INSPIRATION

What inspires you...

For inspiration I often refer to Instagram, Pinterest, online magazines and blogs online. However I find I get the most amount of inspiration from stepping away from the screen. The best thing to do is to go for a walk and take in all your surroundings. Getting a breath of fresh air whilst looking at the surroundings really helps me. I believe that inspiration is truly everywhere around us. You just need to open your eyes and look for it. Another aspect of my life that I gain inspiration from is music, I love to listen to music whilst I am designing I believe that it enhances and relaxes me to produce better work. 

PERSONAL BRANDING

As a group we helped each other write a mind map about our personalities. We had a lot of fun with this and had a laugh about our personalities and traits. Examples of this include; a bit of a perfectionist, a little stubborn and hard worker. We had such fun we started relating each other to a breed of dog based on out personalities. 

I am a determined student who likes to have fun, I am well informed an am inspired by the world around me. I am known to my peers as feisty but fun and apparently I am much like a Chihuahua. I am small, feisty and strong minded. I love the researching and idea generation part of graphic design as I think it is one of the most important aspects as you cant produce the final outcome without the ideas and research.

IDENTITY

From this lesson i received an insight into different ways to communicate with professionals and those which are best to gain a response from. It showed the need to be creative and unique with how I interact with professional in order to be noticed. Something as small as an e-mail won't really show who you are or what you have to say. There are multiple ways to interact with people including sending a letter or a document or sending little gifts such as a drawing it adds a more personal side to the experience.

RADIM MALINIC - BRAND NU

BOOK OF IDEAS

I thought this lecture was very inspiring because Radim had a dream and he followed through and completed it. It wasn't boring it was extremely funny explanation of himself his work and the fact he likes his dog. He showed loads of example of his work, he showed us his process from his initial ideas and how he developed them to create a final brand identity. I got the vibe that he liked to have fun and work alongside others to create his work. I found this good and I thought his book was amazing as he explained the way he made it writing little bits at a time on the tube on his way home and piled them all into one to create his final piece. It was really innovative work which really inspired me.

TIME MANAGEMENT

This week we were focusing on time management and how valuable it is. If you manage your time correctly you will be less stressed and more organised which in turn will make you happier which is the end goal. Not only the work tasks we have but also things we want to do for ourselves like travel. 

In order to discuss this we made lists of things that we have to do e.g. work and things we want to do e.g. travel. Examples of things we have to do include; going to uni, eating, sleeping. Examples of things we want to do include; travel, draw more, be happy.

This then lead to us having to plan out a week and timetable in all the things we have to do to identify how much spare time we have and how much time we have to spend doing the necessary things. By doing this, it showed how much free time, outside of uni I have for the things I want to do. Even in my have to do's I could accomplish some of my want to do's. I will be using this calendar the following week to see if it is truly helpful.

This was my table and if im honest after trying to follow it for a week I didn't follow it slot by slot. I stuck to the rough guideline of it however I am quite spontaneous and I made plans with friends or something like that rather than sticking to the plan. I think the reason behind this was I didnt give myself enough free time. However I do think it helped with my time management. 

STRESS

ANXIETY

-fear or nervousness about something that might happen in the near future

We had this session so we could figure out how to handle stress and to identify what it is that trigures the stress that we have. We also had it to find out how to deal with the stress that things like this course will give us. 

In order to discover how to help ourselves handle stress and identify what stresses us out we answered the following questions:

• 1 What scares you?
• 2 What negative thought have you had today?
• 3 What stresses you out?
• 4 What do you do to de-stress?

This task helped me because it showed me that I am not the only one having the bad thoughts I have. It shows that there are other people in the same boat as me.

We wrote out the answers to these questions on little pieces of paper and shared them with the group which is how I found out that I am not the only one in this situation. My answers were the same as many others. My answers and those I related to were:

1 

- My work not being good enough

- Work piling up quicker than you are dealing with it

- Deadlines

2

- I'm wasting my time

- I am not going to get my work done on time

- There is no way I can catch up

3

- When I leave work until the last minute thinking it will be ok then getting stressed

- work load piling up

- When I leave work until the night before

4

- listen to music

- Eat

- Have a nap

After this we looked at Haiku. Which is a traditional form of Japanese poetry. Haiku poems consist of 3 lines and rarely rimes. These are most commonly written about a certain theme. Below is my own version of a Haiku.

I am not going to get my work done.

I need to focus.

Have a nap.

In groups we then had to think of a way to help people deal with stress, something that can be designed graphically. We thought we could use posters all around Leeds and having to find these posters that are all linked up.

BRIEFING

The aims of this module are: To support students in identifying areas of personal interest within programme specific creative practices by introducing appropriate principles, processes and resources To develop critical and reflective approaches to self-evaluation of individual progress in relation to identified creative practices. To identify and develop areas of individual creative interest through practical investigation and contextual research. To develop individual communication skills through programme specific practical and contextual research, development and presentation. Throughout this module I need to keep on referring back to these points to keep myself on track.