Design Practise Progress Statement

Rationale

Within the Final Major Project I aim to work as professionally as possible. To me this means: quick turn around of work, consideration of audience and context, appropriateness and legibility of fonts and imagery and environmental and social accountability.

I want to create work that is ‘real’ – work that is useful in its own right or answers some kind of need as opposed to work that main purpose is to develop my design skills. However, while I want my outcomes to be ‘real’ and ‘professional’, this may be the last chance I have to experiment relatively risk free, and I intend to capitalise on this opportunity.

I also want to try and get an idea of where exactly I fit in within the graphic design industry. Although I intend on getting a job in a design studio as soon as possible after I graduate, I fully intend to set up my own practise a couple of years down the line. My Final Major Project could be a good chance to get in touch with other designers to inform my practise (but also as an excuse to show people my work).


Subject / Theme

Asylum Seekers – possibly looking at this as part of a ‘bigger picture’ - portraying Britain’s impact, role, and responsibility in regard to the rest of the world.


Design Disciplines / Creative Development

Currently my design work is about exploring the presentation of large amounts of statistical information in the most user friendly way. After this period of research and information gathering, I see my work taking much more of an advertising approach to design – presenting information that engages with certain audiences, which should be simple, clever and memorable.

The four areas that I see the practical aspect of my research investigating are:

Statistics/facts/legislation – this be primarily be based on info-graphics

Opinions and education of general public – this will involve researching the media and interviewing people.

Experiences of asylum seekers – this will entail reading and conducting interviews and taking photographs.

Britain and the rest of the world - this will involve making maps and diagrams to find patterns/relationships between issues like asylum, trade, colonisation, war, etc.

It would be interesting to maybe make this information into a book.


Practical Skills / Workshops – what, why and when?

Current practical skills that I am developing are information design, and working with agencies/companies that have a limited budget, various restrictions, etc.

Skills that I need to develop are people-skills, and my confidence talking to people, as I will need to approach lots of people and conduct various interviews.

I need to learn about advertising – about targeting very specific markets. This is the type of brief where you have to approach the audience on its level so as to not offend or isolate them.

I am beginning to think that skills in web design and online production are quite important, as I have taken on a couple of briefs that need this knowledge. Hopefully, they will help improve these skills so I can begin to use them more professionally.

I will need to improve my organisational skills if am to a produce a book with information about asylum seekers.

As I am currently very busy with various different projects, I can feel my time management improving, however it will have to continue to get better as my workload goes up.