PPP: Evaluation

Personal Practice:

This year has been a year where everything has come together. I feel that I now understand who I am as a designer more  and I know trust what I do more and don't doubt my capabilities or my way of thinking about design. Although it has been an incredibly demanding and difficult year it can only be seen as a positive thing as it has encouraged that drive that you need to succeed in life.

I feel that the skills I have developed have been my confidence and my communication skills which are two skills that I have been wanting / needing to develop since first year. I now feel comfortable doing presentations as we have done so many different ones this year which has been good as it has now become a still a bit scary every day occurrence. We have also had chanced to pitch for briefs where we have had to pitch in front of potential clients, this was bit more daunting as we were not aware of who we were pitching in front of (whole L6 class of interdisciplinary) (winter light festival committee) we got through it successfully and it was a great feeling delivering an idea to the actual intended client / audience.  In first and second year I struggled to put my ideas across in a clear way so that people would understand what I was talking about when describing a brief, but I now feel that I can do this as it is something we have practiced though portfolio surgeries.

I have learnt this year who I want to be as a designer and who I don't want to be. I now have a clear understanding of my ethos and goals and what I want to achieve which has been great as it has pushed my drive even more.

Things that I still need to improve / if I could re do would do differently would be contacting studios. Although I have now contacted a lot of studios and had response I only started doing so in December when really I should have started in the summer but due to not knowing what to say / not feeling ready to show my work I put it off as long as I could. Now that I have a portfolio that I am proud of I feel I can actually contact studios comfortably as I now have a portfolio which I can talk about which I see as very important.

As I said in my PPP presentation this year for me has been about finding my feet, being a sponge soaking up information/learning and achieving it has been a hugely beneficial year and has prepared me successful for the real world of graphic design




Say My Name:

I am really happy with how Say My Name is getting on. Although it is really early days, we took the decision to get things rolling and organised once we had finished with our degrees as we really want to focus on Say My Name and not rush into anything / get anything wrong. We started Say My Name as four and now we have become three, as Greta took the decision that she no longer wanted to work with us for reasons that I won't go into. This at the time was a great shame as we really like the dynamic of the studio but we had to respect Greta decision and the fact that she wants to go solo. So it became myself, Mike and Lizzi and so far it has worked out great. All the collaborative briefs that we have done together : End of year show, Interdisciplinary (art and design) year book, Face In't-Mud and winter light have all come out really well and I would happily show them off in my portfolio which I see as a sign that a project has been successful if I can talk about it and am happy to show it off.

We have had some great opportunities and advise as Say My Name through going on studio visits and  through emailing studios we admire. The response has been great and everyone has been so supportive in our venture which has spurred us on more to succeed and that this is a risk that we are all passionate about taking. All the advise that was given was from independent studios that we had contacted for reasons like they had were once in our boat and to hear their success stories is really inspirational and forward driving for us.

So far we have a few things put in place like our studio name, a domain name, a studio ethos, drafts for business mock ups like invoices and contracts, but we have a lot to carry on with and sort out in the next coming weeks once we are all handed in. We do however have a number of exceitng things set in place for the future like the pitch we one for Winterlight Festival we have that to look forward to and work on in December, we also have Adopt a band which myself and greta set up where bands in need of design come to us and at this moment there are 4 bands waiting for design work so that has some potential to grow into something big, we have a job offer to do some design for the hotel works at and we also have been given an opportunity to send our collective portfolio off to a large creative marketing agency in London who I got talking to. The founder Mark asked what I do and the conversation about Say My Name came up and he was really excited by what we want to do and inspired by our passion and work ethos. His company The black and white agency work with freelance designers and so we would have an opportunity to try this out if they approve of our portfolio. Although this is not necessarily the area of design we are interested in going into, any opportunity we are thrown we will cling onto it and take it as the more we do the more we will be out in the real world.

With all these coming opportunities I am feeling very positive about Say My Name and it has made finishing uni pretty exciting as the future is very unknown and going to be hard but I think it will be worth it.