OUGD603 Extended Practice Brief 01 Students' Union Work Evaluation

Throughout the year my work with the Students' Union has been both very stressful and very rewarding. Each brief has been an exercise in listening to clients, really closely and intently, to truly understand what they want from each design. As someone who actively uses discussion as part of her design process the meetings with the entire Su were incredibly useful during each brief and the open, nature of the SU has allowed a true analysis of each brief from a number of perspectives. A particular example of this would be the elections campaign. We were given the theme. In any other situation this would make me very uncomfortable but the time we had to discuss the theme and what people were envisioning meant that I was able to run with the theme in a way that I was comfortable with. 
In many ways the SU have been more like collaborators than clients, because of their readiness to experiment. This has been very useful during a formative time in my practice.
Because a number of the briefs involved events or similar ways of recording success. It is easy to say that the designs I created for Freshers and Elections were really successful. We had the highest attendance yet for the Freshers Fair and every role in the SU was filled during the elections campaign, Something that hasn't happened for many years. 
There are of course aspects of each brief that, in retrospect I feel I could have done better; such as the complexity of the folds of the Freshers Guide and the branding of subsequent Elections events.  However, this was both the fault of me and the SU. Although it is great that my relationship with the SU was so casual it also meant that briefs simply came in conversation format, rather than a clear outline of everything that they needed. Although the conversations were and are great for getting the tone of voice of a project, the clear cut outlines are sometimes side stepped.
Despite this, I have learned so much through this brief about commercial print. My continued conversations with Pressision Print have been formative in my knowledge of what is possible and how it is achieved. For example the folding technology that has recently become available and was used on the events flyers I designed for Freshers is great to know about and I am sure will come in handy later in my career. So, overall, I am very proud of the work that I have done for the SU and incredibly thankful that I got to do it.