ougd203 mid point

I wanted to work with an image maker/visualiser. I tend to think of lots of ideas and see them in my head but find it hard sometimes to actually get them down onto paper. Working with someone with strong visualising skills was an attempt to help me learn to improve on this. Charlotte has very strong visualising skills and the thing I've learnt is probably to just spend more time doing it, it's easier to refer back to work when it's clear to begin with. I also wanted to work with someone who was a hard worker and committed to the brief, and this was definitely the case. Gaining confidence in image making was also another aim, I've spent more time on this brief than any other drawing so that's a positive. For submission we used illustrations from both of us, deciding on who's were most appropriate for what. I'm not sure whether or not I've been able to design something with more impact as our design was quite intricate so that's something I still need to do.

What are your specific areas of creative interest in this brief?

My own interests in this brief were designing for an environment, 3D illustration and producing something attention grabbing. We've developed our designs with the intention of it becoming 3D however we haven't actually made it 3D so I don't know how successful our assumption were. I plan to produce the shop front in 3D before module submission to see how well it works. Our interests in the brief were quite similar to begin with, we both wanted to design for a space and try something new.

What specific design skills do you have to offer in relation to your chosen brief? How do you intend to use them?

My design skills to offer were: Problem analysis, idea generation, craft skills, prototypes, photography, motion graphics. These were skills that we thought would be useful for producing a mock up for the shop front. The way we went with the brief resulted in me not using the majority of these skills. Idea generation was probably my biggest input, design wise. I used my knowledge of craft and motion to design the machine for the front of the window but communicated it through illustration rather than producing anything 3D. I spent a lot more time thinking about the problem, and how to approach it, working things out etc rather than actually producing mock ups. But that seems to have suited the partnership because Charlotte was able to visualise the inventions in a suitable way.

What specific non-design skills do you have to offer in relation to your chosen brief? How do you intend to use them?

Non design skills I specified as: organised, maintain communication, realistic goals, confident speaker. As a partnership we maintained communication well, we didn't necessarily work together very much towards the end during production but when it came to meeting up and talking through what we had, we both turned up and communicated well. After discussing our progress and what we had to do we would make plans of what needed to be done, who would do it and when it would need to be done by. As well as being reliable and organised, Charlottes skills for documenting and secondary research were very apparent. These are two areas which I tend to forget to do sometimes and the fact she was doing it made me do it too, until I got into the habit of it. So this is definitely an area I've improved in. I was happy to present our work during crits and Charlotte would then help me answer questions about the work.

what will your specific responsibilities be in the collaboration in relation to your brief?

My responsibilities were to scan in any notes/work and make sure we both had copies, budgeting our money, digital filing and booking times. There wasn't a lot of budgeting to do because we only printed the boards and everything else was drawn. I think we both managed to stick to our roles throughout the brief, and it made it easier to keep track of things.

What will your joint responsibilities be?

Initially we said that we would both be responsible for:
storyboarding, problem analysis, concept, idea generation, presentation boards, scaling, type, tag lines, materials/stock, action plans, target setting, self crits

We didn't actually have to do storyboarding in the end, although I sort of did for the motion of the machine. Everything else we did together.


As a collaborative partnership I think this has been the most successful I have had. We had an equal work share and I was confident that Charlotte would produce what she said she would. We communicated well; both when we were and weren't together. I learnt a lot about the design process, and learnt a lot about other ways of working which I will be able to take on board when working on my own. Working with someone who is keen to use contextual research was also beneficial because this is a weak area of mine which needs improving. As well as identifying areas that I need to improve on, I also managed to identify strong areas of my design process, for example defining a concept and problem analysis. Charlotte has very strong image making skills and so next time I collaborate it might be beneficial to work with someone who has strong type and layout skills so that I can learn from them.