FMP Final Evaluation

The overall idea of my final outcome was a brief look into a campaign based art movement exploring the flaws and controversies surrounding big brands and corporations. The idea of this was to display a transparency into the ethical and immoral conventions large corporations use by showing various issues and controversies in typographic redesigns of the chosen brand’s logos. These pieces consisted of logos/logotype of well known brands constructed out of words/phrases about unethical or immoral things the company is known to have committed or still do commit.

This differs quite heavily in visual concept to what I originally planned out in my Project Proposal but keeps the same philosophy in the campaign. From my proposal, I looked into creating re-imagined advertisements that used a suggestive method to portray immorality in well known brands. The change between this and my final outcome is that my final pieces show a stronger visual that holds the same aesthetic style which gives the overall campaign a stronger visual element. 

Through the use of my sketchbook, I recorded my work as I did it, using it for annotated research, initial sketches or digital tests, which was a process I found useful for coming up with and developing ideas. This also helped by enabling me to look back and see my progress and also helped me to visually develop my ideas in an efficient fashion by giving a visual platform of design experimentation.

I also would use my blog to reflect on the contents of my sketchbook weekly to help plan out where I could take my work and further my progress. It gave me a good platform to reflectively record my process of design and evaluate each step which heavily assisted in helping me reach the final outcome of this project.

Along with my blog, I also utilised my FMP Action Plan to keep time management efficiently and evaluated my work progress on my blog in terms of the schedule of my Action Plan. Not only did this plan help me keep on track with what went in the sketchbook, but also assisted in allowing me time to evaluate and reflect on my work and solve problems to keep up with the timeframe.

My action plan outlined the basis of each week’s workload, concentrating on a different focus each week. In week 1 and 2, I had scheduled to complete particular pieces of research on each day, which ranged from scheduled gallery visits to primary research, such as the survey I completed based on prior secondary research to attempt to focus my theory down from looking at prior, similar campaigns.

During the Mid Point Review, some of the plans for the second half of the FMP (week 4, 5, 6 and 7) I added in some targets including focussed research based around my change in visual idea which consisted primarily of artist research. Apart from this change, the only added targets for me to complete was the change in outcomes which consisted mostly of time management in terms of dates of completion. This also included added experimentation on both the visual design and the format in which I planned to exhibit my work.

For my final major project, I found myself constantly researching more and more ideologies connecting to my campaign, which started to overcomplicate my design ideas. The initial idea I had for my final outcome was of a collection of reimagined advertisements, and through the course of idea development and initial designs, I found this to be a rather large task to handle.

The change in direction released a refreshing burst of inspiration which had been dragged out of me by the excessive amount of research. From this point, I had a clear sense of the direction I wanted to take my project, using the same theory and campaign idea, by altering what I had originally set out to accomplish.

This also meant I was able to stronger reconnect with my comfortable skill set in typography and use that as the basis for experimentation, which meant I was able to perform a lot better under the specification I had set myself. The final outcome was mostly type based, and therefore gave me space to fill up with development of the idea and experimentation within the use of typography.

Despite having a strong idea of my concept from the outright, for the first two weeks, due to the excess in research, I found it difficult to visualise an outcome to this project. Through weekly group tutorials and booked one-on-ones with various tutors, I was given a good amount of ideas to play with. One idea I had received in an early group tutorial was made after I displayed my research to the group where it was said that I should take properties from each ideology and theory I had researched and make a new one instead of trying to bundle them all together. Not only did this simplify proceeding with this project, but also produced the idea of a campaign-type movement. On another occasion, after reporting back on the campaign idea to various tutors, I gathered ideas from each one to experiment with how I can contextualize my campaign as I had little context to go on apart from theoretical ideas, which I managed to overcome by visiting galleries and looking at artists I had not known of from the advice given by tutors.

If it wasn’t for the group tutorials and one-on-ones I had through the length of this project, I would have found it relatively hard to manage my time well. Saying this, there was the occasional falling behind which I believe could have been avoided if I had begun my design process earlier than I had and scheduled just one week of research instead of two. If this were the case, I feel I would have learnt that even if I did not have a solid idea of what to put down on paper at first, if I had experimented with sketching anything it would have broken me out of the research stage sooner.

I believe this project could have also been a lot steadier if I also had more confidence in what I produce, and don’t aim for something final so early on in the design process. This perfectionist attitude has been helped not only with feedback from group tutorials but also the mentor position the tutors fill which has led me to become more comfortable with experimenting and displaying my work. These changes in attitude have enabled me to complete this project as successfully as I am able to and have greatly assisted in the preparation for next year where I will be doing a Graphic Design degree in Brighton.