Boris A

1st Year Graphic Design Student

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Success

Well, deadline day is here and I managed to complete everything that I think I am required to complete. This is a great development for me for I overcame some of my weaknesses and shown that I have improved. Thanks to all of my suggestions I managed to personally develop myself with goal settings. As I have mentioned in my recent post I have provided myself a rewarding system and damn do I feel satisfied. This is a hurdle I managed to leap over as the last deadlines I have displayed through my module feedbacks in my blog have demonstrated struggles of being unable to complete work in the set time. The idea of being provided with satisfactory results lead to convincing myself of being able to manage time and organise. Last week I set objectives for me to complete in some certain days, for instance, after the lectures and talks I planned on visiting inkwell to print of my final piece in a professional format using Matt Poster Paper; it may be expensive but I did what it took to get it done. Why Wednesday? This is because I knew this would take a couple of days, this idea merely derived from my own previous experiences of printing professionally. Last year I studied a foundation course in the same university and a module required me for professional printing for exhibition purposes but the process took a day days to complete, so I anticipated it would be the same case as last year.

Now all I can say that this is a start, that would certainly help me push through my journey. I may have completed what I want to be done, but the cost was leaving this blog inactive for some periods of time. Clearly implying that I still need to refine my skills to remain somewhat organise and manage some of my time. But rejoice I am happy to be able to achieve this success.

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Illustration for Website

These are illustrations I am utilising for my website based on my salon topics of our brand. Each of these vectorised illustrations is supposed to symbolise different emotions through shapes, facial features and colour. I used them to interrogate the audience after they listen to a piece of music whether they feel emotional, relaxed or irritated. But out of all the pieces I like is the first illustration you see at the very top. This is because to me it looks like the face is trying to mask its emotions but gradually lets it out with the way I created I made half of the face that would resemble a silhouette.

The other two illustrations are music covers used as a visual representation suitable to the music’s genre and what feelings they could potentially evoke. So as an example if you are able to see it the top imagery portrays a face in a state of distress, while the splats from behind show a visual translation of what that face could be feeling it also describes the foreshadowing of the music’s nature. The image on the bottom, on the other hand, has stoic impression which already makes contrasts with the other cover. The shapes implicate the music’s calm nature showing its flat and light.

What I feel like I need to improve on are my illustrations bring more of an abstract sense of visual narrative especially the illustrations listed in second and third they are lacking the most prescence out of all of them in my opinion. So what I could maybe change or improve for that in the future is to investigate abstract artist and use their influence to develop more pieces. I could also read into illustrators identifying solutions for gaining illustrative practice.

Back when I started my blogs I wrote about topics that interest me that has a connection to graphic design and I also referenced that I took an add+vantage module in Illustration. I told myself that I would attempt to get into the habit of drawing and practice more illustrations, but unfortunately, I couldn’t keep up with those expectations as sooner as I thought I would. But maybe there is a silver lining where I can possibly try to pick myself up again since I happen to feel preoccupied or inactive for some time so, in turn, I will attempt to get into the habit of blogging regularly and keep myself up to date.

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PDP

I really should have made this post earlier but this post is where I technically an update post as a way to evaluate the progress of my personal development from the very start. And I am also going to explain how I record my own reflective practices.

Throughout my reflective practices, I record my train of thought on my notebook or leave in a draft in my blogs in preparation for writing a post later, so that it may later trigger my memory when I have the time. From the way I have displayed the reflective practices, I begin by explaining the activity of that event, then pointing the benefits and the flaws and begin to reflect what I could do to change it or what I could have done better. However, I have noticed after consulting one of my tutors that I haven’t particularly described how I am going to accomplish these feats so it becomes quite vague in some of my reflections. But I am making a few improvements regarding that matter. As a person, I wouldn’t consider myself to be evolved yet but there is definitely advancements but I can say that I am in a process of evolving.

But I do really hope that I will be able to pick up my pace I just need to make it happen. As a graphic design student or as a person I’m still new to blogging. So in the future of my journey I will get use to the idea of being able to blog very regularly as the graphic designer I hoped to be.

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Deadline

Deadline day is approaching!

Excuse my language but that word is so fucking frightening. Deadline is literally the end of the line, but could possibly etch a new beginning for us. The word deadline itself mentally challenges others to the point where it even starts killing your brain cells. Many of us interpret it as a do or die situation hence the work dead.

We all had a fair share of becoming oriented to deadlines, feeling threatened by time itself and we feel the need to fight for survival. When nearing a deadline my thought immediately accumulates towards one goal finishing before the deadline. Getting pumped with adrenaline to the point our body reaches the point of fatigue. In my first semester I was stressed to the point where I almost gave up but for me, there was still a glimmer of hope because, in the end, I don’t want to give up. Why should I give up? I’m here for a reason. 

I reflected on these experiences and decided that I don't want to go through something like that again, it's too much. An obvious solution is to manage your time, but I think I’m slightly getting better at it while towards the reaching the deadline I almost completed what I required to do with the help of small goal settings. Throughout the week, I literally convinced myself to complete what I can so that I can watch Avenger: Infinity War and ordered myself a new laptop, so essentially I provided myself with a reward system. It actually worked I was so motivated to the state where I found a remote of ridiculousness but exploiting my desires was sufficient to trigger.

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Looking back

After writing and re-reading the feedback on my previous modules I decided to look back on some of my earlier blogs recording if I managed to make some improvements as I reflected upon my own efforts over the last few months. I made progress and almost stayed true to my suggested objectives for my personal development. Setting small goals has helped me complete some of my set tasks. In my earlier post, I mentioned that being given feedback would adjust the quality of my work and that was by coming to most of my feedback sessions. As a demonstration, we would hang posters on the wall and we would be assigned to teams, choosing which poster to critique and provide feedback.

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What will happen next year?

Today I had a talk with one of the lecturers about work and study placements in my second year. She talked about how we were objectively supposed to explore in developing our self awareness along with our skills and knowledge that is essential for Graphic Design practice in the first year. The second year is where we would be putting our theory into practice in a professional focused way and gain more interface with industries. She gave a few examples of how there were students in the past with a drastic change of attitude after returning abroad.

Speaking of industries, there was a second talk that has very close relation to my second year experience in the future. A member of Coventry University’s The Centre of Global Engagement (CGE) they provide students with enhanced employability skills by gaining international experience. They also recommended a program called the Erasmus Program, a European project for students to participate in exchange programmes, they will be able to travel abroad as well as being provided with funding to help support us.

If I am going to be honest as great as this may sound I do currently feel very anxious for me to travel abroad, mainly because I will be travelling to a completely different environment and basically forces me to jump out of my comfort zone.

The problem is I can’t devise a proper solution for me to have the confidence to be out there. So I devised of maybe asking my tutors or peers for any substantial advice for me to gain the benefits of having this confidence.

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Words Of The Week: Next Year

So for this word of the week post I am going to be talking about what I will be anticipating for next year in the course. Throughout the year, I have been challenged as I am not used to dealing with multiple briefs at once. However, as the year has progressed I have been gradually improving my own personal development. I have taken into account of my own issues in the first semester. 

From what I'm expecting in my second year of studying the course is to be able to overcome my issues and mistakes, although I anticipate to encounter them again. If I don't anything graphic design related prior to next year I'm afraid to only remain dull.

So in preparation for next year, I am expecting to hone my skills as a graphic design through my own self-initiated and practices. In order for me to record that I am going to post these developments on the blog as a way to maintain myself to get into the habit of blogging more.

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Feedback on Visual Communication Module

As my deadline is approaching in a few days I decided to why not present one of my feedback during my first semester.

How my performance was from the start?

From the start of the year, I made a strong initiation in my project which leads to me making some interesting solutions. My tutor mentioned that my sketchbook feels fragmented and disjointed due to being unable to completely develop my sketchbook as it was a race against time for me at that point. This is shown through the inability to present my work to its full potential as there are bits and pieces filling up all over the page, clearly showing that I need room for development.

Did the book cover serve its purpose?

I redesigned a book cover called Stephen Hawking, A Brief History Of Time, my assessor mentioned that my redesign had a fascinating, if bewildering, graphics on the front, but as you can see above the front cover resembled two stylised Christmas puddings. I laughed when I first read this because he was not wrong and that is something I will need to overcome. The main problem with this cover is the lack of development which I, unfortunately, wasn’t unable to showcase so it isn’t clear what I am trying to exemplify. The book cover was supposed to represent two ideas with how the earth and moon are lined up for the lunar eclipse, hence why I used a blood moon-ish colour scheme. The other concept illustrates how large the universe really is, after looking at the illustration above these are obviously two “stylised Christmas puddings” right? So the smaller “pudding” is symbolising us or the solar system from how much or little we know from each other, the bigger “pudding is essentially the unexplored universe suggesting that there are bigger things out there. But as a way to convey complex ideas, I could’ve made an argument that these images are mystifying providing in a way to grab the audience’s attention, but in a way, it simply hasn’t really served its purpose without displaying its full potential.

In a typographic sense, my book cover is lacking, my assessor stated that I’ve over-leaded the blurb in a way that aids legibility in a design which has favoured justified text resulting in large spaces of work. Solving a problem as he stated it to have a good combination but concludes to another issue the text is oversized making the outcome appear with a simpler attitude than it demands. I may oversized the output to fit a sheet of A4 so the assessors were not able to see it on a proper scale. This is something that I have noticed as well considering the hierarchy is a bit of a mess, I’ve set a bold headline following it by Roman copy, but this can add a possibility of improving it with some changes within the blurb using bold, italics and etc. The quote residing on the bottom of the back cover requires changes too so that it can feel a lot more notable. As of right now it could be a second paragraph and it isn’t, so I should try making it smaller, changing its colour or whatever worls tl make this more appealing.

Was my publication really a publication?

No, no it wasn’t. At least what I don’t consider it to be, I know my development was a mess but this was almost as messy because my publication wasn’t bound with anything so it would only come apart whilst being assesed so there is a chance of it being assesed in the wrong order (sad face). But in return I managed to offer the assessor with interesting approaches to the imagery making him interested investigating, so there’s at least some benefits. However in terms of my imagery, my images were cropped clumsily from books and magazines, showing implications that I have rushed as an attempt to complete it. But I wanted them to focus on the images so that they are able to psychoanalyse with their own interpretations. The issue with the publication was that I left it more of scrapbook than as a publication itself because of the lack of binding interfering with the story.

Conclusion:

So as a overall analysis my assessor stated that I was heading towards the right direction while showing a promising submission which I needed just a little bit more time to really clean it all up, it undermines my efforts but I know I was getting there.

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Word Of The Week: Future

Sometimes I always try to think ahead of the future where I’ll end up, what mistakes I will make or what decisions I will regret later in the making. However, most of the time I don’t envision my own future as I sometimes look into my past, contemplating my regrets, disappointment and what I could have done. Shoulda, coulda, woulda, it’s rather troublesome as there is no need to dwell on the past because moving forward is the only option.

Focus on the present, completing what needs to be done and hoping for the best. However, my future aspiration as a graphic designer is to achieve with enough accomplished challenges and experiences to be able to become a freelance. 

In the past, I felt like I made numerous mistakes throughout my first year in the Graphic Design course in terms of my performance, which could lead to doubting my own capabilities. I have mentioned them several times in my blog but I do feel l have gradually improved which a step forward for me, but there are still parts where I still need re-evaluate my personal development. In order to avoid these mistakes in the future is to think about or backtrack what went wrong and why I think went wrong in that particular event. Treating it as a trial and error phase is a good way to go about it for me.

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Message From My Future Self

Dear Boris,

This is a message from your future self ten years from now. Now at first, this might sound absurd to and you might be roaming with questions about how or why I am writing to you. But believe it or not, I am who I claim to be. You may not buy what I am writing to you but you could at least take my messages into consideration as a way to reflect upon on the decisions you make for the path that unveil.

As I am right now, I am a Freelance Graphic Designer and I have come a long way to reach up to that point but you may experience a long troubling journey. But this is something both you and I have expected right? We both know that I'd prefer working independently but working with others isn't as bad as you think it is. At some point of your life, you would be working together with your closes friends those who you may not expect, Working with them has given me access for contact for something they could help you out in.

My current occupation as a freelancer invokes a variety, particularly as a layout artist, also a logo and flash designer, I wouldn't have made it this far if it weren't for working for triumphing through multiple challenges and gaining experiences while working with different companies. 

Before my time of becoming a freelancer, I worked in WHP Creative they are a creative design agency in both Milton Keynes and London. In your time, they have roughly around over 15 years of experience in graphic design and design projects. I work with clients to be able to create a solution to their design led problems for several years. That is until I started working for Armadillo they focus on web designing through the accomplishment of a team effort. Now hear me out I know right now that you may be frowning with disappointment, but think of it as a way to overcome a weakness, I know you may dislike web designing via coding but this is something you will have to encounter regardless in some point of the future, it just takes getting used to.

I don’t have any particular advice to you, I’ve sent this letter for the sake of nostalgia contemplating of what the younger version of me would think after receiving this. All I can say is make the most that you have, live without your regrets, but living with it also means to live with something new, without it you may not be able to move forward properly. Use those regrets and past mistakes to drive you forward, you can’t always linger in the past as your past can sometimes build a wall before you and pull you down while you attempt to scale.

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Coding...

Oh, coding, why do you hate me?

When I first started coding I had no idea how to initiate even after creating a web design and going through HTML and CSS tutorials. I am completely a beginner, frustration sometimes takes over me and these feelings mainly stir from not knowing where to go from that step or getting something to work properly. It stresses me out because I am aware that this is a long process.

I am supposed to code a website for a brand I created as a group for a salon. As some of you could recall I posted a blog about brands logo in my earlier blogging history. The whole brand is a group effort but for this specific assignment creating a website is an individual task.

So far from what I have done, I began with a fixed navigation bar containing the brand’s salon logo, links and a search bar. I made sure the navigation bar is shaped with skewed angles so that it may complement the majority website. The search bar is animated and I made it happen by using CSS, the bar extends creating a flowing transition demonstrated whenever the search bar is clicked on. When you open the website you will also see a black and white landing image with a white text aligned at the middle stating the brand’s tagline, Hear, Together! Below the image is a title with a brief description of How music affects mood and emotions?

Whenever I successfully make development or progress I tend to feel excited and pat myself on the back for my accomplishment because there are some situations where I find aspects of coding difficult.

To be able to improve many skills in coding I thought I could list possible coding techniques through CSS that complement my website. For example, making a user rating to record the audience's response. I also need to find a solution to get myself coding in regular bases, I don't want to force myself otherwise I wouldn't be able to enjoy this. Therefore I suggested myself to code 2-3 hours a day.

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Being Socially involved

At Wednesdays, I sometimes visit the studio to connect with friends or peers from the course. It would later become a thing for us to group together in order to be able to relax and help each other out in projects. This helps establish a connection with them and I think that this would assist me well interpersonally.

This is mainly because I consider myself to be socially awkward, although I that could be part of my introverted nature I sometimes get the feeling of this awkward environment after delivering something that could cause this. I can't handle being part of a larger group as I seem to relish this sense of isolation or having myself being kept busy. Now don't get me wrong I do like coming together and interacting with others. I just dislike interacting with a larger portion I'm not very familiar with and those I can't handle. That is why I thought having this time to come together is a great benefit for me because I don't do very well with communicating with others or didn't have time to do so.

During these sessions, we would help each other out with different projects particularly coding this gives us ideas for exchanging different coding techniques and ideas. However, we wouldn't also give ourselves time to relax such as playing a few games of FIFA 18. We would treat our studio as I feel it is our own home.

I think these sessions has established a connection of being able to trust one another and being able to engage a conversation with each other is able to put some relish a closer connection with some of my peers. This is something's that  I personally deem as a sign of progression, however, I do feel like I need to attain higher in my social perception

- How do I make it better?

Therefore I have decided to have myself participate more in these periods in being more socially interactive. This is by meeting together with people who I feel have more of a familiar presence and those otherwise so that I am able to evaluate these perspectives and possibly identify an easier method of how I could communicate with new people.

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Word Of The Week: Concerns

I have a majority list of concerns, Most are things that I consider to be concerning are:

Not being able to catch up, losing management of time or feeling misplaced with my university assignments. Deadlines, that may appear far but is actually promptly closing in as much as I can comprehend. Hell, it feels like I can see it on the horizon. As my Student Life goes it turning out pretty well so far, however, I am very anxious that I will encounter something that would probably try to crush me. For example, my finance is slowly but surely losing its stability but I believe I can pull through and I am afraid I would be forcing myself to produce work rather than letting it go with the flow if I started working. Which could result in not enjoying my course or feeling burnt out, so I try to keep it balanced while working during my time off uni. Generally, earlier in the year I found it difficult to keep my life together as I sometimes have difficulty to keep work and play in balance not to mention sacrificing sleep to get the job done. I personally work during evenings or somewhere late at night as it allows me to avoid any sense of distraction, remain concentrated and helps me feel comfortable. 

Most of my concerns I have mentioned earlier were my fears that happened in my first semester in uni, but nowadays I am somewhat finding grips of what I could do to prevent this from happening again. This is by finding a balance between what I would do in my spare time in terms of work and play. Taking breaks in between doing work helps me maintain a natural flow of what I do in my spare time. However, as I have mentioned in my previous I feel like I work best late at night while it keeps me focused, comfortable and free from distractions. Listening to music that I enjoy, encourages a natural routine for me especially music that is suitably relaxing keeps my mind at peace (free from any stress or anxiety).

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How my creative skills emerged

From what I am able to remember my creative skills or the idea of how it emerged started from the years I lived in my childhood while I lived in Germany. I was introduced to the concept of drawing from a woman or caretaker from ‘kindergarten’ from where I was from or preschool. I was self absorbed in life drawing as I liked to observe my surroundings and create sketches. Later on, in that time I have seemed to have lost that passion to be able to explore this. But I thought I would compensate this for sketches I do in my spare time. This is how far I could think back to how my creative skills emerged.

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Word Of The Week: Reflection

Imagine looking into a reflective surface, you see yourself. When you look at yourself, you reflect upon your own attributes, your strengths and weaknesses. When you reflect on yourself you tend to doubt your abilities. You begin to think you’re not good enough. What am I doing wrong? Why am I not good enough? Why do I feel unworthy as a person? Will I ever be good enough as a person? But having doubts isn’t completely unfortunate, it provides a foundation or guideline for the next step you have to take. You’d need to acknowledge them, remember that you are human and find the strength to overcome them through your own reflections. Think rationally and the questions that you should be asking next is, how can I feel worthy as a person? Or how should I improve?

Throughout my blogs, I have made several reflections of my performances and decisions during the progression of my year in uni. I have my own doubts and mistakes, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t adapt to avoid them in the following. Feedback from other people can help reinforce your reflections, it would accommodate towards the right directions. For example, my feedback from my peers enabled me to reinforce my own opinions of my performances or contemplate what I possibly could do to achieve level of proficiency I would be looking for.

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These are the other variations of the logo brand I created. They all may look similar but these are just experimentations of how the brand’s logo would look like.

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Making my Brand Logo

Two weeks ago, I made a logo that I needed to produce, for a brand. This is a group assignment that is supposed to promote music, the brand's aim is to get people together and for them to engage in dialogue discussing different topics of music. The brand name is ‘our waves’ and it is to show emphasis on the brand’s general purpose. The shape of the logo was supposed to influence an audio bar tying to the theme of music.

I used illustrator to produce this, but there were also trial and errors as there were “prototype designs” that lead to designing the logo displayed above. Now how I created the logo was first creating an ellipsis, then going over them with slightly thicker stroked lines. The shapes aligned outside the ellipses was constructed by utilising the rectangle tool and the direct selection tool to round the corners of the rectangle to portray smooth dynamic instead of rigid, for the sake of staying consistent with the typeface. Cocon was the name of typeface and I decided to use it because I thought the typeface’s design element matches the logo’s dynamic, delivering this stable and relaxing tone. I also manipulated the texts kerning and leading, pulling them slightly closer to each other while I disliked the idea of the letter being far apart as they felt disconnected.

From my analysing this logo, I thought it worked for the general purpose of the brand as our target audience is deriving from roughly the age group of 18-30. So I decided to have a “modern” approach to a modern society. My thinking process behind remaining with lowercase while managing the typeface is to avoid the disruption of the logos stability and strict conventions, visualising that they need to stay in harmony such as music. On the other hand, I was too unsure of what colour I should invoke as I think that using too many colours would consume its visual presence.