Last term I tried to keep a physical journal to record and reflect on my work.  This proved unhelpful and I failed to keep track of my work and experiences adequately. Therefore I have decided to try and go back to keeping a blog. I will use it as a way of reflecting on the work I create this term, as well as a way to document the Chinese Exchange trip that I am a part of this year. 

Overall this project has been difficult to say the least. Working with others in a creative setting is hard, I'm not going to lie and pretend that its been easy. We all work differently and have very different styles.  That being said, it has been a good learning experience having to change and develop how I work in order to be able to work with others.  I've discovered that I am much more organised than I realised, and I am able to organise a team of people in order to produce all of the necessary work.  When working with others, there will be difficulties. Not everything will go the right way, and there will be difference of opinion. However, it is important to keep going and just make sure that the work gets done. 

The webpage also links to different social media for the festival where the viewer can go to find out more information. 

For the homepage of the website we wanted to create a simple design that would be complimentary to all of the different website styles for the individual festivals. This meant that it had to be simple. We designed it using the same ideas from the calendar to create a connection between the two. As well as this it features the logo to show the brand and has a drop down navigation bar that allows the viewer to navigate their way through the website. 

We wanted the typography to stand out and not be either too masculine or too feminine, as we found with the two fonts used at the top. Therefore we settled for Rockwell, it is also used for the logo. The type leads the viewer through the calendar by following through the different elements to finish at the bottom, where they can go to find out more about Unsung Music Festivals.

I can say, truly that I have developed as a person so much this year so far. Not just creatively but in myself as well I am much more confident in myself. As a designer I have really found my style and what works for me. I think that because I have become more confident in myself it has in turn has affected my work. Where before I would spend hours focusing on the smallest of details, I am now more likely to be thinking on a broader spectrum. I will think of many different ideas at the start of a project and spent much more time experimenting and working through my ideas.  This is a great thing for me because I used to spend the majority of a project focusing on one idea, which is very narrow minded and disrupts the creative process greatly. 

One thing that this year has taught me so far is that finding a place to work is vital in order to be able to create good quality work.  I personally find it very difficult to work at home, as I associate it with relaxing and getting away from the stress of university. Therefore I have found that the studio has been a welcomed environment for me to be able to work as long as I want in a creative environment.  As well as this I find that the studio is good for times when inspiration isn't flowing as well, you can discuss your work with fellow classmates and try to figure out what is wrong. 

On Monday I am going to ask my group to get together and discuss exactly where we all are with the work, this way we will be able to see what needs to be done before the Easter break in two weeks, as well as being able to talk about what we will all be working on over the break.  With the 148 deadline being so soon after coming back, it is important that we don't get too lazy over Easter and keep the pace on getting the project finished. 

This is the final design for my essay/magazine layout. While doing some research into magazine double page spreads I noticed that a lot of design magazines go for a very minimal design.  I used columns as a way to separate the text into manageable sections. As well as that I think that the way in which I used paragraphs enabled the reader to be able to jump in and read the article in any order which is necessary for a magazine article.  I orientated the captions to the right as a way of being able to differentiate between the main body of text and the captions. I think that this works well.  I chose to use a sans serif font because I personally find that when reading large bodies of text a serif font can be a little bit much on the eye, especially at small sizes. And considering the fact that I had to use 9pt type in order to be able to fit it all in I felt that it was necessary. 

I tried a few different layouts for my magazine spread.  I knew that I wanted to have a large section of empty space at the top of the page as that is commonly done in design magazines.  I had a lot of problems while working with the text as I didn't realise how large 12pt text actually is. Eventually I ended up making the whole thing in 9pt which actually looks the perfect size when printed out.  Once I had made the text smaller it was much easier to work with, it gave me much more space to work with.  Another problem that I had was with the images, I just couldn't figure out how I wanted to present them. As they were content specific they needed to be next to certain pieces of text which meant that their positioning would greatly impact the layout. 

I have also been thinking a lot about where I have come from. It is crazy how fast first year has gone. It’s been six months already, and I can’t even tell you where the time has gone. It’s been such a roller coaster so far and I am so excited to see what happens next. In terms of my work I have improved greatly, and where I was unsure if this is what I wanted to do before, I am now 100% certain that this is what I want to do.

However, after all of the work that I put into this project I am finally finished and I am so happy with the final outcome. I really think that it encapsulated the story and the themes in the book. It is innocent with a more serious undertone. I really loved reading the book and I wanted to create a piece of design that really showed that. 

For my cover I wanted to stick to two basic colours as a way of not over complicating the design.  I chose oranges and blues because they are complimentary colours and work well together on the page. I was then able to use different tints of the colours to make the design more interesting. I also chose to make the background as a dark blue/black gradient to make the church and the flames even more prominent on the cover.  I still have to work out some of the layout problems, but I think that it is slowly getting to where I want it to be. 

The feedback that I received on these designs was mixed, although it was agreed that I needed to either develop them a lot more or I had to try something different. 

When I was doing my initial research for the penguin book cover brief I noticed a lot of patterns in the design of their classic books.  They used a lot of pastel colours, repetitive patterns and serif fonts.  I wanted to acknowledge this in my research and then go in a different direction. My thinking on this is that if they wanted something similar to their original style then why ask people outside of the company to do the design.  I wanted to try and combine the penguin ethos and my personal design style.  I think that I did this well. 

I have found the Beatrice Warde essay particularly difficult. I have no problem with writing essays, I actually think that I'm quite good at it as I spent a lot of my A Levels writing essays for Philosophy.  I have found this difficult because of the subject matter, it took me a very long time to get my head around it. And even when I finished my draft and handed it my feedback wasn't particularly good. I got the wrong idea when writing the essay and went off on a massive tangent and answered the questions wrong.  I am now working on a redraft, I am referring back to the question for every paragraph so I can ensure that I don't go off topic as much as last time. I hope to get it done by the end of today so I can start to type set it and lay it out in the magazine article style by the end of tomorrow. 

I can't say that I have done that once since getting to university. I have tried to make sure that all of my work is done and ready to be submitted on the morning of the deadline.  And even though I have improved greatly at managing how I spend my time I have still got a long way to go. With the 147dva module, particularly the essay I found that I have been putting it off for far too long. It is now very close to the deadline and I am still yet to finish the initial essay, as well as not yet even knowing what I want to do to present my work.  I am going to be in the studio every day this week, staying later than usual to get all of my work done and ready for submission.