Design Context: OUGD401: Critical Analysis

OUGD401: Critical Analysis - Studio Task 1

by Roxxie Blackham on Friday, 26 October 2012

You can learn to understand your own individual strengths and weaknesses, as well as helping your piers to acknowledge theirs.
It's a chance to ask other people what they think of your work and where they think you could improve - once again identifying your strengths and weaknesses but within particular designs themselves, rather than as a whole.
When looking at work created by your piers, you can be influenced to change your work slightly, as you may be 'inspired' by what they have produced or the ideas that they have come up with.
Gaining feedback from others in your class, as well as working amongst other students helps to keep you motivated and can often lead to stronger design concepts as you are feeling motivated and that you want to succeed.
From analysing the work of other students, you develop a stronger understanding of what good design is and how you can make your work suit the briefs better.

Composition & Layout: If the composition of the design is messy, cluttered, over crowded or just obviously not thought about, I can't stand it. I seem to favour clean structure over messy design, possibly due to the course I was on last year and how much that tutor influenced me, so I find it difficult to like messier design, for example in postmodernist work. However, I can appreciate it.
Colours: I prefer minimal use of colour over bright and overused colour, however sometimes, if it is used well, a lot of colour can look nice. I am quite picky however, and usually favour design that has used 1 or 2 colours plus stock.
Quality: The quality of the images, skills or executed work itself is extremely important to me, as I don't want to be looking at a pixelated image, poor drawing or terrible alignment.
Typography: I particularly favour hand-rendered typography that has been executed to a very high standard, over computer generated typefaces. Typographers like Jessica Hische and Teagan White are large influences for me when I'm drawing type, as I love the vintage style of both of the typographers, and how elegant their type is.
Method of Production & Choice of Media: I love to see Graphic Design that has been screen printed or hand made as I find it really creative and interesting, and I feel that a lot more skill has been put into the work than someone just choosing a pretty typeface on Illustrator.