Reflecting on my Blog and Website

After finalising both the blog and the website, it was time to evaluate my progress and work. We have worked on three different projects throughout this semester. We worked on sequential images, an advertisement poster and our major project which included a website. Referring to known product designers such as Marc Newson helped me get inspired and work hard for all my projects. I spent a lot of time, effort and thought to create the best outcome I could produce as I wanted my work to represent me well. I tried pushing myself to go out of my comfort zone and experiment and research as much as possible. In product design, the product you’re designing has to solve a specific problem. I tried to find a general theme that was a common problem and provide solutions on how to solve it. In my research, I always tried to look at various products and analyse them myself at first without looking at any other sources. This allowed me to be more creative and spot out aspects that I want to implement in my own design. By doing this, I started thinking more critically and analysed the products in great depth.

Regarding my blog, overall, I feel like I did a really good job. There is sufficient research to back up all my work. I tried to describe my research findings in great detail and try and look at artworks from alternative perspectives to find hidden meanings inside them. In the making of my projects I always tried to include as many screenshots and technical detail as possible as a means of guiding my viewers through my thought process. Especially for my main final project, I tried to research every possible aspect of it and dedicated separate blog posts for each. This allowed me to explore all the possibilities of the outcome and be more confident in my final result. Researching various artists helped inspire me and give me ideas on all of my projects. The ideas of all my projects were based on existing pieces of work that inspired me so that was very useful. One very valuable skill I acquired from writing blogs is how to properly research, filter and paraphrase information by adding your own opinion. I tried to link everything together and look at things from various interpretations. This was a very beneficial skill that also helped me with my 2D3D module as we had multiple artist research to do. I documented all my thought process in all my blogs with as much detail as possible. I am very happy with how my blog turned out and I feel like it represents me well. I did lack some research at the first blog posts but I went back and added more research to back up my work. The research I completed made me realise how important and how research can contribute to an end result. It is important to take a lot of time to properly research and plan your outcome as that will make the making and manufacturing process way easier. This is why I added so many blog posts on research, to ensure that my work is well planned out and I have everything ready for my design. Towards the end of my blog posts, I started adding more images than text and started adding table diagrams which I feel like were very effective. I usually have lots of text included in my blogs which makes it uninteresting at some parts. Introducing diagrams and more pictures definitely helped improve and make my blog more interesting. Further to that, I really like that I included a testing measurement as it helped me visualise things and introduce more practical methods to my blog. I also like the layout of my blog as it matches with me website theme and represents me well. I really like the development process in my final project as it shows the improvement from the initial idea, all the way to the end result.

Contacting my target market and receiving feedback from them really helped me improve my work and produce an even better outcome. I learned how to properly take constructive criticism and make changes to an initial idea to make it more suitable for the target market. This is a very beneficial skill for a product designer as you always have to link your work to your target to ensure that you stay on track. Additionally, I realised how important planning and time management is. Planning out weekly blog posts was essential as I managed to stay organised and complete everything on time.

I had the opportunity to work on software such as photoshop, milanote and sketchup which was a great experience as it helped me enhance my software skills. I explored all three of the software in great depth and tried to use many tools on there in order to familiarise myself with them. I will be using many software's in the future so this was a very valuable task for me. It was challenging, however, I managed to create a really good outcome that I am very happy with. In photoshop, I edited my design boards where I learned how to professionally present and market my work. Selecting key points and creating a nice flow in the design boards was essential for success. 

However, next time I would like to start referencing correctly. Even though this was not required in this semester, it is a very valuable skill to learn how to reference correctly. Additionally, in some of my blog posts I wasn’t very concise and was repetitive which made the blog posts very long. As time passed, I tried to keep my blog posts more to the point in order to avoid rambling about unnecessary information. I feel like I achieved this, even though I could have added more details in some of my last blog posts. I felt very fatigued by the end of the semester which inevitably decreased my productivity. However, the positive feedback from my tutors always helped me stay motivated and on track with my work. It would have been even better if I included more designers and analysis of similar products to mine as it would help and inspire me even more.

Regarding my website, I am very pleased with the end result and I feel like it represents me a lot. I started off with a completely different colour palette that was very uninteresting. However, after research I managed to find suitable colours that help represent me and my work. I am very happy with the layout of my website and the font used. It is way more improved and interesting than it was before. It is easy to navigate through the website and access all areas. I like that my website is very personal as I added my own home page image that includes my sketches on the final design and some research I did. This image connects to the rest of the website and looks very aesthetically pleasing. I also like the graphics included in some of the areas where I tried to keep them minimalistic and simple. In the portfolio page, I really liked the gallery chosen and I think that it works well with my design. The language used in my website is formal as I wanted to ensure that it is as professional as possible.

Even though I feel like there is sufficient information on the about me page, maybe I could add some more or expand on it. Additionally, maybe I could try adding graphics in the home page too as it looked really nice in the rest of the pages. I could try out different sketches of layouts and colours to explore even more possibilities. However, I really like the outcome of my website and I don’t think that I would change any part of it as it resembles me and my work well.

The work and effort put into this module during this semester is evident and I really enjoyed working on it. I picked up on new techniques and learned how to design a website. This is a very valuable skills as I was taught how to promote myself in a professional way. I am really happy I chose this project as I learned a lot from it. 

Concluding, I definitely learned a lot this semester that will help me in the future. I tried to complete my tasks at the best of my abilities and I believe that I did a great job. I am very proud and happy of the work I created.