I’m a student currently halfway through a product design program and thought that now was a good a time as any to post up what I had for review in this community. My plans for this summer were to pursue some internship opportunities but with little design experience outside of school I’m unsure of where I stand. I would really appreciate any sort of feedback you could give me.
Feel free to be as blunt as you like but I would appreciate helpful ways to improve myself if you can provide any.
Wow! Rarely comes across a student with such positive attitude. You’re right, and I am really glad that you’ve realized the importance of internships while you are still in school. It’s only your second year, which is what makes such attitude even more valuable. I don’t know if it’s too late to apply for internships now, but if you are willing to work for free, I don’t see why not.
Again, you are only second year, but your work is great. I see a lot of effort to tell a story in each of the panels. Most people just throw sketches together but they don’t mean anything to the reader.
I like your stethoscope panel simply because you have attempted to, not only put your design in context during the designing stage, but have the balls to sketch the human figure and hand. Although they are not perfect, the effort definitely counts. Keep practising. You can only get better!
I guess the only thing that you may want to keep in mind is the usage of empty space to leave some breathing space in your layouts. I think the panels are on the cluttered side. Maybe it’s your sketching style. I don’t know, but I just feel that there’s a more efficient way to layout your presentations.
I don’t know if you do this, but I will layout a script-like draft to remind myself exactly what kind of information I want to tell, then pick and choose the sketches/renderings/photos to use. I know it’s hard to stop yourself from showing everything you have done because you put so much effort into them, but for final presentations, it’s ONE idea that you need to sell, so be sure not to conflict that objective.
Thank you so much for your input. I can definitely see what you’re saying about overall page layout. It’s such a struggle to keep everything streamlined and still convey a clear message. Thanks for the advice on the listing of objectives for each page. That should really help out in the future. Much appreciated.
Nice skills and work for only sophmore year. Was ID part of your first year or was it a foundation year. Good stuff. Same comments as above about the crowding. ID and presentations aren’t drawing contests (even though they frequently turn into that in school) so for your figures if you’re struggling, find it in a mag and trace it (simple, so it doesn’t distract from your product).
Same comment on the attitude as well. Good luck to you.
This is extremely well put together for someone your year (heck for most seniors). I like to see that you have done the easy stuff that most designers overlook. Arranging nice panels, using a consistent font, borders, and colors throughout, showing your sketches in a way that makes sense… it is amazing how many people miss these things. Good work, keep it up.
I look forward to seeing you get that much better over the next couple of years. Your challenge will be to keep improving. From how well your attitude seems, I don’t think this will be a problem. A few Next steps:
1-Continue to push yourself on your form work. Try to communicate more and more complicated and subtle form work. Study forms from nature and bring them into design. How can form help tell your product’s story?
2-Begin to visually research. How can you incorporate Ethnography into your process? What insights can you bring to your work by studying people?
3-How can you use design to tell bigger brand stories and more complete consumer experiences?
These are pretty advanced things that most students would not focus on, but I think you have the ability in the next few years to tackle some of this stuff.
My only complaint is that your layout is very cluttered and it looks like you’re attempting to shoehorn too much stuff onto the page. The title fonts are especially waaaaaaaay too large as you’re attempting to plug the white space.
I would recommend not only dropping the font size, but maybe even changing the alpha so its faded out more. White space = good, 250 point fonts = bad.
The first Logitech page, to me anyways, is probably the best in terms of format but even there you need to drop the “Quick execution” text and pull the thumbnails down because they’re just too tight on the main graphic.
Thanks again for all the feedback. I really appreciate you guys taking the time.
Looking at this again I can really see everything that’s been pointed out. Layout is something I can definitely work on then along with my other skills. It’s extremely difficult to choose the few images for a page when you feel attached to more than a few of them and want to show them all. Targeting each page to a specific message in the future should really help with restraining that urge, though. The specific advice from mmjohns will help out a lot as well. I’ll also keep in mind the points that Yo brought up. Really helpful tips, I like knowing what I should be shooting for.
To answer Skinny’s question, at my school we have a foundations year but it seems to be a very ID focused foundations curriculum. Just the bare basics like Perspective, computer drafting, model making and a class in color theory. I don’t know what the foundations courses at other schools look like, so I’m not too sure how that compares.
Once again, I really appreciate all your input. This should definitely help out.
Editing is one of the most difficult skills to learn. Your on your way though, don’t be too rough on yourself. Where have you applied for internships. It is a bit late in the game for this summer. I know we hired ours months ago…