Cooking Set Evaluation

I originally wrote this brief to give me the opportunity to experiment with different medias I had not had the opportunity to use before, but to also design something I would enjoy and benefit me and my design skills. In some ways I feel I have achieved this I have used a laser cutter and a Fabric printer, I have also had the opportunity to use different craft skills such as sewing and collage. One of the main areas I wanted to develop and work on with this brief was collage, I started off with this approach but different decisions led me away from this. Although I didn't use this brief to fully develop this areas as much as I had originally wished, I do feel the areas I have used it in really work for the brief and help make it successful.

The target audience for this brief I felt would be really interesting and easy for me to work with, I wanted the opportunity to design for children again as my previous experience was really enjoyable but I also learnt a lot from it about my self and my design skills. With the cooking brief, designing for children I felt I had more freedom to design the way I wanted and this would give me more room to experiment with. I found again producing for children was a real benefit to me and the decisions I was able to make for the items I had more freedom with, however when it came to the packaging of the box I really struggled.

As I mentioned above my weakness in this brief was definitely designing the packaging, because I new this would be a problem I decided to start by developing the products for within the box and use these designs to help me put together the outside of the box. This initial idea was working well until I had problems with my idea for laser cutting. This brought up many problems and a lot of wasted time, my designs were too intricate for the cutter thus making the packaging too flimsy.

I have mixed feelings about the finished brief, I really enjoyed the first part; designing the patterns and making the products. However the packaging part was a struggle for me, until this point I thought one of my design strengths was design for packaging. I now realise to achieve a professional standard with packaging briefs, it would be in my works interest to work collaboratively with someone, for myself to work on the images and for them to work on the type and layout. I think the more I work along side someone with these skills the better my work will become.