Module 1 - Evaluation

Studio Brief 01, a brief that involved working with typography and create five variant logotype outcomes. This development and design process was very new to me, as normally one final outcome was all that was required in past projects I have designed. This refreshing approach was a great learning point to remind me that when showcasing design work to future companies and clients, one final outcome, no matter how well designed it is, just isn’t enough. Working in groups and partners for activities such as the Ligature Brief, and Kern down helped showcase my new found knowledge of the anatomy of typography, and the effectiveness of composition and kerning of logotypes. The Crits held for this brief were extremely helpful, and by having time to present my work with full attention from others, I found as a group we were all able to give each other great feedback. The Crits also helped shape the development process and journey for this brief, allowing me to approach and eliminate any confident or weak design concepts. After being a Design student for 15 years (from GCSE Graphic Design to Level 3 Foundation in Visual Communication) my confidence in software such as Photoshop, and Illustrator was already really strong. From the keyboard shortcuts to the variety of tools, working on Illustrator has been really straight forward for me, and this was of great help for me time management wise. 

Being someone who loves experimenting with destroying the rules of design and being inspired by David Carson, having to read The Vignelli Canon in Brief 1 was rather interesting, especially when Vignelli so kindly expresses how my preferred approach to design is “visual vulgarity”. However, I must admit, reading The Vignelli Canon gave great input into the power of logotype composition and kerning, explaining how simplicity is key and an effective form of design. Overall, his book heavily inspired my approach to kerning for my final five logotype designs.

 When creating my typeface for Brief 2, I wanted to approach a more unique style of typeface and approach to the word Static. I chose Berthold from the suggestions of Muëller-Brockman as my starting point, due to its simplistic and san serif form, eliminating the idea of using a serif typeface. as destruction and fragmentation of a serif typeface would become clustered.  Also I chose Berthold due to the fact of how it inspired the makings of both Helvetica and Univers and that really interested me.  Through experimentation and development Brief two took many different directions, from approach to texture, structure, context (use of Morse code) and then change of the overall rationale, I was able to explore many different ways to approach this brief which was because I learnt from my mistake of brief one. My dependence on Illustrator was rather strong in Brief One, going straight to digital design instead of hand draw sketch’s, which personally I found limit my idea approaches and potential. I was really proud of my final outcome for this Brief, the improvement in research, analysis and design process was evident when comparing to Brief One. The final outcome was deemed a confident representation of my rationale and the design specimen was described as “ unique and well thought out"

and  “really cleverly designed. Another thing I found extremely helpful and effective in the Module was the group activity, which had peers creating brief approaches of how to communicate my rationale – this opened up the many ways to which I approached the projects.

Over the course of this module my knowledge and understanding of typography and graphic design was improved, from learning the anatomy of typography, to learning about theories behind graphic design and many aspects within it. If I were to approach Brief Two again, I would like to produce a full typeface of Static and put it into context like political or social artwork (e.g. David Carson ‘What is it good for – absolutely nothing’ work).