What I have learnt about leadership is that I must gain the confidence to delegate slightly more than I have done, and that when I took the time to step back and relax a little, it became clear that my team where more than capable of handling things and that panic and stress help no-one. All in all I thought I was good at leading the project.

I kept the lines of communication well and truly open with various ways of us getting in touch with each other and sharing information. I learnt that Doodle is great for scheduling plans with large groups. Getting across the correct information to the right people in an easy and digestible way was very important, at times I may have provided too much information on irrelevant aspects for people. One of the main things I had to bear in mind throughout the project, is that not everyone is accessible at the same times; I sit at a desk all day so could remain in contact for vast amounts of time, but this isn’t the case for lots of people and is where I had to remind myself to be patient.

What I learnt about planning is that you can never plan too much, but that you can plan too early. I was very keen to get decisions and brainstorms underway, wanting to divide up responsibility and tasks from the very beginning. This would have been counter productive though, we needed a thorough understanding of what we where setting out to accomplish before planning the finer details. Also keeping clear and up-to-date lists of what needs to be done by who and by when is very important, ticking things off and monitoring progress is a sensible way to keep a project on track.

I have learnt a few valuable things about Graphic Design along the way, my meeting with Smith and Milton and the Watershed Comm’s team was very insightful. It showed me how to conduct a professional meeting, how to present work to a client, how to process a clients ideas and how quickly work can be turned around. I really learnt how valuable networking is to my industry and that being pro-active on social media can help to widen my reach as a designer. I also learnt that there are lots of restrictions when it comes to html emails, that although I had a design mocked-up in photoshop, that it wasn’t as easy as dropping it into the body of an email.

If I could do anything differently, it would be to spend more time and attention on the designing the signage for the event, trying to propose for extra budget to be used and making the most out of that opportunity. I would also liked to have run the event for three nights, it was a lot of work to be all over in one shot, three nights would have made it more profitable for the Watershed and all our hard work wouldn’t have been over in such a flash.