Summative Evaluation PPP

Overall through the duartion of doing this module I have found that I have developed a vareity of skills and learnt alot especially with the briefs we have been set. The brief which I had found to be the most useful includes SB1 - Creative Report. I had some knowledge of getting into contact with designers and practitioners for research for other modules but I hadn't gone to the extent of contacting them through more formal means - email rather than Instagram dms and setting up an interview and producing an outcome based of their answers and their work as well was something which I had enjoyed.

The only module which I had concerns with included SB2 - Lifes a Pitch. I think this may have been down to having a longer duration to complete this brief - alot of the people within my group had taken advantage of this by using it as free time to work on other modules. I had ensured I had attended most sessions unless I had a valid reason as why I coudlnt attend but I feel as though because of this - our presentation could have been alot better in terms of the performance as well as refining our concept as there was alot of confusion over it being one idea or several ideas which had been merged into one. 

I am yet to do my personal presentation but I feel after doing the workshop which Alec and Orlando had set for the 1 minuite pitch had been very beneficial in terms of seeing how well I could sell an idea/ present something under such tight timed conditions. As well as this, as a large number of the group hadn't attended this session, it meant that with the small group that we had I was able to analyse traits or ways that certain people perform their presentations and considering as to how I could tie this into my own presentation. 

I would like to continue going to more events and engaging with people in my practice but I need to be aware ot going to too many and allowing this to hinder my main studies as the Find &Seek project which happened obver the duration of three months had meant that I wanted to do this work more than my uni work - although tbf most of this was done in my free time and has been something that I have wanted to do for a long time.

Find & Seek - Pop up shop Submission

I have always had an interest in producing product related to clay and ceramic materials but never found an opportunity before to produce things as its either been something which was impossible to produce or I have put it off to not having enough time to produce things for myself. 

I may have not realised how busy I would be from January onwards with work needing to be produced for modules but I thought I may as well as take on the task whilst I have the time and fitting it around doing work for uni and utilising my free time a bit better. 

I have never had my work put into the exhibition or shop before so I had made sure that I had thoroughly carried out my research before I started sketching out ideas and buying materials. I had started out by using websites that I would normally use to find and search for earring - as people have commented on my range of handmade earrings that I own so I had looked on Depop and Instagram mainly to see what sort of thing is popular among people and how I could fit this into my own designs. 

I didn't want to rip off anyone's designs as well as doing this so I had drawn up some designs including the kind of shapes/colours which I would wear myself. I had categorised my audience as the typical art student/ a version of myself including colourful and bold shapes which can compliment most outfits. 

I feel as though as towards the end of this - the branding of the products which I had made could have been a lot better but because I was very pushed for time I had to make use of resources which I had at hand. I had recently worked on producing a book for Adam French for my responsive module and I had 20 sheets of nice G.F. SMITH card stock and I thought that I may as well make use of this - so I had painted some textures on a couple of sheets of this and trimmed them down to the sie of the earrings and the bags which they were contained in. 

Throughout my research I had found that I would be able to use a certain type of clay which I would be able to solidify without using the kilns at the university as I didn't have time to be inducted and to wait to be added onto a list to get an induction without ceramics so the more DIY approach was more suitable for this. 

I had asked the staff at Fred Aldous about what sort of clay would be suitable for this kind of project which I was wanting to do and they had suggested using a FIMO Polymer clay to make the earrings  - Although quite expensive  their store does apply a student discount to products so I thought that it might work out buying the main materials through them. 

I had been suggested to apply for project fund as well as I had heard that it might be a beneficial approach to getting funding for the earrings that I had produced - later on in the application process I had found out that this money is only allocated for future projects which are unrelated to work being produced for modules being worked on. I have still put my application forward and will be finding out this week if my application will be getting funded as I have already received a response that they have accepted my application and are very happy with the information that I have provided. I will be finding out the 25th of March if this has been put forward and will be funded. 

In term of the production of the earrings, I had to work around being the work I do for my main university hand ins which meant that I had to utilise my free time as well asking for help from some of my friends to help me mass produce a lot of the earrings which I had made. Throughout this Eloise and Alice had provided me with a lot of help on making these and making sure I got everything ready to put in the Find and Seek shop which was based in Leeds Corn Exchange. 

I had attended the Launch event for the pop-up shop which was very successful - there was a very large turnout to this and the people setting up the event - Ada and her illustration peers from the 57 Club had commented on how they would be buying a few pairs. The thing which had hit me about all of this was being able to see a girl who had bought a pair of earrings which I had made on that launch event which had put into perspective that what I was doing wasn't a complete waste of time - even though it was just one person this was enough to of a highlight to take from this event. 

SB3: Personal Presenation

SB1: Sending out the Email to Saul Studio

After having the realisation that I was not actually taking any of the research which I had found relating to the creative report which may have been down to the fact that as I had not visited this information in a while and I had lost interest in pursuing these avenues further. 

As the deadline has been approaching, I felt like I need to apply restrictions to make myself actually contact a design studio which I am interested in which would be able to work around the restriction of time which I have left as well as the consideration of the locality of where the individual is based.

I had opted to find people through my social media  who were based within Leeds which I could contact as this way I may be able to speed up the process

I decided to take a very casual approach to the way that I would email Saul Studio - I knew it was very short timing for me to ask for these questions and didn't want to put the pressure onto them with the brief which I had been set to do. I was quite unexpected with their very quick response as they had emailed me within a few hours of me contacting them. I thought it would probably be best to send them the list of questions as well as offering to meet up - based of the session we had with Alec where he provided useful ways to getting in contact with practitioners.

s of speaking them face to face and potentially being able to see their studio space. 

As they had got back to me so soon - as well as offering for me to go to their studio space as well I didn't have much time to plan the set up of the interview and just thought I would go with taking a camera to get images of them ( I had asked permission prior to the interview after bumping into Joey) as well as just recording the session using my phone which I could transcribe later on.

BBC Fierce Women in Media - Tech Skills Workshop

I had heard of the BBC put on a series of workshops which was promoted through the university Instagram. This was something which just from the name of the event sounded really appealing as I hadn't heard of any events happening locally like this before. One of the main requirements to apply for a ticket just included having a Leeds based address and I thought to fuck it - what do I have to lose with a free event which had very vague information about what would actually be going on in the event itself.

Myself and Eloise who attended this event didn't realise that the panel discussion which we had signed up to listen to was primarily focussed on software design and engineers who work in the BBC as this was a complete tangent from what we do but later on the discussion there was mention of how the BBC has multiple programmes in place to support those who may have joined them in a job role and want to try another role out for 6 months (or more if they are happier in a different position - called Hot Shoes. Some of the people in the panel had been on these programmes and had talked about the benefits and drawbacks of doing this:

Including...

• Being able to meet new people in other parts of the BBC
• Find out about a role and completely fall in love with it
• Can start this very shortly after you have joined the BBC if you're unsure of the job role you had previously enrolled onto

Although...

As a lot the people who join this role may be from other graduating from other programmes in the BBC and be encouraged to work for certain teams - but later on, realise in that short period of time that they don't enjoy it that much.

(Generally this was low key a pointless session for me and Eloise but we had found out about a few of the programmes that the BBC have in place to support those who may not have a degree or on in stem subjects and how they get work their way up to working in an actual role that they might want to do)

We also attended a Social Media workshop later on in the day which had provided us with some useful ways of promoting our work/ making sure it gets seen by a larger pool of people. 

SB1: Making the Creative Report

I had realised as I was transcribing the information for my creative report that the information which I had noted down did not make sense - the initial transcription process had taken a long time as well as the recording quality was quite poor as it was done on my phone - which I was also using to read the questions so with the movement of the recorder in my phone had caused further disturbance. 

I had searched online for free software which transcribes audio recordings - even though I was advised against this as this type of software is often not very accurate - which is evident in pieces like this - where all the information has just been mashed together. Although this seems quite useless - the software tracks each phrase it has captured and links it to the word so then it can be easily tracked or replaced with the correct word. 

This had helped to bulk out the main body of information which I needed to include within the creative report but it meant that I needed to listen through the recording 7 times to make sure I didn't include any information which they did into want to be included within the interview. 

Scotty - Book Reference

I thought that layout wise - this book would be a good example to look into to help me layout my creative report. As well as looking at Saul Studi's work when it comes to publication design - the only examples of their work which I had to look at after the interview was what they have available on their portfolio page on Behance so by looking at a more tangible example of how to visualise the information obtained from the interview as well as the images I had gathered, this had given me a much better idea of how to layout my spreads in my indesign doc