Overall I'm reasonably pleased with the progress I've made on this unit and the final designs I came up with. At the start of this project I struggled with Illustrator as I'd never used it before, but in the end i think I developed my skills enough to successfully carry out my design. I'm glad I chose to do 2 different styles of poster as it gave me a better variety of work to do which kept me motivated.
I found the presentation and crit process very helpful with developing my ideas because before each one I was convinced the designs were finished. It made me look at my designs in a new way and provided me with a very helpful forum for peoples opinions on my designs. I think that most of the major stylistic improvements in my design were down to the presentation and crit process.
I think my first design follows the brief well and it communicates the message in an effective way. I would have liked to have more time to be able to accurately reproduce Triedlers unique style, but that would have taken far too long when using Illustrator and I don't think my final design suffers because of it.
My Soviet styled poster was the one that challenged me and developed my skills the most in this project. The fact that my design was changed from landscape to portrait towards the end was a useful in exercise in learning to adapt a design for a slightly different purpose.
The techniques and features of Illustrator I used (specifically when applying the texture) were things I'd never been able to do in the past and I'm glad the needs of my design forced me to learn them correctly. This poster also made me evaluate my layout skills and helped me learn how to arrange things on a page in a pleasing way.
The project as a whole has also made me think more about my work routine and helped me to make sure that I keep working to a more regular schedule in future projects. The narrow use of software has developed a new skill set for me which I look forward to building on and utilising in an ongoing way.