-I feel that for my own individual work, I completed the tasks to a very high standard. I ensured that I had completed the tasks set and to the best of my ability within the timeframe, and made sure that all creative decisions were considered and relevant. I feel that my ideas contributed well to my group; I produced a variety of design ideas myself to help push our group ideas further, and researched themes and ideas as an individual to contribute to the group and generate more ideas. I feel that my own research was incredibly thorough. I produced my groups Pinterest boards and ensured that all images on these boards were relevant and would push our ideas further, as well as looking into these themes in depth through mood boards and mind maps. I also completed relevant primary research which was very successful, though having a slightly more varied range of this could’ve been more successful. I feel that completing contextual artist research could've been beneficial to our research and final execution of our display, to make it more considered and perhaps more creative. If this had been my own project, I would've aimed to be more precise with our theme; where we chose a generic theme of Japanese fashion, I would've looked more into depth to certain styles (Harajuku, Ganguro, Lolita, Visual Kei etc.), and produced a display reflecting one of these particular styles, as I am particularly passionate about Japanese fashion and feel that there is so much more that could've been done and reflected in our finished display if we were more precise and exact with a particular fashion. I think I most enjoyed the production of our displays, as I was able to give people particular tasks to complete by certain times, which allowed the production to work much smoother than previous parts of the process (planning, designing etc.), as well as this being the most creative section of the project, which I definitely enjoyed.
-I feel that I contributed a lot to my group; I produced the majority of our research and initial design ideas, as well as completing a large amount of our actual display and worked through free periods to ensure it would be complete in time, which was very successful. I feel that my strengths within the group were organisation of the group (e.g. allocating jobs to various members on various days), and willingness to work extra time (e.g. Wednesday afternoon where I was gluing up swans), as well as a certain level of patience (e.g. showing others how to make the origami swans, working around other member’s absences). I feel that a weakness of mine is that I don’t particularly like group work, so when others weren’t in or didn’t want to stay behind, I would work on the project alone; to work around this, I need to keep a group-focused mind-set, as it is a group project and should’ve been treated as such. Another weakness of mine is that I tend to dominate work when in a group as I am proud of my own work and would thus like it to all be my work; to overcome this, I need to let go of this pride when working in groups, and allocate jobs more evenly to other members to ensure that I’m not taking over the work. Our practical work was completed to a very high standard in the end, and our initial research helped the progression of our design ideas, which is very successful. I would rate my own level of effort very highly, as I was in college every day of this project that we were required to be, I completed a large body of the work, and worked a lot outside of lessons to ensure that the project would be successful. As a group, we negotiated certain ideas by each suggesting themes and aspects we would like to work with, what we think would/wouldn’t work, and other members brought ideas relevant to that until we all had a considered idea that we were all happy to work on. From working in a group, I learned that other members have different rates of working at, and that I should consider this when allocating jobs, and how to listen and consider other people’s ideas more, as they could actually bring the work forward and make it more successful. I also identified my weaknesses, so I now know what I must work on in order to make future group projects more successful.
Above is also our presentation board, showing our most successful mini-styling shoot images and our final piece, to finalise the project/act as a visual conclusion to the written work.