Design Practice self evaluation

I have had mixed feeling throughout the self written brief, at moments i have loved it and other i have hated it to the point of almost changing. I originally chose to create for children because i had recently done a brief which involved illustrating for children and i had so much fun doing it, not just creating but learning. I felt i had enough time in 5 week to exhaust this topic and expand on recent skills i had just developed whilst still being able to enjoy what i was designing. However because of this i didn't go into the brief totally open minded about the style of illustration i wanted to produce, which could have been a massive down fall in the material produced.

I new what i wanted from this self written brief, but i struggled to narrow down exactly what i wanted to produce. With so many different options i had in mind, all relating to children somehow i eventually decided on educational material, i feel this was definitely the best option for me for my first self written brief. As i wanted to explore different possibilities in the production process, i was limited to the content i was aloud to illustrate dependent on the topics for each subject i chose. This had a positive affect on my work because generally i go all out producing random things that don't necessarily make sense and this aloud me to focus on one area.

Although i new what i was producing and what style i wanted it to be in, i had no idea really how to present this and lay it all out so it worked together successfully. This was definitely the area i struggled with. I am still not 100% happy with the layouts i have used for the final but i feel they are the most successful of all the elements i produced. This came from constantly taking feedback from crits and tutors, constantly changing and taking into account their opinions as well as my own. The smaller illustrations and type work by themselves such as the back of the Que. cards, but when i comes to filling a large space and putting lots of information/illustrations together is when the overall piece doesn't seem to quite fit right.

I feel for the first time this year i never let things just be, i was constantly striving to make things better, to make them work. Even though not every attempt was successful, i do feel the attempt and the ones that did had a really positive affect on my work. For instance i throughout had a problem with the type faces and didn't feel they were working quite right together, when i eventually found one that did work this transfered across to the other pieces of material i was producing and instantly had an impact on them and the quality they held.

I have mixed feeling with the work i have produced, i feel its to average level which i am happy with because although the outcomes aren't 100% perfect i have learnt a lot in the module which i think is necessary for me to take forward into year 3. Even though i feel this way i am pleased to say for the first time ever people who i don't even talk to that much have commented on my work mostly i might add the book covers, i think the choice of stock helps this but still i feel its an achievement alone for people to say this. I wish now i had printed the A1 posters on the same stock as the quality would have been to a much higher standard.