system failure

‘System failures... we thought and thought until we stumbled upon something we feel is really affecting us and we decided to do something about it.

That’s right, we are talking about Graphic Product Innovation, our new course that we feel is failing us and this book will act as a SWOT anal-ysis of the course and go through what we feel are the STRENGTHS, WEAKNESSES, OPPORTUNITIES AND THREATS for us within the course.

As the course is shiny and new, there are still opportunities for it to be re-worked and rewritten to be London’s next super course.’

When it come to the Graphic Product Innovation course there are many strengths. The strengths are as follows:

- At the end of the year each student is expected to make a final book of the work that they have produced over the year. This is to be presented in the form of InDesign spreads.

- The course is small therefore there is more fo-cused one-to-ones.

- The course enables a broad variety of learning focuses.

- The university has provided the course with its own design studio.

- The chance to work on a live project with a company was given.

- The 10.00am start, not too early but at the same time not too late in the day.

- There was a chance to meet the 2nd years stu-dents and work with them on a project. Although the project wasn’t too successful, the idea of the project enabled the 1st and 2nd years to be able to discuss outside of class and therefore any question that the 1st years may have had could be answered by the 2nd year students.

- The course is new therefore there is always room for improvement.

- The name sounds very interesting and usually raises many peoples curiosity.

The next part of the SWOT analysis is the weak-nesses of the course:

- Unorganised, there needs to be a lot more general organisation on the course.

- The classes aren’t very structured.

- No budget in the printing room even though we work towards a final portfolio.

- More skill workshops should be introduced and maintained taught the year.

- The focus needs to be put on the ‘learning’ aspect instead of the ‘doing’.

- Little to no group work.

- Make it clearer as to what the course entails

- More workshops like the one we had with Tony Pitchard.

- More tutorials to see how we are getting along.

- Less group critiques so we only have them when necessary, example being near to the end of the project.

- Maybe have a choice of briefs rather than just one.

The next part of the SWOT analysis are the op-portunities we hope to get from the course and after pursuing this degree:

- More live projects and interaction with the ac-tual design world.

- Broad range of skills (picked up from work-shops, projects and self initiated learning

- Should make more use of all the facilities that LCC has to offer including: photography studio and dark rooms, interactive and moving images studio, green screen, film etc.

- This course enables us to act upon any inter-ests that we wish to pursue as the projects are really broad - we are not restricted to any one medium.

- Small course, opportunity to have more tutor student time and develop closer relationships to peers.

- As out course is so similar to GMD we could have some collaborative projects linking GPI student interests with the GMD pathways?

- As this is a new course job oppotuinites haven’t been defined as yet so we have the option to be modelled and shaped into who ever we want to be.

The next part of the SWOT analysis are the threats that we face:

- New course so there haven’t been any gradu-ates so we are not sure if there is a demand in the market for such a broadly skilled designer.

- GMD at LCC are seen as our hugest threats as they are on a similar course and would be applying for similar jobs...

- As GMD would be applying for similar jobs, we would be competing with more focused disci-plines designers.

GPI is an intense course to go on, you get a chance to tryout many different things!

My favorite is visiual lan-guage! because it was very creatve and interesting

My least favourite was sensor! because it was boring; time consuming and NOTbeneficial....

Favourite Brief3D TypeWhy?It gave us complete creative design and more importantly unlike most briefs it wasn’t a group project.It was also one of our first projects so attendance was high and the crit was well thought out.

Worst BriefHandover GiftWhy?Very little lesson time (due to bank holidays etc). I person-ally found the project impos-sible, we only scratched the surface of 3D but yet had to design and make a complex handover gift, of which hand many changing features.

GPI overall:I think I like most people I was expecting more skills lessons and a better cover-age of briefs as I felt a lot of the time I was just repeating myself so it got quite tedious. More emphasis should be on the specialised equipment we have at LCC like the print rooms.

I think Gpi so far is definately not what I expected, its really varied and seems more prod-uct design rather than graph-ics which i actually wanted to do. But i am still strangely enjoying it.

Favourite project : Pictograms

least favourite: Definately Design Toolbox!

My least favourite project is obviously, handover gift!!!!

the most loved one is The way we eat....project....

oh yeah, the reason why i didnt like the handover gift.... was because it didnt achieveit’s objectives in terms of learning about the facilities and techniques, it is3d workshop, and we were meant to learn how to use tools, but it resulted in thisdelirium and nervous break-down due to the fact that i dont know how toconstruct my shit becasue he didnt show me the tech-niques.....

GPI COURSE SO FAR: Could and should be much better, however their are some positives. Also bor-ing.......................

FAV PROJ: when we learnt composition etc in 1st term with coloured shapes, type hierachy etc...WHY? Because we actually learnt something about design instead of just being given a brief...which we can just do at home and not learn any graphic theory etc.

LEAST FAV PROJ: none, most of the projects need to TEACH us more, not merely giving out briefs. we need to learn SKILLS and design THOERYS

PICTURE OF FAV PROJ: you will have some already

please keep this annonymous, hope this helps!

Least favourite: Sensors, Han-dover, Toolbox, Straw bridge

Favourite: Boxing London, 3D type, How We Eat, Visual Grammar

I understand that the course prepares one to be a general designer able to work within diverse fields but I feel that at times the course is being written and restructured as we go on and I don’t feel the industry is ready for such broad designers as yet... It is exciting however to be a part of something so new and innovative!

I think that the course needs a lot of improvement, the motivation of the class lies with whether or not there is ‘a point in coming in’. this has become a big part of the course as all that we seem to do when we come is do work, the biggest improvement that needs to be made is for us to be taught skills in this time as the projects can be done from home

favourite: alter ego

least favourite: end users

Good things about gpi

- small class- friendly atmosphere - no nasty competiton- one to one time with tutors (silvia, not jamie)- no other course has this name, we are the only GPIs!

bad things- teachers not strict enough. We have become lazy be-cause we know we can get away with not doing the work.- too many projects going on at once. it would be better to have 1 project to concentrate on for 1 or 2 weeks.- not enough competition. By that i mean good competition, the kind that wil force you to work harder because you want to do the best.- crits should be more formal, so we feel our work is being seen and appreciated. This will force us to produce good stuff.

fave project:-broad oak farm + 3D type

least fave project:boxing london + affordances

Extremely diverse range of projects.

Favourite: alter ego

Leats favourite: Boxing london

I think the course needs to be more strict and more reward-ing to keep motivation up and to portray the real world attitude, but I do really like the course and think it suits me well with what I want to do in the future, but I know for some people its not quite the right course for them but I feel they should try bend the rules a little and make things how they want to to show their strengths

Favourite project: The Way we Eat - because it was longer and broader to do what you wanted

Least Favourite was...... wayfinding!

Here were some comments and bits of work by the current first year GPI students. There are many strong oppinions and we realised that people feel very strongly about the course and would like to help improve it.

PPD June 2010 ©