PPP2: Collaborative Year Review

For the PPP Presentation, we have been asked to say what our achievements are and show how we have improved from the first year.

Emily and myself were discussing the contents of our Individual presentations and what we should put in them.

We decided that it would be a really good exercise to do what we did at the beginning of the year where we did the positives and negatives list of each other. We are very honest with each other and are use to criting each other so we are a strong indicator of each others strengths and weaknesses from a less bias point of view. By doing it now at the end of the year, we would be able to compare the two lists we made for each other and see how far we have come.

Beginning of Year List

End of Year List

As you can see from the list that Emily has made, there are points which have changed for the better, some things that have stayed the same and new things I have to work on. 

The good things that have improved is my ability to use technical skills, like software, which is something that I have been working on all year and dedicating my practise to learning this trade, particularly Photoshop and Binding skills. Another good point is my enthusiasm to learn which I completely agree with as I always like to learn a new skill and apply it- I don't always get it first time but I always get there eventually. Another main point which is certainly something that has changed over the year is that I have got much faster at producing work which I am very happy with as it shows that the more I practise my design, the better I am getting at it and the faster I am at producing it. 

Some thing that have stayed the same within my practise is that it still takes me a while to get things done and that I worry about small things and start to panic and it sets my anxiety off. This is only because it is in my nature to want to make sure that I do everything right but at the same time, it does hold me back sometimes. Thankfully my blogging and my images, listening skills and media have stayed as positives as these are areas which I do think are important skills to have and keep up with. 

Things that have become a negative within my work over the course of the year is my time management skills. I totally agree with this point as I have had an awful year in regards to trying to keep up with the course. Another one is thinking but not doing a brief which, again is something I can completely identify with and I know that I do. This is something that I have been trying to address with a few of the responsive briefs by giving myself a short time span to do it.  

One thing I didn't agree with was how I do briefs just because they are for uni. I do briefs because once I get into them I find them fun. When I asked Emily about this, she said that she meant it was suppose to mean that I don't think about what I want to get out of a brief. I can see where she is coming from because I don't think of what I want from the brief as I always think about answering it rather than my own practise within the brief. With that being the case, it was a fair point.

Overall, this was a very successful, valuable and helpful exercise as it allowed me to look back on how far I have come and how I have changed as a designer over the course of a year. I think I ave improved and changed in the way that I do some things but at the same time this has sacrificed other areas which I now need to improve on. I will defiantly mention some of these areas within my PPP2 Presentation.