REFLECTION
DVB102 Assignment 1 – #Oneperday2023
Maddison Denning | N11286121
Class: Thursday 2pm – 5pm
Tutor: Adrian Clifford
Reflection on Assignment 1 – #Oneperday2023
Heading into this unit, I had some understanding of pricing images from my 3 years taking part in senior Visual Art, but as I come out of it, I realise a lot I still do have to learn and re learn in this process of creating. The learning process is always continuous and that never in one’s career does anyone ‘Know Everything’. This is what I need to carry with me and always relate back to through this journey. I have also realised how important experimentation of different mediums and techniques rather than sticking to one’s comfort zones and familiar programs. It has taught me not to neglect the connection analogue art has and how it develops feel and connection, something I was desperately needing after digital dominated my medium choice for over 3 years now.
I find myself more intune with the use of theorical concepts such as colour theory, composition, persuasiveness, and negative space, some I already had quite a bit of understanding on as well as quite a lot I vaguely knew but rarely used. These come more intuitively than before and already can see over these past weeks of the assignment that I am using these more and more in my personal projects. How instantly certain colour matches don’t work well or are dull or if the placement of a component seems off.
This process of negative space was one of my favourites to do as it challenged me to think more about the figure and shapes the opposite way around rather than how I would normally draw with guidelines and building the shapes first. The concept of its very intriguing for me, and as if it were exercising different parts of my brain that I had not used in such process before. I found myself using this technique in the lino printing poster and little at home sketches. With practice and development, I can push and grow this technique and I believe I will use this technique in more of my art works and experiment digitally.
Through week five's exercise, I was able to play more with photo shop. As an integral part of communication and graphic design used my many industry areas, my knowledge and understanding are quite lacking. But I believe the idea of a new program overshadowed my drive to learn and I got scared off. Through the weeks techniques and taking the opportunity presented to work with photoshop, it really reignited the passion and drive to understand and tackle this program to unleash my potential. If I were to go back and redo this assignment, I would love to have utilised photoshop more and have a greater understanding of its capabilities.
My biggest challenge I realised through this process is that I struggle to put multiple ideas down in a short time. The ideation process for me is hindered and held back through my perfectionism and overthinking to the point I barely get anything down on paper for a long time. I was vaguely aware of this issue, but this assignment really brought forward this struggle. Although I did not over come it during this assignment, which realistically wouldn’t be possible as these ways are so ingrained into me, I have become more aware and determined to work on and improve this hindrance in my process especially on how important it is to provide multiple concepts and ideations as a visual communication designer. If I continue to take on the idea of “an image a day’ concept and every day or realistically few times a week take the time to exercise my brain in ideating in a short time frame I believe I will be able to see improvement. It is a vital component, I have learned, that really must be developed to see my improvement and growth in my art.
A valuable thing I have taken away from this task is factors to build a stronger portfolio of design work and seen a glimpse of how deadlines, vastly different concepts, and styles and how to engrave my identity and flare through my designs take up a great part of working within the visual communication design industry. I am mostly happy with my work created in this assignment. In some I believe I could’ve developed further or explored further, which was hindered by my overthinking. The environmental poster of week 4, although I do white like the aesthetics of it, could have been stronger in presentation or persuasiveness. In a few I believe I ran out of time and had to move to the next to realistically finish in time, and still ended up struggling with the deadlines. But overall, the experience opened up many view points and realisations for myself to reflect on and improve to grown better for the industry of working as a visual communication designer.
