OUGD505 - Studio Session 1

For this studio session we were asked to prepare our research into five boards.

Once in the session we were put into groups of six and given forty five minutes to talk through our boards and initial idea we had for the studio brief.

While researching everything I have been coming up with a few ideas of what I could do with this, but because I didn't know the actually brief, I didn't spent too much time doing this. The initial idea I have is to do an exhibition of trainers, using Branding & Identity as a focus point and Information & Way Finding as the secondary focus point. The reaction and feedback to this idea was generally positive and enthusiastic, with them saying that I should focus on one of the shoe brands and not do all of them, making it a more focused idea.

For the second half of this session we were told to get all of our design boards from the previous module as this would be a design board workshop. The aim is to help us see what we do need to have on a board and what we don't need to have on the boards.
Initially we started off by listing these as a group.

What you shouldn't have on the design boards

• Initial sketches
• 1st person
• Typo's
• Food/Water stains & Print Problems
• Poor image quality & resolution
• Too much text
• Too little text

What you should have on the design boards

• name & module codes
• Board numbers
• Page numbers
• Titles
• Final work
• Good image quality/photography
• Text
• Consistency

After doing these two lists we were told to swap all our design boards with someone and go through and point out everything wrong with it.

My feedback:

This comment is that perhaps some of the paragraphs were a bit too long and needed to be condensed more.

This comment was about having just one image on the page instead of condensing these similar images onto one.

 This comment is on the final outcome page where there is images but not text explanation.

 Another comment about condensing the text.

 A 1st person comment.

 A good comment about the information included.

 Another good comment about the information included and about the good quality photos. There is a comment there about the photo's being taken on a black background, but considering the outcomes are yellow, it seemed the most obvious choice in terms of impact and getting the best quality images for the outcome. That's a comment I'm taking down to personal opinion.

 This comment was about leaving the colour in the background so the images don't look as photoshopped. Another comment is that I need some written information on the context of these images.

 This is a comment on the fact that this final outcome sheet didn't have any supporting text with the images.

 Again another comment on lack of supporting text. I'm not sure it's necessary though considering these are proposals and each have a title explaining what they are.

This comment was about putting my design into context.

Overall I found that the comments were constructive and I had made the same mistakes through all the boards. In the case of the concept pages, there was a bit too much written information, and in 1st person, and in the case of the final outcome boards, there was not enough written information.

After this we were then told to swap the research boards with another person and go through the same procedure. As these are research boards there is going to be a lot more text on them, so this was more about the general layout and other things that might be missed out.

A comment about the title line being too long. It is suggested that I make it as long as the title itself.

 The opposite to the above. The line is too short and should be to the end of the title.

 A comment on use of a good grid structure.

A comment on my use of first person text.

There was a lot less feedback on these boards in general, which is probably down to the fact that these are very recent while the others are a few weeks old. It shows that I am considering all of the key points discussed and am making an effort to make the boards as professional as possible.

I have picked up some good points about the mistakes I have been making throughout and will now be consciously making an effort to better my ability in creating these boards. Overall there weren't any dire comments which has given me confidence in my ability to present my work in a professional manner.