the numbers

I don't think I ever mentioned in my many many (ahem) blog posts how my course works...Basically, I worked for two years without it even counting towards anything. Only the third and final year has anything to do with my final degree. All I had to do for the first two was pass so I could go on to the next year. The idea behind this is pretty logical I think: we are only judged when we're at our best. When we were all rubbish and clueless it really didn't matter that we were. However, there is a big drawback...we are only judged when we're supposedly at our best!...In a similar way to when you have an exam and you're having an 'off day'. It's possible in graphic design to have an 'off-project'. Sometimes the idea just doesn't click and it just never works out exactly how you want it to. But when you're in your third year of university and 100% of your degree is on the line......let's just say the pressure was on and no off-days were allowed!


I had four chances to be brilliant or disastrous over the course of this year that added up to different percentages of my final result:


1. Self-Written Project: 12.5%
2. Industry Brief: 12.5%
3. Dissertation: 25%
4. Final Major Project: 50%


1. Any project we wanted to do. Self-written you see...
2. A project chosen from D&AD or YCN competition briefs.
3. Only 6000-8000 words because it's a design course, not a theory one. Mine was 'How Has Technology Affected The Way We Receive Information?'
4. 50% AH!


AaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhHHHHHHHHHH! An off-project here could mean the difference between a first and the third! I imagine...I never actually worked it out mathematically...But still! 50% for one project!


The last thing we all had to do before the Easter holidays was present to the tutors our ideas for our final major projects. Major is definitely an appropriate word! We'd be working on this one project from Easter to the end of the year so we had to think of things that had enough scope to carry on for a few months and keep ourselves interested. And of course it had to be interesting to other people (ie. the tutors marking it. Did I mention the 50% thing at all?...)


I managed to come up with an idea only a couple of days before the day of the presentation. Before then I'd had no time to think about it because of the deadline for the industry brief. But once I'd given that in (where I last left you. The day the random old man gave me a random weed/flower) I got down to it and decided to take a slightly risky approach when picking the subject of my new project...


And to be annoying and leave you on a cliffhanger (and I can't be bothered to write more right now) I shall shove off.