Extended Practice

Although we seriously struggled at the beginning of this brief, I think that we managed to come together as a group and work on each other's strengths to create something that I am surprisingly very proud of!

As our group was a bit of a random selection, we all had very different design styles, likes and dislikes etc and this made it really difficult for us to come to any kind of decision as we would all have so many completely different ideas! I think that our struggle with the brief set us back a bit, as we found it difficult to come up with a solid idea within the timeframe. Eventually, after we had a crit with the DBA group, we decided that we just had to go with the strongest idea and flow with it. We had to stop being so indecisive as a group, otherwise we wouldn't be able to get anything done!

I found this brief particularly hard, as it was very computer based and hugely conceptually driven. Usually I'm fine with coming up with concepts, but because of the commerciality of this brief, I found it really difficult to come up with anything suitable! Logo wise, I struggled to create something that I was proud of that worked with the concepts that we were going with. Because of the indecisiveness of the group, I found it really hard to enjoy the brief as I couldn't get into it and work on it properly, as I felt like all of my ideas would just be thrown aside and wouldn't even be considered.

However, once we started to make some decisions, I found the brief so much easier to work on and I actually started to enjoy myself! I think coming together as a group and giving everyone their own role also helped, as this meant that we wouldn't be working on the same things and meant that decisions were so much easier to make!

I learnt a lot about working in a big group from working on this brief. I definitely think that large group work only really works when you all have similar likes and dislikes, as it makes the whole design process so much easier than what we were dealing with! However saying that, we did manage to come together as a group and pull out some really good designs.

I enjoyed this brief, because I felt as though I was really pushed to my limit and had to completely work outside of my comfort zone, which is something that I'm not really used to having to do! This meant that I learnt a lot about myself and my work ethic, as well as different things on Illustrator and Photoshop, such as working with isometric grids or creating a full working high definition .gif file!

At times I did feel as though a few of the group members didn't really pull their own weight, which seems to always be the case when you work in a large group, but towards the end everyone was working equally as hard which is encouraging!