The last brief of OUGD406 was definitely my favourite brief as it gave me the chance to think about how much I have improved since the first week of term. For my general idea I wanted to talk about confidence as this really affected me and still somewhat does.
"Personally, the problem which seems to stand out the most from all the others is the lack of confidence with my own work and feeling as though I wasn't good enough for the course compared to others. I found the transition from sixth form a levels to degree standard graphic design incredibly challenging. This was because at the beginning of the term I felt completely out of my depth due to being not only one of the youngest on the course but also I felt as though I was one of the least experienced with software and graphic design as an entire discipline.
I also found that throughout the first few months of the course I did and still sometimes do compare myself to others based on ideas/concepts and how people were tackling briefs both aesthetically and through their ideas. This really affected my confidence as I found myself thinking that my own ideas wouldn't be valued as highly as the others. This in turn meant that I found crits and presentations of work difficult due to a lack of self confidence and belief.
However as the year has progressed I feel as though I have become more aware of how I was feeling at the beginning of the course and have realised that certain amounts of advice from tutors and other students have helped me. Gaining tips about forming a greater understand of "self" in PPP with John and Amber has been vital in developing a form of confidence and overall a further understanding that individuality is okay. Gaining positive feedback in crits from Simon and also members of the class has also been rewarding as at the beginning of term I seemed to gain only negative responses.
Although much like other students I have come across other problems most of which I have mentioned above the most important in terms of myself would be the lack of confidence. This issue doesn't seem to be something which openly discussed even though it affected a large majority of students on the course. "
I also looked into how professionals have spoken about confidence and I found a brilliant video on ted talks:
David Kelly on TED talks
http://blog.ted.com/2012/03/01/building-creative-confidence-david-kelley-at-ted2012/
His talk was quite lengthy and in depth but I found a short summary after watching to place onto my blog as a reminder.
David Kelley starts off his story in third grade, at Oakdale School in Ohio. His friend Brian was making a horse out of clay. One of the girls sitting at his table looked over and said, “that’s terrible! That’s not what a horse looks like.” Brian’s shoulders sank, he wadded up the clay and threw away his horse–and Kelley never saw him take on a project quite like that again. This type of thing happens all the time. People often become uncomfortable around creativity — and yet surely creativity is not the domain of only a chosen few.
Then he puts his own wish to the audience. Don’t divide the world into “creative” and “non-creative,” he urges. Let people realize they are naturally creative. “Let their ideas fly; let them achieve what Bandura calls self-efficacy,” he concludes. ”When people regain that confidence, magic happens.”
My final piece:
I'm really looking forward to presenting this to the new first years in the hope that it will help some of them and act as a form of kind reassurance and welcoming to the course.
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