Design sheet best practice

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Here's an example of how to layout your work in response to your practical activities.

This is 2 pages using the 3 column design sheet.

As you'll notice it's very 'Image dominant' with a good amount of written content and this is how I would recommend you produce your work in response to any practical activities.

The top left-hand corner Highlighted in blue is the Planned intention/action plan or your plan for the activity. Plans are increasingly important as you go forward and they're one of the key things you're assessed against. Your plans need to outline what you're going to do and can be written up retrospectively - normally I write up an outline of what you'll be doing at the start of the sessions, so you can use my description as the basis for any plans. Things that you can include in your plans include...

• What is it you're aiming to do/learn/improve with regards your practice (Photography).
• What resources/equipment you'll be using (Use images).
• Floor plans if shooting pictures indicating the light type/direction/equipment see below for example.
• Where you'll be shooting/working.
• Who your model or assistant/s will be. 
• What your creative intention is (If relevant).
• If you're shooting images and your idea for your images is influenced by photographers or artists that differ from your main research done at the start of the project, you should include a Micro research element. This might be as simple as one image that demonstrates what you're work is based on. Along with the single image include the Photographers/artists name and the name of the work and where it was seen/published. 

The practical work  this should constitute 75% of the pages. Things that should be included here are...

• Images of equipment, materials and techniques used.
• Wide shots of the environment your working in showing the equipment and set up (Studio/darkroom/location).
• Contact sheets - showing a range of the ideas you tried. *Note if you shot hundreds of images pick out the 48 or 72  of those that represent what you did and make 2 or 3 x contact sheets of 24. if you use 2 or 3 contact sheets you'll probably produce more than one page for the whole activity.
• Screen grabs if using Photoshop showing new learning. 
• Your work from the activity at different stages showing a representation of what you did and how it came together.
• Images that identify processes.
• Annotations that support the images, but as much as you can let the images serve as explanations avoid writing large annotations.

The Gibbs Reflections This is the section highlighted in the salmon colour. This is the other bit that requires the bulk of the written material. (See the link in the sidebar to the right for an explanation). 

Read the explanation first.

The first 3 parts of the Gibbs Reflective method are kept to a minimum - literally 2 or 3 sentences should suffice. The 4th section is the key part and this is where you Reflect on what you've done in accordance with the criteria from the brief/assignment below...

In this analysis section you need to do as indicated in 4/D.P7 and 4/D.P8 above in the grid. 

(1). Explain why what you've done meets the requirements of the brief.

(2). How what you've done has improved your knowledge and understanding of photography - what have you learned and can you see the potential for it? 

(3) Identify areas of skills deficiencies or lack of knowledge/understanding and explain what you need to do to improve.

If you do all of this each time you have a practical session in the darkroom and every time you shoot you will almost certainly be working at a very high level. In time if you adopt this process, it'll become so easy to produce your work to a very high standard.