End of module evaluation
The Context of Practice 2 module has been a major part of my learning of how to push concepts and theory through into design decisions and influences. I have learned through this module how to take a theory, analyse it, and then apply that specific theory to the design of a related publication, and I feel as if I have effectively communicated the points of my essay through the publication design decisions. I have explored contextual and theoretical research into how to apply a theory that is written about human behaviour into relevant and applicable design elements of a publication, such as the colour scheme, layouts, and content. I feel as though through this module my skills with layouts have drastically improved and I have been able to cater the layout design to the content, the overall design and the underlying theory of the publication. I think this is because I have undertaken more contextual research into the style of publication I wanted to produce than I normally would have done, and although I ended up not pursuing the way finding and label ideas to accompany the exhibition booklet, I have learned a fair amount about suiting designs to a specific purpose and particularly a specific space.
Before completing this module, I had never before successfully created a publication or piece of design work that was purely based upon and stemming from theory, particularly theory which I have applied to the subject of art and design. I think looking at the behaviour of how people interact with products and design within the specific space of art galleries has helped me steer the design decisions of the publication towards the audience to be able to convey the message I wanted to get across. I have always had an avid interest in sociology and anthropology theories and feel competent with writing essays on the subject, yet through completing this module I now feel confident enough to apply them to the design process more so that the work I am producing is being targeted to the audience exactly how I want it to.
I find essay writing to be one of my major strengths and thoroughly enjoyed researching into the topic I chose, 'field and habitus in art galleries', and although it was theory I knew about and understood before starting the course, I had never considered it within the context of the art world before. Although I feel as though my essay writing skills have not drastically improved during this module in comparison to Context of Practice 1, I now know I can apply the skills I have of essay writing and analysing theory to the design process more thoroughly to produce stronger pieces of contextual work. I definitely feel more confident going into Context of Practice 3 now though. I feel as though the way I wrote the essay, then began the publication, then went back to the essay to influence the way my publication was going and managed to create a dialogue between the conclusions of the essay and the content of the publication, which is a skill I desperately wanted to work on before progressing to Context of Practice 3.
One of my weaknesses throughout this module has been that I majorly struggled with defining down the concept of the publication, although utilising my essay writing skills enabled me to overcome this eventually. The other weakness I have had through this module is that I have not done as much self directed research as I feel I could have done into the lecture topics as I became overly interested in my essay topic and researched heavily into that instead.
This module has had its frustrating moments where I found myself really struggling, yet once I felt like I understood the idea of synthesis between theory and design decisions, my work has drastically improved. I think the work I produced for this module, the essay and the publication, have both been successful and have helped me understand what is being asked of us in Context of Practice 3 next year.
Context of Practice - End of Module Evaluation
