Alternative Techniques - Research Task

My next module will be largely self directed and will focus on broadening and extending my skills. I have been asked to reflect on my graphic design practise to date and identify a preferred area of expertise, (editorial, typography, graphic illustration, branding, packaging, etc.) mine being graphic illustration.
I will begin by researching into developments of graphic illustration, then work of specialist practitioners, trend prediction/forecasting and job specifications.

My project will be structured around the completion of a negotiated live brief, a live brief, or a practice enriching self directed project. On completing this project/projects I need to concentrate on developing and documenting a complement of new skills. The project will be a host which I will exploit to the advantage of extending my skills set.


On the completion of my research I will complete a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats).

Strengths: My personal strengths lie within graphic illustration and I feel rather comfortable with Photoshop which has been my main programme of choice to use for many years.

Weaknesses: As I tend to be a lot more comfortable with Photoshop I neglect other programmes, such as Adobe Illustrator, which I feel restricts my work as if I had more skills on different programmes I would be able to utilise a range of different techniques and improve my work.

Opportunities: This will give me the chance to really improve my portfolio in order to show off my skills and make it more industry specific. This brief also gives me the opportunity to really improve my skills in other programmes and make myself more comfortable when using them.

Threats: Other personal commitments and time constraints could prove to be threats to me during this project. In order to try and avoid such threats I must remain organised throughout and perhaps create a personal time plan to follow.

Muffin Break Vouchers

I am currently working part-time at Muffin Break, a coffee shop. As a company we get approached regularly by charities requesting a basket of muffins to give away as a prize for raffles. This sometimes becomes an issue and my boss asked me if I could design a voucher which we could instead give to the winner so they could come in store and receive a free any size coffee and muffin for two. I came up with the following designs:

For these designs I tried to replicate the current, recent graphic design trends within the company with the colour scheme and hand rendered type.

Packaging Design - Urban Outfitters

During this project I began getting to grips with adobe illustrator, which is a programme I'm still not completely confident with as I always tend to use Photoshop throughout my projects. It was a good project to help me teach myself the basics as I approached my designs by creating each face of the box on illustrator, then putting them all together using the warp tools in Photoshop. It taught my the basics of vector shapes and the pathfinder and grouping.

I do like the final outcome of this however I would like to add to this project another time and create more designs using the packaging theme and perhaps make them a little more intricate as I feel this would really reflect urban outfitters as a brand.

This was my first ever packaging brief so my skills werent as good as they perhaps could have been and I have had fun learning new techniques and quite enjoyed the brief as a whole. I would like to work on more packaging brief as I feel there is still a lot more techniques for me to learn and improve on.