Reflecting back on this module as a whole, many new skills have been learnt, all of which will help in my career progression after graduation. Undertaking three days of work experience at Autoglym in their brand marketing and design teams was one of the major learning curves in my development as a designer. Since I have never had any experience before working within a professional environment, this was good to see the day-to-day running of a brand department, showing me how I would potentially be working in a real-life professional environment. For me in particular, finding work after graduation was a big fear of mine, not knowing what to expect and wondering whether or not I would actually enjoy the work, however taking part in this work experience has now put me more at ease about this eventuality. In addition, this experience allowed me to get stuck in with their work, taking part in a brief to produce an exclusive set of vinyl stickers targeted at Autoglym's younger demographic of consumers. The ideas and designs I produced towards this brief will hopefully go into production after approval, which has helped get my work out into the world.
In addition to new skills, this module has also allowed me to continue developing existing skills in order to build up a portfolio of work that I am pleased with and one which communicates myself as the kind of designer I want to be. Since my creative practice is varied, this has allowed me to continue developing a wide range of skills, such as printmaking, bookbinding and editorial design, illustration, branding, and digital design skills. One of these which has been particularly developed throughout this module is my branding design skills. This is something I had not explored much in previous years since at the time it did not appeal to me as something I wanted to go into in the future. However, it was realised that branding actually creates a large portion of a graphic designer's work. Therefore I took on a number of branding briefs, such as the End of Degree Show branding, Creative Convos branding, hypothetical branding for an event, as well as even a live logo design brief for a client. Through these briefs I have therefore been able to develop skills in this more specific area of design, and found it was something enjoyable that can be made as creative as you want it to be dependent on the project itself.
In particular though, despite some challenges, I have enjoyed the two editorial briefs I worked on this module. These were both produced experimenting with new production and bookbinding techniques I had not used before, such as perfect binding and hardback cover binding (also with the addition of a magnetic flap). These methods are what made these books look much more professional than any previous book I have produced, new skills which I shall take away for use in the future. These briefs also confirmed my love for print and I hope to work within this part of the industry at some stage in the future.
For other briefs in this module, collaboration was key, however something which came with its fair share of challenges. For instance, in both the Creative Convos brief and photography book brief, there were instances where people did not communicate effectively which as a result affected work flow up until the individual brief deadlines, making these more challenging to work to. In addition to this, multiple other briefs were on the go, something which I feel has geared me up for a potential career in the industry since this is how I would typically be working. It also showed me the importance of timetabling, as if any challenges arise with collaborators or clients that may affect work flow, then time can be factored in to avoid these going over a deadline.
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