OUGD602 - Design Strategy and Skills Evaluation

6A2 / 6B2 / 6C2.

DESIGN STRATEGY AND SKILLS EVALUATION:

Reflecting back on this module as a whole, many new skills and pieces of information have been learnt, all of which will help in my career progression after graduation. Undertaking three days of work experience at Autoglym in their brand marketing and design teams was one of the major learning curves in my development as a designer. Since I have never had any experience before working within a professional environment, this was good to see the day-to-day running of a brand department, showing me how I would potentially be working in a real-life professional environment. For me in particular, finding work after graduation was a big fear of mine, not knowing what to expect and wondering whether or not I would actually enjoy the work, however taking part in this work experience has now put me more at ease about this eventuality. In addition, this experience has helped to start building up a new network of contacts of whom I can turn to if ever needed in the future, with members of the team at Autoglym also offering to hand over my CV and information to any other agencies they may know and so showing the importance of these kinds of experiences and contacts.

This module has also showed me that we all have the power to define our own careers and design who you want to be as a creative, which, as a result, can give rise to a philosophy, ethos or mission to shape the work that you do, meaning that you can create various different opportunities for yourself when others don't immediately appear. Even if you start work on personal projects that interest you, more stable job opportunities may eventually come from this. The message behind this then is to always continue only making work that you enjoy and interests you, with an importance on then getting this work out into the world for others to see since generally if you are enthusiastic about something, then other people will feel the same. In terms of future progression, whatever comes after graduation, I will continue working on personal projects and sharing these with the community of creatives, making myself known and opening up the potential for new opportunities, whilst in turn also allowing me to continue further developing my skills as a creative.

In preparing for life after graduation, the skills learnt from this module I feel will help well equip me for this in terms of legal advice and working with clients. For instance, setting clear expectations, knowing how to create an effective terms agreement, how to decide on what clients to take on, as well as putting a price on your work, a lot of this which I was unsure about how to go about previously.

Reflecting on my overall design strategies, it was considered that one part of this which still needs work is my ability to create timetables and schedules, and then stick to them. This is something that I have never been good at since I prefer to work on things as and when they need doing, rather than setting myself specific times to do certain things. Although I tend to work better this way, I have found that timetabling will be something of importance when it comes to working professionally and so after graduation I will attempt to develop these skills throughout any personal projects I undertake.

Another of my design strategies involved attending and engaging with multiple professional talks and workshops throughout this academic year, such as Glug, Evolution Print, Creative Convos talks and workshops, and a workshop with Protest Press. Whilst these provided me with valuable advice, new skills and experiences, they also provided me with an additional opportunity to make myself known by talking to these professionals and networking with others. One of these which went well was with Eva Cremers, an intern at Man vs. Machine, of whom I took my time to speak to after her talk and hand over a one-off screen-print for her to keep as a thank you for attending Creative Convos. This is something which she then shared on her Instagram stories and took her time to re-thank me later that day through this, providing me with a small bit of creative press.

In terms of contacting and talking to designers outside of these such events, however, is something I still need to improve on. This comes mainly down to confidence, finding it much easier and more comfortable to contact people through email for instance, rather than calling and talking to them directly. However, this module has shown me the importance of making yourself stand out, and one way to do so is to call people directly since they are less likely to ignore you this way than an email, something I need to build up the confidence to do after graduation in preparing to find job opportunities. Despite this, I still implemented a strategy into any emails I sent, in order to help myself stand out. For instance, creating a punchy subject line that gets people instantly engaged, and sending emails early in the morning when people would typically check their emails so that mine is top of the list.