Evaluation

At the being of this project we set out to make an exhibition that properly and professionally displayed our Final Major Projects to an audience of viewers, in the least we did that though how well it was done and how much better it could have been are questionable. Starting with what went right the designs for the posters/leaflets/initiations/banners/name tags where one of the best most successful parts of the process. Sporting the bright mustard which we had voted on and the eye catching glitch art it made for a great likeable poster which was flexible in its design and could be moved and adapted to all the different areas to help create a strong brand for the exhibition which could be used in every aspect. It however hadn’t always been this way and it had taken a few re-designs to get the final piece and quite often those re-designs where not supported by some members of the group which could have hindered the poster and kept it in a state where it tested negatively with audiences but was fortunately helped by the Fashion Department who refused to use it allowing for the poster to be remade into what it is and being a successful part of the process. This also influences the Magazine which was another very successful part of the Exhibition, the magazine worked its purpose by displaying all the exhibitors work in an easy to understand professionally printed catalogue of the exhibition sporting the same logo and brand as the poster also made it eye catching on the outside. It not only served its purpose well but we moved all the copies at the exhibition meaning none of the copies went to waste. The magazine did have some issues though out the process, like not being able to decide if we wanted it bound with a spine, or if we only wanted nice copied for the exhibiters then a cheaper version to the public, all of this though would end up benefiting the magazine as it meant we got the best possible outcome where it was a nice quality but a reasonable printing cost for it, this meant the end result still came out well and was another success. The health and safety assessment was also a success, every ground was covered and no incidents happened as a result, it was also carried out in a professional manner and had been written and planned accurately for the exhibition. The Instagram Social media was also a success, it managed to display all members of the exhibition probably and in a way that would attract people to the page and hopefully to the exhibition. This was helped by the use of proper hash tags which featured both location and exhibition to attract people from the local area who could realistically come to the exhibition proving it to be another success.

There were however a lot of failures and issues with the process, one of the first and main ones was the Venue; I disliked the venue from the beginning, for its placement, its architecture and its abundance of space. The placement didn’t turn out to be a problem but the size and architecture did as we were unable to use boards to both fill the space and hide the ugly interior. This was further hindered by the people who dropped out of the exhibition making it even emptier. Though if we had had a full class and the boards hadn’t rotten we still would have had issues as there wouldn’t have been enough boards to accommodate everyone since you can’t touch the walls and you can’t hang anything on them. Personally I think it would have been better had we used an actual exhibition space or just kept searching as that couldn’t have been the only option had we kept looking, overall it was hindered by a lot, such as the drop outs and the rotten boards, but even if that had gone right it still would have been very hard to fill the space with the sort of numbers we had and so would have had a similar outcome of issues and an ultimately heavily effected exhibition which suffered as a result by looking empty and disjointed. This brings me on to the failure of the layout; this failure is almost completely attributed to compromise after compromise, hindrance after hindrance. It began when we had first finished our design only to discover there were only 76 boards instead of the supposed 120, this meant cutting down the layout exponentially and sacrificing the atmospheric spaces we had originally intended for a flat open plan look which was more utilitarian in formation, this was the first big compromise. The second came when we discovered that all the boards where rotten and so had to change our plan to fit the new plastic pipe system, this was a big hindrance as it meant that all the presence of the boards would be lost and the exhibition would practically fade into the background with the skeleton deign. I had briefly tried a skeleton design earlier in the planning process but it was only mean to be used in junction with the boards, without the boards you get an empty hollow appearing exhibition which is what we ultimately got. The third compromise came on the day of set up when a number of things we had planned similar never got done for opening time such as lighting, magazine posts, and department names, all of these where sacrificed to time, admittedly this was partly my fault for leaving early but also due to people who had promised to help not keeping their word and so the work ended up being understaffed. This also came to the last compromise and that was of the final layout itself, in the final exhibition very few of the exhibits where they planned to be, this was because people wanted do there’s a certain way like with photography and graphics but also because if we didn’t shift it the would have been massive empty gaps in the exhibition due to the no shows and pipe set ups. All together all the compromised greatly hindered the planning and eventually layout to the point where there might as well not even been one and that all the work went into it all for naught. This is one of the biggest problems and failures of the exhibition and greatly affected the quality of the end result but almost all of that failure came from factors outside of our control but is a failure no less. Finance was also a common issue though out the process, it was probably the first problem we came across as the original person who took up that roll dropped out from it after 3 weeks but failed to inform any one or do anything to carry it on, this mean weeks of set back until we eventually re-assigned the job, but even then we didn’t have a fully fleshed out budget until only 3 weeks before the exhibition. Adamantly this was heavily hindered by how it started off but in taking so long it also hindered marketing and so had a knock on negative effect to that making it a failure. Marketing was maybe not a full blown failure but it certainly had its downfalls, the main hindrance being the fact we didn’t know how much could be spent on marketing till weeks in, it was also hindered by the amount of time it took to create invitations and banners from the original poster and how there seemed to be a lack of communication between marketing and design which hindered how long it took for posters to roll out and actually be on display and by the time they where it was too little too late. Originally we had intended to start full on marketing 4 weeks before the exhibition but due to all the planning issues we actually didn’t roll them out until only a week and a half before the exhibition was to happen; and even then I only ever saw posters around collage I didn’t see a single poster around town or on any boards or anything. All of this will have had an effect on how many people eventually come and so hinder the attendance numbers as this is something that could have been sorted out earlier had the budget been fixed earlier. One of the smaller problems of the processes was the Twitter and Facebook social medias, both of them where incredible failures as they were set up but nothing was ever posted on them due to the account details being held by one person but not shared to the social media team. This small discrepancy meant that they both went to waste and so also didn’t attract any visitors and they simply wouldn’t have known and so also hindered the numbers. The last problem is probably the biggest and certainly the longest on going and that was communication; it was constantly as a problem with people being too shy to talk at first, to unprofessional arguments, or the amount of passive aggressive comment and arguments we had which I have left out of the journal unless they impacted the group in some way. All of this meant that the team really worked as a team and instead worked against each other with the best interests of the exhibition rarely at heart for some people. They impacted every area in some way or another, whether though delays, staggered development, or just acting out of spite especially in the last few days of the exhibition all worked to create a very uncomfortable unenjoyably atmosphere for everyone and made the experience a painful chore to complete when it could have been much more if people got on.

The failures stack up high against the things which went right and because of this there would be a lot of things I would do different if I were to do it again, one of the first things I would do is try and fix the communication issues, one way for that is to never have an argument in the first few weeks which kicked of the big issues but personally I think a better solution would be two exhibitions. I know that the point of doing this is to work with people you wouldn’t normally work with but if the design department where to hold a separate exhibition to the more art centred departments and instead just colab and help each other out though out the process that would have ultimately made for better exhibitions though ones we would probably not learn as much from if it. Which is one of the most positive things to come out of this exhibition is the experience of it and the amount I have personally learned from it in terms of dealing with people and more volatile situations then what you’re normally use to working in art. Much of the Social Media and Finance/Marketing issues where out of my control as I wasn’t working on anything to do with that so there’s not much more I could have done other then try and push change forward in the meetings more. Time management is also another thing I would change, if I were to do it again it would be of much higher priority making sure that we wouldn’t end up in the situation with the layout that we were, this would mean everything would go up like it was meant to and there would be less panicking and all together better end product. The final thing I would change is the venue, if I were to do it again I would make sure to use a purposely exhibition space, this would be more appropriately sized and would create much better looking and feeling exhibition for the sort of numbers we had even from the beginning.

In conclusion a lot went wrong but an exhibition still happened but it was a very mediocre exhibition which could have been so much more if so many mistakes and compromises hadn’t had to be made, but having said that we did get the Design and brand right, as well as the legal aspects and some of the social media accounts which did bring at least some light into the exhibition at the end of everything. Overall though this was a miss opportunity in my opinion to have done something better if it had only gone better.