reflection

Overall Thoughts

I’ve had a great experience in Graphic and Web Design Studio this semester – it has been very interesting to learn about CARP principles as well as the eight typographic systems. I’ve really enjoyed experimenting with different layouts for the posters and typographic artworks and I feel like I have a much better understanding of what makes a good design. I have written more about my design process on the carp and typography pages.

In terms of the web design, as I already had quite a bit of experience in this area, I was very happy to have my tutors recognise my skills and push me to use more advanced technologies, such as the JavaScript animation framework GSAP (GreenSock, 2023) within my work. Further details about my web design process can be found on the coding page.

Technologies Used

In this module, we practiced using Adobe InDesign, Adobe Illustrator, HTML5 and CSS3. I had an advantage in that I was already familiar with all four of these, however, this was a great opportunity for me to revisit and refresh these skills. In particular, I learnt much more about text design options in Illustrator, which I will absolutely be using in the future.

Beyond this, my website also utilises JavaScript to create the animations and interactive features such as the hamburger menu on mobile.

Evaluation

One of the more challenging aspects of this project has been that, as I’m not working for one specific client, I would occasionally find that my tutors had different opinions about what works well, particularly with regards to the typography artwork. It was actually extremely useful to hear a variety of different opinions, however, it made my indecisiveness quite apparent throughout the process. While working on this project has certainly helped, I hope I can continue to build confidence in my own design choices throughout my degree and become better at explaining my decisions.

I also need to make greater use of the content on the reading list. At the start of the semester, I was reading very avidly, but, towards the end, I found myself referring to the material less, even when struggling to conceptualise designs.

Finally, with regards to the website, I’m very pleased with my work, and put great thought into the design of my website through Figma. I should, however, have put more thought into the code design as I found myself frequently having to refactor elements, which definitely somewhat slowed the coding process. While refactoring in production is not unusual, there are certainly aspects of my website where I could have saved time by further planning my code structure.

Overall, I think my output has been very successful and I’ve managed to work to the deadline well – there was never a point where I felt concerned I wouldn’t be able to meet it, which shows effective time management throughout the semester. I’m also really looking forward to tackling future projects and applying the skills I’ve learned so far, while learning even more advanced technologies.