It is quite useful to have occasional PDP lectures because it sometimes enables me to realise if I'm going in the right direction or not. Today the lecture was about goals and planning.Â
We had to come up with SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, timely) goals for the end of next week, the end of the year, the coming year and for the long-term future. This are the goals I came up with:
For the end of the next week: successfully hand in my essay and my book cover for the 147DVA module. For the end of the year: gain more knowledge about design, develop my skills and produce better work. Improve my foreign language skills (not just English but I also want to work more on the other languages I already took up such as French, Japanese and Chinese). Get shortlisted for the Penguin cover contest. For the coming year: To try out more things. Meet new people. Read more books on various subject (design, science, astronomy, literature etc). Find a job placement that would help me to develop my skills. 10 years time: Have a job in a field of design I enjoy (maybe web design, magazine design or book cover design).
Where am I? Â - this is an important question, and one you should keep asking. A useful way of identifying the groundwork upon which goals and plans can be based in a SWOT analysis. Identify one of your goals and in relation to this goal, consider your:
STRENGTHS, WEAKNESSES, OPPORTUNITIES, THREATS Strengths: I've already done some research on the layout so I have a vague idea about how it should look like, what it should and what it should not contain. Weaknesses: not enough research is not quite enough because I only used two magazines so I need a wider range of examples. I am also not sure about the quality of the essay as I haven't received any feedback yet, so I don't know if I am going in the right direction or how much I'll have to change it. Opportunities: access to proper magazine layouts (Elephant, Eye magazines) at the library as well as on the internet. Threats: Lack of time and motivation. We only have one week and 5 days left until the deadline and as time goes by I only get more eager to go back home and relax a bit.
Further on, we were asked to think on the specific actions we could take to enable our goals and whens should we do them. As I said before, I think I have to do more research on the magazine layout by looking at magazines in the library and on the internet. Also try to figure out a way to break down the text in only two pages, which is difficult due to the large amount of text and find the five relevant pictures we have to use for our essay in order to depict our ideas and properly place them in the magazine spread. I feel like I shold also work more on the essay; read and re-read it, look for spelling errors and make it more creative and inciting.Â
We then had to think about how we got here. Specifically, about one thing we did well and one thing that we haven't done so well. For me, both of these relate to the 147DVA Module. The thing that I did well was submitting the book cover for the Penguin competition, while the thing that I did not do so well was being unable to submit the second cover. We only had to submit one, but I thought I could create two of them. In the end, I couldn't come up with a good idea for the second book cover, so I only uploaded one. While I am aware that it will not affect my grading or anything, I am a bit disappointed with myself for not being able to achieve my own goal. In the future, I want to start working on such projects earlier and spend more time thinking about various ideas.
It's quite a big relief that I am already done with the book cover and I successfuly uploaded it on the penguin website, so I only have to worry about the essay for this term. I know there's not much time left but I'm confident that I will be able to produce a decent magazine spread.
















