OUGD502 // Reorientation to Uni

To get us back into uni and thinking about our work again, we did a orientation. This consisted of lots of questions which we had to make lists of answers to.

The idea behind this was to get everything out of our mind that we could be thinking of about uni, so we had our minds empty and ready to think about the actual work. It would also bring out questions that we wanted to be answered before starting the course again.

Initially we started off by making 6 lists of answers to the following questions:

1. 5 reasons why you chose this programme:
- Well recommended from previous students/tutors
- Course structure suits me
- Good tutors which all have/do work within industry
- Resources/facilities are good
- Good links to industry - visiting professionals etc

2. 5 things you want to learn:
- professional practise
- web design/design for screen/app
- better presentation skills/ how to act in professional environment
- branding
- practical techniques - screenprint, binding - build upon those i already know

3. 5 questions you want to know the answer to?
- Is the work i am producing relevant to todays industry?
- Can i have a distinctive style or do i need to be flexible?
- How much should i charge for design work?
- What sort of design practice do i want to work within?
- Would having experience working in design in another country benefit me? is it better than uk design?

4. 5 ways to evaluate your progress:
- feedback from fellow students
- crits
- blogging
- tutorials
- personal evaluations

5. 5 skills you think are your strengths:
- Good at working within groups
- Manage time well
- Can work across different platforms
- Editorial design work
- Type and Grid / layout
- Can pick up new techniques/software easily

6. 5 things you want to improve:
- drawing skills
- screen printing
- presentation skills
- idea generation
- work out of my comfort zone

After this we joined up into groups to compare our answers and find ones which were similar. We compiled a group list of the most 10 common answers.

1. Success of previous students
2. Professionalism: Presentations, work, placements
3. How to approach studios for experience
4. How to collaborate effectively
5. Powerful blogging
6. Taking advantage of the facilities
7. Methods of self evaluation
8. Finding new work processes
9. Time management & Organisation
10. More versatile design outcomes.










After making this list, we then swapped with another group, with the new list we had to turn the answers into a question which could be asked to the tutors.

1. How do you become the person you want to be?
2. how do we improve our contextual studies?
3. How can I experiment with a variety of presentation techniques?
4. How can i use my blog to evaluate my progress?
5. Through collaboration how can i improve my confidence?
6. In what ways can i be more professional and selective within my analytical writing?
7. Where can i find information on the business side of graphic design?
8. What resources do i have available to develop and learn new software skills?
9. Am i going to be prepared and skilled enough for the final year?
10. In what ways can i promote myself in the professional world?




After each group re-wrote the lists into questions, the tutors then looked over them all and created a group 10 common questions and then answered them to the group.

1. How did the course gain good reputation?
2. How can i improve time management/punctuality?
3. How do I improve essay writing skills?
4. How do we learn web and general software skills?
5. What rate do we charge?
6. Will i make it?
7. How can i evaluate/reflect progress?
8. Gain more confidence whilst presenting?
9. What do i want to specialise in?
10. How do i become better informed of whats going on in the industry?









From this we then got back together as a group and created a list of problems which we could encure over the course of our 2nd year.