21st - 25th February 2011 (Half-term)

For the half-term week I have decided to work on the 2 presentation for 'Reflective Practice' and 'Creativity and Social Context'.

For the Creativity and Social context presentation I have decided to study the Italian Futurists, at this point I felt that I didn't know enough about the Italian Futurists and wanted to know more. I had been greatly influenced by the work of Fortunato Depero (one of the main practitioner of the second version of the Futurists) in a brief issued in my Btec course. I believe that studying the Italian Futurists has been highly beneficial for me as it has made me realize how the social conditions at a time of a movement can effect and change the course a movement can take. I have passion for anything to do with the second world war and when I read that Filippo Marinetti(one of the founding members of the Italian Futurists) was a devote fascist instinctively I read on. After completing a draft of my essay I conclude that the movement may have continued functioning for many years after the War if Marinetti was not such a devote fascist, other founding members of the movement were believers of the cause but not as orthodox as he then was.

For my Reflective Practice presentation I initially decided to study the history of the Helvetica typeface. The typeface is so widely used and has just past it 50th birthday so I felt that this was an indication that it was a success. I was unable to find enough information on Helvetica from books from the library and the internet, whilst reading around the subject of Helvetica I came across the Swiss Design movement, I later decided to continue with this movement for this presentation.
I feel that studying the Swiss Design movement has been beneficial for me, I feel that the techniques used could be influential for my future work. Without already realizing I am currently using techniques used in the Swiss Design movement in my work, this would be the techniques of the Sans Serif typeface set in the flush-left and right rigged formation.

14th - 18th February (reading week)

As this is reading week and my first week back from my operation I have decided to reflect on the week as a whole, stating the work I have completed, as opposed to having a reflective paragraph on each module I am undertaking.

My main focus for this week has been the YCN brief, I have deiced to undertake the Boost brief.
I was confused to begin with, but I feel I have now grasped the concepts of what would like the final outcome to be.

This brief is totally different to ones I have been issued with in the past. Briefs in the past have been along the lines of.... design a logo to suit a certain target market and apply it to various obejects, poster/branding/stationary, with hardly any constrants applyied.
Whereas in comparison to the Boost brief, I have a set of rules to abide to, including what logo to be used and how to use it, what typefaces should be used and what colour scheme I am to use.

Its these constrants that bring my out of my confort zone, I feel that I am limited to what I can do when desiging, and sometimes think that I could choose a better typefaces to use, but then I realise that its in the clients best interests to use what they would like to appear in the final outcome. Reflecting on this issue I feel that as a designer, when working in industry, I could face this problem on a regular basis and need to adapt to it.