OUGD603: Extended Practice - My Statement of Intent

Who am I as a Person?

Personality wise I can seem quite shy at first, especially around new people. I don't really enjoy public speaking and can find social situations quite awkward.

I'm from Liverpool, one my favourite things about it is the scouse sense of humour. Although I do love Liverpool I would love to travel following the completion of my degree and possibly live abroad.

I particularly enjoy spending time with my family, watching football - supporting Liverpool FC of course and drinking beer!

Whenever I feel down I like to buy a pair of trainers to cheer myself up, I currently have nine pairs in my collection.

I recently adopted a giraffe from Chester Zoo.

Who am I as a Designer?

When working on a brief, I particular emphasis on devising creative concepts as solutions to set problems as I personally feel this is one of my strengths.

When it comes to media, I prefer to experiment more with the idea of hand-rendered processes and mixed media rather than digital software within my design work.

I am not as confident with digital software and I'm not very good at coding websites.

I strive to make the solutions I produce as interactive as possible.

I enjoy a hands on approach especially when it comes to constructing prototypes etc.

I have a keen interest in the promotion/advertising and branding sectors of the creative industry and would like to work more within these areas.

What I Know

Throughout my first two years on the course I have been able to have workshops on the hand-rendered processes I particularly enjoy such as screen-printing and Lino print and I have took advantage of these facilities in previous briefs.

I know how to approach a brief in quite a organised and methodical manner, and how to use the initial stages of a brief to devise creative solutions to the problem set.

I have a basic knowledge of the Adobe software such as Illustrator, Photoshop and Indesign and use these to visualise my initial ideas.

I know how to produce a brand / identity and the theory and psychology behind branding.

What I Want To Know

I would like to know how to produce more relevant, specific and in-depth reach which will inform my practice.

I would quite like to improve the professional quality of my design boards which I believe will aide my in the future.

I would ideally like to improve my skills in Adobe software to feel more confident using it.

In order to work with a live client at some point in the future I would like to know how to conduct myself in a professional manner.

I would like to used this year as a opportunity to experiment further with mixed media.

My Statement of Intent

I am a concept driven Graphic Designer, with a particular emphasis on the exploration of hand-rendered and mixed-medias to achieve interactive design outcomes.

Briefs

Before I started planning and writing up any of the eight briefs I wanted to undertake as part of the OUGD603: Extended Practice module I started by thinking about what I wanted to incorporate overall in my design work in order to reflect me as a person and me as a designer I came up with humour, Interactivity with the audience and mixed media within the areas of promotion / advertising and branding. This gave me a starting point as to the kind of briefs I would write, which hopefully incorporate at least one of these.

I personally believe humour is important, this probably comes back to my love of scouse humour and therefore I like to incorporate it into my design work where ever possible. Therefore I chose to do a brief centred around Cockney Rhyming Slang another unique sense of humour to demonstrate this.

From working on the Bear brief for the OUGD503: Responsive module I found the idea of interactivity and how the audience would interact with the outcome, therefore I decided to design for exhibition, putting a particular emphasis on the space itself and how that will be interacted with, which is something I never designed for before. Another concept I came up for as a brief was to collaborate with the PPP module in order to send out some sort of interactive mail shot to members of the industry ideally to see how many responses I can get back.

During the course of the year I also plan to undertake to advertising / promotion briefs as this is an area of the creative field which I am particularly interested in and would like to design work for.

Other ideas for the briefs I devised came from my own personal interests such as trainers and Giraffes, by having a personal interest within the subject of the brief itself I believe I will be more motivated to work and produce outcomes.