OUGD502 - Previous Year Challenges and Reflection on Level 4

Throughout the PPP project of first year, I faced many challenges and had to deal with tasks that I wasn't otherwise used to. To begin with I was talking about my personal life frequently to a group of people which was both difficult to tell a personal story, which is hard as I was nervous about the response, but it was also challenging as its hard to make a personal story interesting and engaging for the listener. I had to find a balance of seriousness and personal information as well as humour and interesting anecdotes to make it engaging. I hadn't often publicly presented to a group of people, whereas this is more common now. I had to work on my own confidence and use strategies to help me deal with speaking to a group.

The biggest challenge was knowing what to do with my future and to create a direction to focus on in my work. Having only just started studying I had not really found an area of real interest and no idea what to do with my future. However after self reflection I realised my passion for film and the film industry and looked further into this area for graphic design. The challenge also included creating a self branding project that was different and linking it to my own styles and interest as a designer. As I had no clue as to where I wanted to go, I instead looked at personal interest. At the time I was into hair styling and hair products and decided to use this for the basis of my project. This interest in packaging design made me think more about prop design in film.

This year I have much more of an idea of what area of graphics I want to go into. Working in film is my main focus and creating prop and set design is something that I would enjoy. This year I am going to create more contacts within this industry and research the area more to hone my personal branding. I want to go back to my design roots and go back to the styles and techniques that gave me a place at this university. I found that I when producing my personal branding work I did this and expanded on my skills even more to produce unique and intuitive designs. This year I want to do this in all of my projects and find techniques of working that I really love and take them into the field I am working towards.