Project completed...

...and handed in to Patrick tonight.

I have just returned from presenting Patrick with half a rain forest's worth of papers and notes.

My PDP 5 / PDP 6 "Action Plan (2008-2009)" is now finito!!!!

Have fun, Patrick!

Evaluation of interviews...

Firstly, I am very grateful to the three interviewees, Patrick, Joanna and Sarah, I hope the questions were not too dull, difficult or demanding. Your assistance is very much appreciated,

Thank You.

I have been studying the responses and looking for any trends or similarities amongst my three guinea pigs. Here are some of my thoughts and deliberations (doesn't that sound grand!)

The answers were all very different and have made interesting reading.

My thoughts:

Interestingly, both Patrick and Joanna found the demands placed upon them by deadline and/or budgetary constraints proved to be positive, rather than negative, by focussing their energies and helping them to be more creative. Sarah, on the other hand, found that having to meet tight deadlines meant she was not always able to deliver designs to the standard she expects of herself. I wonder if this is because Sarah is employed by an organisation and works within strict "office hours", whilst Patrick and Joanna are independent designers who are able to put in the extra hours that Sarah cannot.

How each of them started in the industry was of interest to me. They all come from different educational backgrounds. Patrick has been in the industry much longer than the others, over 20 years and is the only one to indicate that he knew from an early age that he wanted to be a graphic designer. Joanna and Sarah have both had a varied career history and to paraphrase Sarah "fell into the job".

All three appear to enjoy the challenge of being creative and of trying to design to the best of their ability. Furthermore, they all actively strive to enhance and progress their skills by attending regular training courses; visiting exhibitions; viewing creative and visual media websites; by reading design magazines, books and journals; and by critical self assessment of their own work.

I was not at all surprised to see that each of them, when answering the question about software, mentioned the industry leading Adobe Creative Suite! The fact that only Jo uses Dreamweaver was not hugely unexpected as she is the only web designer of the three!

The choices of favoured fonts was also interesting as there was complete diversity among the answers - a fact that possible reflects the sheer number of fonts available to todays designers. Jo's fonts were obviously tailored to her area of expertise, the designing of websites, whilst Patrick and Sarah chose Gill Sans and Myriad Pro - two fonts which are among my own favourites.

The designers and artists who have influenced them was also compelling, with Patrick citing strong, British designers amongst his choices and Jo favouring my work!! Thanks Jo.

In all, I found their interviews to be illuminating and very thought provoking for me, and I will be sure to follow up on some of their answers as I seek to broaden my own design knowledge.

Thanks again.