On Monday, our Programme Leader, Antje, gave a fascinating plenary session about the reasons why last year's students achieved the results they did, in their final year project. This explained what individuals had done either well or badly, to achieve the outcome that was their final mark.
Positive key points were:
- Print onto a wide range of media (fabric, metal, glass, wallpaper) to show a wide ranging notion of print.
- Conduct in-depth research and do a lot of development work.
- Vary the scale of what you work on, and only work up finished pieces where the increase or reduction complements the outcome
- If you are working for a site specific installation, ensure the work fits, is appropriate to and complements the site.
- Make sure your concept supports the worked outcome
- Consider quirky and powerful imagery, performance art, and entrepreneurship.
- Have considerable support materials to show how you developed your work.
- Integrate your techniques into your materials.
- Make sure the detailing is immaculate
- When using new technology and hand craft, ensure high skills displayed throughout.
- Experiment with your technique and work your ideas thoroughly through variations on a theme
- Ensure your concept is robust
- Consider how best to display your work as part of your design development
- Experiment widely with print techniques.
- Make sure your message/concept is clear.
Things to avoid
- Don't say in your project specification that you are going to produce 5 posters, then only develop 3.
- Don't use sloppy technique and process to make your outcome.
- Don't mount and display your work using sloppy process.
- Don't use the first materials that come to hand. Consider how your fabrics (etc) support the story you are telling
- Don't leave your best work in your portfolio
- Do not assume that winning a prize (eg Chancellor's Award) means your work fits your specification or meets the requirements of the final project brief.
I have highlighted 4 key points from the end of the lecture
* More variety in outcomes and scale
* 25% of marks are for support materials
* Continue to develop good ideas
* Differentiate your outcomes.
Statistically Government targets state they expect degree results to show 58% of candidates achieve a 2:1 or 1st. 53% of last year's students achieved this level, so Antje will be justifying how she and the verifiers came to this conclusion. However, I suspect we had more than our allocated expectation of Firsts (because there was some truly excellent work on display), and probably more fails than would normally be expected. But having listened to the reasoning, I could see how the results came out the way they did. (I suspect I would be a hard marker!)
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