Evaluation

So far in the third year I feel as though I have made a huge amount of progress in my personal and professional development, development of my skills and my approach to my design practice. In relation to PPD, I have contacted several places to stock my papercut designs and have been approached by shops in Australia wanting to buy my products at wholesale too. I have made a huge amount of effort to get my work out there and get seen, with an interview in DigitalArts magazine on line and having my work featured in the magazine too. I have taken on various commissions, with the most current being to create a wedding photo album with papercut illustrations within it and I am on the lookout to gain more work this way. I have also put a great deal of time and effort into my online presence, with my shop, personal blog and website. Through developing this online presence I have had the opportunity to work with animators in LA, been contacted by BBC 3 in relation to my book covers and had my work in two magazines (Digital Arts & iDN) I have also recently been recommended by the animators from LA I worked with, to a producer in New York who has commission me to create some papercut alphabets, if a job goes through.

With this personal workload, the amount of briefs I have taken on has been relatively small, but this is because I really want to focus my designs and ideas to the processes, materials and techniques that these briefs have used. I feel making my current briefs more detailed and professionally finished is of more importance than just taking on more briefs. The amount of personal briefs I have made some changes to one of my briefs - the lampshade packaging brief, which I will develop into a stationery range instead of random products. I feel this is more appropriate as all the products will be paper based, with papercutting being used as a technique and materials being a focus.

A number of my briefs have had a crossing over of ideas which has inspired my development which I feel is a more organic way to work. This has greatly developed my skills and areas of interest, of which have changed from working for a design company, to self employment and freelance design.Through all the development of my briefs I now know that I'm more interested in being mainly self employed, while working freelance on design projects when the opportunities arise, with my main interests being focused on processes, materials, techniques, products and creating a well established brand of paper based products that I can sell and have stocked in appropriate shops. The next step in my development of my professional practice is to arrange a meeting with a business link advisor and set up as a freelance designer.