I think one of the main differences from A6 to every other assignment I’ve had to do is the different level of time management. A6 was a perfect chance for me to test my skills at micro time management, at managing hours instead of days, weeks and months. For the majority of A6 I believe I time planned rather well, but as always there are places I could improve. Now the unit has finished though, I feel so much more confident in my abilities to time plan, and my confidence in my own work.
The first task in A6 came as quite a shock. I did know that we were going to be doing a timed task and I knew we wouldn’t have much time to complete it, but that still didn’t prepare me for the intensity and pressure that would ensue due to it. It came as somewhat of a culture shock – before I’ve had days, even weeks to complete similar tasks – but here I was completing the very same tasks in 2 hours. The first task did bring something home to me however: just how much can be done in two hours if you really put your mind to it. This is one aspect of the timed tasks that I will be taking over to all future assignments as it made me realise just how much time I’m really wasting playing about with tasks and spending too long on tasks that requires half of the work that these timed tasks did. Before I start any work at home from now on I’m going to plan my couple of hours work right down to the minutes so I can replicate the level of work I have proved I can produce.
I can say that this is easily the single most enjoyable assignment we’ve done so far, and the way the assignment has been set out has taught me so much about typographic techniques in a practical way that no amount of reading books or other methods could have taught me. I now feel a lot more confident with my use of typographic devices, and I feel better able to denote what typefaces are suitable for what tasks. Not just that either, because we’ve learnt some valuable newspaper techniques that have allowed me to transfer my skills over to other print tasks. I also feel a lot more confident with my abilities to “design”, because this assignment gave us a chance to be free of the constraints of web design, and really have a go at designing in any way we pleased. Positive feedback from other members of the group have boosted my confidence a lot about my abilities. I don’t face a design task anymore and wonder where to start, I just throw myself in and start putting some ideas down. I believe that extra confidence has allowed me to loosen up a bit with my ideas, something which I most definitely wouldn’t be doing if we hadn’t have done this assignment.
This assignment wasn’t just about fun timed tasks however; it was also about doing a presentation, which was another area I felt I’d gained more confidence in this time around. I do feel I left my presentation a bit late to complete, but that was due to the pressure of the other assignment. I had been collecting my research for a long time before I started to create my presentation and I had been reading a lot about Eric Gill, but I still feel I spent too long just researching Eric Gill instead of doing the actual presentation. When I did get around to it though I think I did a good job of designing the slides, mainly because I spent some time coming up with ideas in my sketchbook before I moved to the computer. This is something I will do with all future presentations.
Having a practice shot at my presentation the week before also helped me greatly, because it meant I wasn’t just practicing to myself and allowed me to assess how much I’d improved over my last presentation. I gained some valuable feedback that week that allowed me to improve my presentation, and this will be something I am going to try to do every time I have to do a presentation in future.
When it came to doing the final presentation I felt a lot more relaxed this time and less nervous compared to my last efforts. I even threw in a bit of humour, which helped me relax a bit more as well as relax the audience. This presentation undoubtedly went better than the colour presentation, but that was to be expected as we had a lot more time to create it and practice. I still felt a bit nervous however, but this will only change with more practice. I did feel that I could have talked a bit more about typographical techniques as I had a lot more prepared than I actually said, but this was due to the pressure of the presentation that I didn’t get around to saying them.
The final task of the assignment – and the part which I believe I did the worst on – was our final timed task. I knew the typographical terms and newspaper devices thoroughly (I must have written down about 60), but it soon became apparent that I’d remembered too much, and I wasn’t going to get everything into my fact sheets as I wanted to. With 15 minutes left I resorted to drastic measures, and just started to write down as many definitions as I could remember. I’d gone way too ambitious with the amount of terms, and I paid the price heavily for it. If I was to do it again, I’d focus on about 15 terms and illustrate those ones, because one place where my fact sheets suffered is the lack of any illustrations.
Although I felt I didn’t do as well as I could have done on my final task, I still think I learnt some valuable lessons. I feel more prepared to do a similar, highly pressured task again, and I think I’d do a lot better if I was to do a similar task again.
Goals for next assignments:
• Use skills in micro time planning in any future assignments
• Improve presentation skills.
Word count: 1062
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