My second year of university has been a very different experience to what normally would be a second year of university. Being in lockdown and having full online learning has made me learn a lot of new skills and learn things about myself I would not have found. The first thing I have come to realise is the importance of talking to others and the effect that has on your design ideas. Not speaking to fellow students, other staff members, or seeing others work, has had a large impact on my creativity and innovative work, this is because by seeing and speaking to people you share ideas, pick up their strengths and see problems you may have overlooked. Following on from this new way of learning, when we can return to the studio, I want to discus my work to new people and receive feedback from more people and also to see how others approach a similar brief and how they develop their ideas. For example in my Sketchup brief, I did not see other students work or speak to them about how they are tackling the brief and it resulted in little feedback throughout the project and subsequently resulted in a lower grade to what I had received during past projects that I did while in the studio. I feel teamwork is key when being a designer as you are able to bounce ideas off of each other and develop weaknesses as well as sharing strengths.
Over this past year my design work has changed and improved significantly, at the end of first year I began to change the way I sketched and did my initial design work- as shown in my first-year reflection. I struggled with quick sketches and always wanted to make them neat or never showed my quick rough sketches as I thought they were not good enough. However after a few weeks of quick sketches and less writing, I was able to adapt and change my ideas much faster which resulted in more creative and innovative designs. In my first year I would spend a week making one a3 sheet look visually appealing however now I could quickly fill three a3 pages in one day and have more information and be more benefited to me. A big learning curve for second year is that you do not have to be the best at drawing to get the best result or design, as long as your ideas are shown and someone can read it then it works, there is no need to spend hours on one drawing that could be done in minutes. For example in my Antiform project, designing a shop for sustainable clothing brand, it is a much larger space than all previous designs and so timing was key to getting all areas designed and finished and this change in approach to sketching has helped greatly.
Overall in my second year of University I have been able to develop the skills I learnt in first year, for example Photoshop, InDesign, sketching and development. After second year I am hoping to go on to a placement year where I can see what working in the design industry entails and widen my design understanding before going into final year.