Reflective Report

My name is Eva Montoya Prades and I’m from Spain. I was studying a degree in Design in the University of Barcelona but this semester I’m doing an Erasmus exchange in the University of the West of England. Here I’m studying Graphic Design and in my module I’ve chosen the Moving Image pathway. I’m pretty sure that my Erasmus has been one of the most amazing experiences I’ve ever had.

When I arrived to England I was really afraid: I thought that my level of English wasn’t good enough, I didn’t know if I could live without seeing the sun for a few weeks and I needed to find a room in a week. Initially I had a really bad time, I was very stressed, I had to get used to many new things and I really missed my family and friends. But day-by-day, everything became better. I started to enjoy my new university, I found a share house with really nice housemates (most of them were studying the same as me) and thankfully my level of English was improving incredibly quickly.

My first impression about UWE was that it was huge, with a lot of corridors and I thought that every time that I wanted to go somewhere I would get lost. My first class was also a disaster, I made a big effort to understand my professor but when the rest of my classmates started to talk to each other I couldn’t understand anything. However, I talked with Kate, my professor, and she was extremely nice with me and she tried to help me as well as she could. And as always, after a few weeks I could understand almost everything. From this moment, I enjoyed all of my classes because they were really interesting. I did a lot of new projects and I had the equipment and the knowledge to do as many things as I could imagine. However, time-management for a student is a big issue, but I’ve tried to do it my best and learn as much as I could.

In my module, I did four different workshops: Go Pro Cameras, Adobe Premiere Pro, Arduino and Adobe After Effects. They were really useful for me, the lecturers explained the software very well and I could use them in my projects. Besides the workshops that I must did for my module, I also did one workshop in 3D Printing. It was absolutely amazing and I was really impressed with this new technology. You could imagine an object, draw it with a special software and just printed it with these amazing printers. In a few minutes you could have the actual object.

In my home university, in Barcelona, apart from study Graphic Design I have also studied Product and Industrial Design. So I’m used to have more technical classes, as technical drawing, anthropometry, materials science or AutoCAD classes among others. For each class we had a different lecturer and here in UWE I had a functional tutor for the module, so it was really helpful. Besides, I think that in my home university we don’t have as good equipment as in Bower Ashton and I feel that in UWE I have more freedom to experiment and figure out what I want to do in the future.

It had also been a pleasure to be a UWE student, I really like the University, all the lecturers that I had and, in particular, Kate my tutor. Everybody was really nice and they tried to do everything easier to me. And of course, I also enjoyed meeting my new classmates and the rest of the Erasmus and the International students.

It’s a shame that I only have one more month to be a UWE student; I’m really used to be in Bristol now. Although it’s obvious that I miss my family and friends and I would like to see them everyday. However I’m trying to find a job because I want to stay here for the summer, until the start of my classes in Barcelona.

In conclusion, I’m really happy that I have chosen Bristol to do my Erasmus and I hope that when I’m older I can come back and remember all the good moments that I’ve had.

Online Portfolio

Hi!!!!!

I'm really happy to show my Online Portfolio. I've always wanted to have one but I don't know why I've never found time to do it. I think that in these days, you must have an online website or blog to show anytime you want your work to other people. And for that reason, I've tried to do it as best as I could because I wanted that this website was like my business card. Obviously, I know that when I go home I need to keep it update because it wouldn't worth it to do it.

In this web site (http://evamontoyaprades.weebly.com/) you can see all the works that I did in my home university and here in UWE.



Eva

Lectures and Workshops

Hi all!!!!!

In this post I want to explain you how amazing have been my lectures and workshops at UWE. I think it's not going to be easy because I've enjoyed with all of them. Anyway, I'm going to try to explain you my experiences as good as I can.

My first day at uni was overwhelming. I had to do a big effort to follow my class, my English wasn't as good as it should be. I understood my professor pretty good, but when my classmates started to talked I was absolutely lost. At first, I thought that I shouldn't be able to do any project or understand the classes but as you can see it wasn't like that. And besides, UWE was huge and it has nothing in common with my home university.

As you know, I'm doing Graphic Design and I chose the Moving Image pathway. I've really enjoyed it, we have been doing a lot of different and interesting projects. My tutor Kate has helped us very much, although sometimes she didn't explain us everything because she wanted that we felt a bit lost. Initially this was disconcerting me and it didn't have any sense. But I've realized that it has been a way to learn on our own and discover what we really wanted to do. Though we have had guidelines to realize our projects, we also had a lot of freedom to develop them.

About the workshops I need to tell you that I'd never done anything like that in my home university. In Barcelona we used to be a lot of students per class and we don't used to have enough staff to do this kind of classes. For that reason, I feel really lucky to do an Erasmus and obviously that I've chosen UWE to do it. I did differents workshops: Go Pro Cameras, Adobe Premiere Pro, Ardruino, Adobe After Effects and 3D Printing. I was lucky because I've had a really good instructors. They knew very much on the topic that the workshop was based and they were helping us when we had some doubts or we had been lost. In addition, the workshops have been very useful to develop our projects and when we requested we could ask them some advices in order to do our projects in an easiest way.

Well, I would like to have more pictures to show you how amazing my workshops and lectures have been. However, most of the time I needed to be 100% concentrated to understand and learn what they were explaining.

Ardruino Workshop

3D Printing Workshop

45 RPM

45 RPM

Stop Motion Studio

Eva

Professional Practice Module Presentation

Hi!!!

In this post I want to talk about the presentation that I did for the Professional Practice Module. We worked in teams and I did my presentation with Alan and Manami.

Although we are graphic design students, we were also interested in product design. So we decided to focus our presentation in designs that we liked and as both of us were from different countries we found interesting to talk about some designs that were characteristics from each country. We also realised that we were all want to talk about designs that consider aspects like sustainability, the traditions and the social dimension.

Alan is from Malaysia and he talked about Royal Selangor a Malaysian pewter manufacturer and retailer. He emphasized the fact that the company recycles old pewter items to produce new ones. So it remains the durability and sustainability of the product.

Manami is from Japan and she talked about the Japanese designer Takumi Shimamura. This designer used to work in different kinds of design. However, she wanted to talked about the he create new products with traditional methods, using local resources and collaborating with students, professional workers and local people.

I am from Spain and I talked about Curro Claret, a Spanish designer. He used to worked with recycled materials and with different institutions trying to help people in risk of social exclusion. I talked about a project called "La pieza" (The piece) that was realised with a Arrels Foundation. The real designers were people that are or have been living on the street. They made furniture with materials that they could find easily on the street and they assembled them with the piece that Curro designed.

As a conclusion we explained some features that we consider that every good product design must have:

- Universal: design thinking in all kind of people.

- Social: design thinking in what could contribute to the society.

- Traditional: trying to preserve the traditional design culture.

- Durability: design thinking in long-life products.

- Resources: use low impact materials thinking in the environment.

- Considering the 3 “R” rules: REDUCE, REUSE and RECYCLE.

I really like working with Alan and Manami. It was really surprised because we were agree since the first time about the topic the we wanted to talk about. And I found it absolutely interesting, I hope that the rest of the international students liked it as well!!

Eva

UWE / Bristol experiences

Well, my life in Bristol is a great experience from the first days. In general I am charmed with the city and though the English weather doesn't look like Spanish,  it's been better since a few weeks ago.

The university is totally different from mine. In Barcelona it was used to have class every day and in addition, apart from doing graphical design we also had classes of industrial design. The classes there are really structured and in general we used to follow the educational plan. Here in UWE, I am doing Moving Image's module and also I have enough projects that to realize. Nevertheless, here there is more freedom to develop our ideas, and in general the students can experiment much more, since there are many workshops to whom you can sign up. For example, I have done workshops on ardruino, go pro cameras, 3D printing, after effects or premiere. This is very useful, since with them a world of possibilities is opened you, because you have many tools to be able to design that this in what you are really interested in.

For the Professional Practice Modulate, we have had to do our CV and a Cover Letter. The truth is that for me this has been very useful, because I would like to find a work in summer to be able to remain more time in Bristol. In addition in Barcelona, we are not used to make Cover Letters and the CV has a different format. Therefore, in this sense it was a bit lost.

Well, I know that I have not written very much from my last post (and first one), but the truth is that I am not very fan of blogs. I know that's a shame because it is a way to remerber my experience here, but the truth is that I try to be busy enough enjoying it.

Up to the following post!!

Kisses.

Eva

 

My infographic CV (left) and my CV (right).

My Cover Letter.





These are my CV and my Cover Letter corrected.

 

Eva

I'm forever changed I will never be the same

Hi all!!

First of all, I would like to introduce myself, I’m Eva Montoya and I’m 24 years old. I’m from Barcelona, Spain and I’ve been living in Bristol since 1 month ago, doing an Erasmus Exchange to study Graphic Design.

I’m in a new country, in a new city, in a new university and I’m living on my own for the first time. So this is going to be an incredible experience for me!!! I’m so excited to meet new people and visit new places. And of course, I would like to improve my English as fast as I can, hehehe

My first impression about this city was that it rains almost every day and the temperature it’s a bit colder than in my country. But some days we also have sunny days, and you can enjoy more than ever. Bristol has a lot of parks that are really green and there are a lot of street art in the entire city. So if you have a sunny day (it’s really difficult to happen, but happen…) the best that you could do is to go out and walk around, to see as much as you can. However, there are a few things that I find really strange here, for example the size of the coins or the direction of the traffic (I’m going to explain that in other posts).

About the university, I only can say that it’s amazing!!! I really like all the classes and the workshops. The best is that if you want to learn other subjects or techniques we can sign up the workshops that we are interested on. We have lot of freedom to experiment and to figure out what we want to do in your future.

Well, for today that’s all!! I only want to say that it’s the first time I make a blog, so I’m trying to do it my best!!

Kisses!!!!

Eva Montoya

 

 This is my new campus