OUGD503 Reflection

The module itself was stressful as there was too much to manage as well as the final briefs. The module has overall significantly helped in my drawing skills since all I did was illustrations. As the briefs were broad, it allowed me to design what I wanted and in a style I wanted. The Papyrus brief intrigued me as it was for a good cause and the final outcome of the design worked better than expected since the requirements were simple and allowed me to think input my own experiences on the design. As the brief was for a colouring book, I didn't have to think about colours decisions which made this brief fairly quick and easy to do.

The Stratford Literacy Festival Book Jacket design was more difficult to do as I didn't gather as much information as I could. I knew the book would be about Sharing Stories but I feel like I could've done with more insight and information. The final design turned out very simple and not as effective as I would've liked but again, I wished I had more information.

The YCN UK Greetings design was one I was excited about since I've always wanted to create some sort of stationary and the greetings collection allowed me to do so. The UK Greetings brief was very broad and so allowed me to design a greetings collection that was influenced by a real life issue and actually support a charity. Each design was inspired by a real life endangered wildlife creature so that people become aware of the issue and could potentially help to reduce the threat of their endangerment. The illustrative designs allowed me to experiment with different media and skills so that I could best represent the animals/insects and has helped me to further improve my illustration and drawing skills. As the greeting cards were made for everyday occasions, it really did make an impact of the serious nature of the issue. Creating all the physical designs were stressful, time consuming and infuriating as it was getting tedious repeating the same action again and again but at the end it was the most rewarding. Having seeing greetings collection as a set really made me feel positive and happy that I could produce a whole collection. The coming up with the collection name 'ENDangered (Wild)life’ was not difficult at all as I had obviously written and said the words a few times but adding in the capital letters and punctuations emphasises the whole meaning of the collection. This brief really showed me the power of design and how influential it can be and how it can impact on people.