OUGD504 - Brief 1 - Brief

OUGD504: Brief 1: My Design Process

Brief 

Studio Brief: 

During this week you will design and produce a folded leaflet entitled "The Design Process" that describes your understanding of the design process and specifically how this is applied to design problems. This assignment will allow you to explore the nature of design at an increasingly commercial level while also exploring creative approaches to leaflet design and folding.

This brief is only one week long and therefore will be very intensive. You will be given support by your tutors in the form of crits and tutorials while studio tasks will focus on aspects related to constructing and designing leaflets. You will be expected to explore and experiment with paper and card stock: folding techniques and styles; and graphic concepts and communication. Your progress, developments and creative decisions should be documented in your studio blog.

At the end of the week you will present your final leaflet design and plan for print to the rest of the group. You will receive feedback and points to consider during this final crit.

Analysis of the brief: 

This week long brief sounds very intensive so soon after starting the new term however I feel it will be a good opportunity to throw myself back into graphic design after the summer break. Leaflets were a media I never covered in level 4 so I am looking forward to adding this to my portfolio to demonstrate how versatile as a designer I can be. My pre conceived expectations of lifters are that the need to be high impact and throw away as they are normally given out/distributed for free, this will also highlight that I need to consider cost when designing to make the outcome more viable.

I personally haven't had much experience with leaflets so am excited to learn more about their conventions however I typically prefer working on items with a higher budget to fully experiment with a range of stocks and finishes that could be unfeasible to use on a leaflet however am looking forward to experimenting with this media. 

I initially thought the content of the leaflet could be dull however I think that the topic will be interesting to actually consider my personal design process in detail to see if it can be improved and analyse this against secondary sources from the internet to compare and evaluate whether my process is successful. 

Research Plan: 

MY research plan will be broken down into stages. I will firstly research the design process in which look at a range of secondary sources online to determine if there is a basic process that is required and can cover the basis of design. I then plan to  document and analyse my own design process and evaluate this against the secondary sources found in my research, I should then be able to extrapolate whether my design process is successful, how I can improve it and most importantly be able to define what a design process is.

I will then analyse a range of leaflet designs from secondary sources such as the internet and examples found around leeds. I will evaluate them based on their design and communication and will be able to learn more about the generic conventions of leaflet design before undertaking my own initial ideas. As part of my research I will also experiment with a range of primary research deconstructing and creating prototypes of different folding styles that will eventually inform my production.