OUGD403 Design Skills Evaluation

OUGD403 Design Skills - Evaluation 

During the briefs in Design Skills, I think I have progressed from starting Studio Brief 1 to 4 by a long a way. As I have come from a Fine Art background, I have learnt an extensive amount of skills from starting this course. The workshops to me, have been particularly helpful in learning the software such as Illustrator to create graphic design. As I have never previously used Illustrator or InDesign, I feel a lot more used to Illustrator and have a basic knowledge of InDesign, which is yet to be expanded when we have the InDesign workshop. An example of this was in Studio Brief 2 where I was really stressed about how to go about digitalising my letters, but with help and numerous questions from the Illustrator workshop, I was taught how to do this and also become a lot more accustom to using the pen tool. This has helped me hugely and allowed me to achieve the exact design of my letters into a digitalised alphabet. I'm a lot more confident now as I feel I know the right tools and software to produce my ideas into profound work. 

Overall I have enjoyed the tasks set to us and have overcome my struggles while developing my ideas and produced my work to a standard I am happy with at this initial stage in the course. For example I struggled with Studio Brief 4 the most as I feel that I could not produce my work to a standard I was happy with, but after the Final critique and feedback I felt a lot better about my work. I feel there is room for improvement in my productions, but as Graphic Design is completely new to me and this is just the initial stage, I feel that at this moment in time, and at this level is does not matter to much as I am only going to progress. 
Something that I set out to improve on was presenting my work. As we regularly have critique's, I believe that I am getting slightly better as we are continually doing it. By the end of the year I hope to not get so nervous while presenting work, but feel I'm already improving on this at this stage. For this reason I find the critique's helpful but mainly the feedback we get from this. I believe constructive feedback is key to helping us progress as designers, and I'm certainly glad it is a regular thing within the course. 
I've attended every possible session I can and regularly stay later than 3:30 at Leeds College of Art. I think my time management has certainly improved from Foundation, but I still found myself slightly behind with keeping up with the blogs. However, at the end and preparing everything for submission, I realised that I was more ahead of myself than I thought. Therefore I want to keep up to date with the blogs during the rest of the year, but aside I feel my time management has improved and I wish to keep it well throughout the year. 
If I were to do this briefing again, I would of expanded my research further in the briefs and kept up to date with the blogs. That being said, I am proud that I have managed my time a lot more successfully than in the past, I produced work to a standard I am happy with. I am keen to progress further and cannot wait to learn more and continue on in the course.