Assignment 1: Tutor feedback and response

Introduction

This entry is the feedback my tutor gave to the first assignment and my response to the feedback.

 

Feedback

The following is the feedback I received from my tutor.

The first part of the course focuses on getting started by introducing you to the
subject and exploring a brief history of graphic design. Overall you had some
good starting points, but you should have developed a wider range of ideas
and interrogated these more thoroughly in order produce more fully-formed
final outcomes.
Overall Comments
Your blog is well organised and I found it easily to find everything so far, but
be sure to be organised and tag posts appropriately so we can easily find
anything. What your blog lacks is in terms of the bulk of work we’d expect to
see, there isn’t a lot on there. You should document all your research and
inspiration on your blog as well as how you have developed your ideas
iteratively, reflecting and explaining your decision making in the direction you
take them.
Assessment potential
You may want to get credit for your hard work and achievements with the
OCA by formally submitting your work for assessment at the end of the
course. More and more people are taking the idea of lifelong learning
seriously by submitting their work for assessment but it is entirely up to you.
We are just as keen to support you whether you study for pleasure or to gain
qualifications. Please consider whether you want to put your work forward for
assessment and let me know your decision when you submit Assignment two.
I can then give you feedback on how well your work meets the assessment
requirements.
Assessment Criteria
The Visual Communications degree has overarching assessment criteria that
link to the course and trace the development of your work.

At level one these criteria are:
• Creative and analytical thinking (40%)
Analysing information, formulating independent judgments; employing
creativity in the process of investigating, visualising and/or making,
developing a personal voice.
• Research and idea development (20%)
Sourcing and assimilating research material; and using visual language
to investigate, test, interpret, and develop ideas.
• Visual and Technical Skills (20%)
Using materials, techniques, technologies, and visual language to
communicate ideas and information.
• Context (20%)
Awareness of critical, contextual, historical, professional, and/or
emerging contexts; and personal and professional development.
Your Tutor Report feedback will make reference to these criteria and give you
a broad sense of how your exercise and assignment work, learning log and
sketchbooks are meeting them.
Feedback on assignment
The series of postcards you have submitted are well intentioned in their
communication aims in answering the brief and your approach in
developing a template layout to produce a cohesive set of cards is a valid
one. However your final outcomes feel unfinished and would have benefited
from greater contextual and visual research and a more thorough
development to give more fully realised outcomes.
Firstly there is a lot of work we’d expect to see that is missing here, there is a
an outline of a creative process though, with good use of notes, brainstorming
and the beginnings of some research although this needs to be more
thorough in its investigation. You should be more varied in your research to
inspire your work – you should be looking for things to inspire you from a
variety of sources, and reflecting and analysing them in terms of how they
contribute or influence your work. You should then create a range of ideas
(3-4 is a good number per output) and develop these, reflecting on their
individual strength or weaknesses to distil down your ideas until you have
final idea that you should finesse. You have fallen into a common trap that
many students fall into by jumping too quickly to develop a solution – this isn’t
anything to be worried about and is actually quite common, which is why the
OCA have a created a video on this called “Jumping to Solutions” which I
think would be useful for you to watch. This very apparent from your final
outcomes which are poorly resolved. The key thing to take away from this is
you will not always have an idea that is immediately viable as a final solution,
and much rarer an idea that is refined enough immediately as a final solution.
So in order to get there you need a way to help you generate ideas which
means expanding your horizons of inspiration from what you to do some
development work once you have an initial idea which involves some trial and
error. What you have at the moment is what we’d expect to see just as a
starting point for the brief. Crucially you are not researching and exploring in a
visual manner which is a key part of the course.
In terms of the ideas you did have, I think you have been a bit literal in
answering the questions for the cards. It isn’t necessary for the cards to reflect
you or your interest in graphic design in an all encompassing manner, in fact
that is quite a difficult thing to do and a more rewarding approach would have
been choosing a single topic to reflect. The cards have quite diagrammatic
feel to them rather than being visual succinct metaphor for an aspect of you,
your interest in graphic design or the culture you inhabit which is perhaps a
reflection of your background and work. Its a shame as there are interesting
subjects in there, for example I love your idea about discovering mystery in
the world – how would you represent that? Would it be something specific you
had in mind when you wrote that or would it be a general reflection of the
concept of mystery? You also mention your photography quite a lot, so I was
surprised to see that it wasn’t included as part of the final pieces.
Going forward you should interrogate the brief much more robustly, do more
in depth research that that is visual which will give you the resources to
assimilate various concepts together to form a variety of ideas, demonstrate a
wider range of those ideas and also develop your ideas more thoroughly.

Sketchbooks
Keeping sketchbooks and a learning log is an integral part of this and every
other OCA course, not only because they constitute 20% of your marks if you
choose to have your work formally assessed but they are also an excellent
way to document and reflect on your development.
I can’t see much evidence of sketchbook work, but we need to see more
evidence of this on your blog – the OCA has a useful guide here which should
help you get an idea of what is expected.
Learning Logs or Blogs / Critical essays
The format of your learning log is good, but you need to document your work
as you go. You should also include any supplementary learning you do in
addition to your course work here as well as contextual and historical study
that influences your work.
The following study guides below provide pointers on how best to do this.
https://www.oca-student.com/study-guides/introducing-learning-logs
https://www.oca-student.com/study-guides/keeping-online-learning-log

Suggested viewing/reading
A wealth of useful tips and pointers can be found on the WeAreOCA blog at
http://www.weareoca.com/ which I would encourage you to read. Also I think
you would especially benefit from engaging with other students work on the
OCA Student Site http://oca-student.com/. You may want to post your own
work for critique or join some of the forum debates that often contain links to
relevant reading and viewing.
Pointers for the next assignment
The next part of the course focuses on the creative process of problem
solving. This is an opportunity for you to find ways to balance the needs to
communicate with aesthetic approaches to generating designs. A more
thorough and exploratory approach to this brief would be useful, researching
your subject more deeply, exploring creative avenues more comprehensively
and assessing their viability accordingly.

 

Discussion

In this section I  will discuss the major points raised by the feedback.

Main points raised :

• You should then create a range of ideas (3-4 is a good number per output) and develop these, reflecting on their individual strength or weaknesses to distil down your ideas until you have final idea that you should finesse.

This is a very valid point and I certainly accept that once I have an idea that I find interesting that I tend to pursue straight away with out considering other options- probably reflect my personality, focused. This is something now that it has been pointed out I will work on.

• Need to fully document research, inspiration and idea development

Noted – again when I have an idea I tend to pursue and take short cuts, plus a lot of ideas sty in my head. Will try to be more explicit on the process I am following.

• Greater contextual and visual research and a more thorough development to give more fully realised outcomes.

Noted – it relates to the other points and responses above.

• Sketchbooks – more evidence of use.

This is currently a difficult area for me. Having an IT background and very poor handwriting and drawing skills I have nearly always keep electric notes (e.g. OneNote and Mind Mapper). This method also allows me to capture Internet and digital (e.g. Photographs) easily plus categorise and search. This course emphasises the use of a physical sketch book, a point reinforced by my tutor. I am (and will increasingly) make use of a physical sketch book for initial idea exploration and development  but feel that it is not reasonable (time, sustainability) to print large quantities of electronic material which I keep and put in the sketchbook. I would intend to submit examples of the electronic material (if necessary I can publish online the whole notebook) along with the sketchbook for assessment. I would ask my tutor to comment on this.

I have summarised my broad process here.

I found the feedback very useful since it is best to be aware of weaknesses in approach at this early stage. Plus, I appreciate the links to additional resources. I have already started to access these and use.