, and wrote a script as we collectively decided that Mel and Leon would be speaking due to a general consensus that they are more confident speakers therefore making it most effective to communicate the pitch to the audience. This division in slides and script meant that although we weren't all speaking, it was still a collective effort.

I believe the presentation was successful in its design aesthetic, and content. The design aesthetic was quite difficult to come to a conclusion to, as there was a divide between the textural elements in my idea for the slides, and Mel's illustrations. In the end, we decided that Mel's illustrations were most effective as we considered the audience we were presenting to, and the overall audience we would be targeting. As a majority of the class proved to live in LS6, our illustrative and urban elements worked efficiently in keeping it visually engaging. The content covered all topics that are important to the brief, as we realistically considered costs and location.

In conclusion, I learnt a lot from engaging in a real life brief in terms of how to communicate and work together efficiently with a group, and how to consider elements realistically. I felt I fulfilled my roles successfully such as the roles I was assigned - organising notes, providing a design aesthetic, and researching into historical, conceptual, and contextual projects. I also believe I did more than I was assigned successfully as well, such as naturally adopting a leadership role, and taking control of the design boards to ensure these were formatted to a professional standard in the correct time frame. 

Creative Report Evaluation

The outcome of conducting this interview was really beneficial to my practice as Maldonado’s responses were in-depth and informative.  I gained masses of insight into how to approach my own personal practice and how to approach my professional practice for employability. Her steps on how to create a typeface was especially useful as it helped me to develop my first bespoke typeface for a separate project, and her ambitious briefs have influenced my own personal branding project.

I feel as though the questions I asked and refined were really successful as it covered all topics I wanted a response to, and even encouraged more topics for the practitioner to reply to. A lot of these questions avoided a typical "yes" or "no" reply, and I think my most successful ones were in response to quotes I had found from her blogs and past interviews as they conveyed that I have an understanding of her practice, and also allowed for her to elaborate on topics I wanted more clarification on.

Her response to the creative report was also really successful, as she expressed an understanding of how our practices relate, and complimented the way I had typeset the project. She thanked me for providing her with thoughtful questions, which I believe reflects the in-depth research I had explored prior to forming the questions.

This creative report has overall been the largest impact on my professional practice development so far, as I feel as though my confusion about my expressionist approach to design has been resolved, and I have an understanding of where my practice can fit in within the professional world. I've also learnt what realistic, yet ambitious, aims to set myself, and feel as though I can always remain in contact with Leah Maldonado which I believe will consistently benefit my practice as it develops.

Creative Report Response

Purpose of the message:

As Leah had expressed her excitement to be interviewed and to see the final product in the emails, I sent her a DM with them as a way of establishing a more direct and personal relationship, while also just picking a format where sending images was easiest. I thanked her for her participation, and asked for permission to post the contents of the creative report on my instagram as some of her replies may be considered personal such as the reply in which she stated not enjoying her job.

I got permission to post this, however I still won't post the section in which she talks about not enjoying her job just to be on the cautious side.

Her response:
"Natalie, this is so sweet. We are not that different from each other, in many ways our age and experience makes us contemporaries of one another. Which makes your kindness and thoughtful report so much more sweet 💕 If i told myself I would be the subject of a beautiful report a year ago I simply would not have believed it. It was just about this time last year that I hit send on the Schnitzer application. 

Something I learned from the working professionals around me was that their success was not that hard for them to achieve. It’s just a little mirage. Being a good designer is very simple: be a kind person and allow yourself to actualize your day dreams! 

I would really love to have a pdf!! You did such a good typesetting it too. Thank you for doing this."

This response was directed and based on my introduction/evaluation page of the creative report.

I chose Leah Maldonado as the practitioner to interview as I felt a personal connection to her practice, and I think through my interview and report, she understood that my approach is similar to hers which makes me feel as though my practice has a successful place in the professional world. Her point on how her Schnitzer award was only a year ago also conveys to me how much can be achieved professionally in a year, which has made me more ambitious.

Final Creative Report

Overall, I think the outcome is really refined and reflects both mine and Leah Maldonado's playful and somewhat minimalist practice. The black cover provides a nice contrast, and emphasises the focus on the content within. It also introduces her as a type designer, with the immediate use of her fonts, and I included a large symbol taken from the tittle of her "i" glyph in Animal Soul Font. I also included a thank you at the back, as I felt it was important as she had taken the time to reply, and provide me with great insight.

Taking the photos against the textured studio floor represents her use and focus on texture, provides an interesting contrast with the clean front cover, and also strips the creative report back to its core - an exploration into a graphic design practice.