Collaborative Brief evaluation

Why have you chosen to work with your creative partner? What are your aims?
Vickie was a good collaborative partner in terms of practical skill sets that I wanted to learn about, for example, she's quite well renowned for her craft work and I'm really glad that that's something we got to use in creating our final pieces. She also has a good track on research and idea generation, which I occasionally skimp on, so it was really helpful having someone who could keep my mind active rather than me drifting out of concentration which happens when I'm on my own.

What are your specific areas of creative interest in this brief?
In this brief, I was interested in exploring craft, which is something I haven't had chance to do since the pop-up book I created in the first year. I was also interested in trying something different in designing for a space, as a pose to traditional forms of design. I managed to do both of these, though the former outweighed the latter, which is a shame, it would have been better if we had managed to really fully explore what design for space could of meant through lighting and possibly ambient technologies such as light projection.

What specific design skills do you have to offer in relation to your chosen brief? How do you intend to use them?
I have skills as an illustrator, particularly working with illustrated typography, unfortunately I managed to stuff this up with legibiity which I feel utterly awful about. Normally, I consider it to be one of my strongest assets, perhaps I was over confident and 'dialed it home'. I also have good skills with illustrator and photoshop, which I used in creating the layout of the board, which I felt overall looked strong (except the promotional material boards) as well as convincing window decals. I was happy that Vickie used some skills too, to do the mannequins because it was an opportunity for her to progress and feel confident with software and she did a really great job of it.

What specific non-design skills do you have to offer in relation to your chosen brief? How do you intend to use them?
I managed to keep quite on top of blogging as well as organisation. Vickie was like a fountain of creativity, literally just pouring ideas out onto the page. I wasn't really able to keep up, however, I was able to rain her in and keep the focus on the project when she went off on a bit of a tangent, or I thought the idea may be a little implausible or difficult to implement convincingly. In this sense, I think the collaboration was really successful. It also allowed for me to take charge when we were starting to wander into apathy towards the subject or we had very different ideas about where the project was going. For instance, Vickie wasn't initially keen on making the window edgy and I think we disagreed on this, but with a bit of persuasion (and a crit), we came to a compromise that didn't effect the quality of the solution.

What will your specific responsibilities be in the collaboration in relation to your brief? I was really responsible for the organisation and to an extent leadership, though that's not to say Vickie wasn't a leader at times. I was able to lead us when we were starting to struggle. I was also quite good at focusing Vickie's idea generation as well as being able to use my skills in type and layout to develop the layout for the final boards.


What will your joint responsibilities be?
Joint responsibilities came in the form of crafting the final thing as well as initial research and idea development. I think ultimately we had to share the crafting of the final resolution, because we were so pushed for time. I also think that because we were pushed for time, the presentation of the third board and the promotional product it's self was actually quite weak, which was disappointing.