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OUGD401 - Context of Practice - Critical Analysis.

Task
Based on the material, exercises, discussions and concepts introduce during the sudio session:
Identify and explain 5 reasons why critical analysis is an important part of education, learning and devloping your understanding.
Identify and explain why the crit (group critique) is useful in the development of your work, skills and opinions.
Choose 5 criteria from the list that were generated during the studio session. For each criteria brefly summarise what will generally affect how you judge what you like and dislike when analysing examples of work. (you should aim to use the images that you brought to the session as examples).

Critical Analysis is an extremely important part of developing our understanding of design as a whole. In our studio session we were taught all the fundamental aspects which help us decide whether we like a piece of graphic design or not, these are my five reasons they will help me learn and develop my understanding:

  • Firstly, it helps me understand all the fundamental bases of graphic design and how to perceive different pieces of work and comprehend what they mean and why.
  • Overall, my understanding of design is increasing and i am therefore able to back up my opinions with academic reasons.
  • My understanding of hidden meanings and messages within typography and image have developed which helps me see past the visual aesthetics of a design and dig deeper into the communication of the piece.
  • I am slowly developing my own constructed opinions on design as a whole and in so, building my own preferences, style and way of working.
  • My inspirations will become more varied and interesting the more i critically analyse artist's work who I research.

In my opinion the group critiques we take part of are a massive benefit to all of us, by hearing viewpoints from other people who take an interest in the same Designs and who have an artistic background or a lot of experience, it gives us a more varied understanding of what people would think of our own designs and help us develop them and improve them to benefit the cause more.

In our studio session we categorised a list on critical analysis and what helps us create our own opinions and critiques on work laid out in front of us, this consisted of:

Colour
Layout
Communication
Visual Content
Non Visual Content
Function
Quality of Execution
Legibility
Audience
Context
Concept
Message
Method of production

Colour:

I think the colour in this piece is the most powerful aspect of it. The base is built on dim shades of dirty watercolour to texture to paper and produce a rather lifeless backdrop, but then the combination of the detail within the dandelion and the splash of yellow is really effective and portrays the idea of life within lifeless surroundings.



Concept:

The idea behind this piece is really clever and humorous. It is a poster design for the movie/documentary on graphic design 'Helvetica'. The poster communicates the concept of the movie in an entertaining modernist style displaying the letters of the alphabet in the helvetica typeface which essentially represents the cast of the font but in the concept of a typeface.

As there isn't much to the design of this poster apart from clever and intuitive layout and colour scheme, the main aspect is the idea/message behind the design.







Layout:

I found this image whilst I was researching poster designs for a brief to follow and I fell in love with the impressive layout.

The whole colour scheme, spacing, linework, typeface, everything about it has been placed perfectly. Description also follows in the spacing of the letter descenders.

I have no negative comments about this piece at all and it has inspired me with my future poster designs. Definitely referring back to this in future work.









Message:

A design is most effective when the message is clear and comprehendible. Graphic design is the process of communicating a message/idea/context through visual dimensions, but also exist as an aesthetic which provokes feelings/thoughts. Which is exactly what the typography on the right is entailing.

The colour scheme is quite bright and in your face but I guess it has to be to provoke what it is saying. Overall I like this piece because of the interesting use of imagery within the type, and how it all fits together.

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