Evaluation on 1st Semester

We started the course with an assignment to do with blogging, this meant recording our thoughts and feeling on the internet. I think the blogging assignment although it sounds pretty simple has turned out to be one of the most continuously difficult tasks. A week didn’t seem to go by without some mention of what the class as a whole were doing wrong with the blogs. I think the evaluation reflective cycle has helped me a great deal when blogging, because I now know how to structure each blog and what I should be writing about. I would be lying if I said even now I am 100% happy with my blogs and I’m sure Steve feels the same, but this is something for my action plan that I can improve on for the next semester.

The other assignment A2 we had to create a website plan. I enjoyed this assignment looking back on it and it certainly helped when creating a website plan for A3 because we would actually have to create that website where as A2 was just a plan. I chose to create a website plan about Bobby Moore. The part that stands out for me the most was the screen designs, especially the measurements in pixels this was very stressful and meant I wasted a lot of time and effort from the start. I managed to pass this assignment first time which I was very pleased about. This gave me confidence for the next two assignments.

The A3 assignment was an advanced version of the A2 assignment so I felt pretty confident with this and was looking forward to developing a better looking website. I had forgotten however that we didn’t create any of the website content for the A2 assignment. The web content took a vast majority of the time for this assignment. I was happy with the designs for my site and received some good feedback. I think the next time I create a website I will plan for more time researching and developing the web content. A site can look fantastic but if the content isn’t what they were looking for then the user will go somewhere else so I think this is the most important thing on a website.

The other assignment was A4 which was split up into four very different sections. This Assignment was completely different to every other assignment I have ever done. I had to give my feelings and opinions about something I really knew very little about and it texted my creative skills something I hadn’t used for a lot time.

Part 1 was about comparing two different images from The Designers Republic, one bitmap and one vector based. This task I found to be extremely difficult and my opinions changed a lot about artist and designer work.

Part 2 was about image compression we had to compress two continuous tone images and two texted based images. I found this difficult because I wasn’t sure how to relate all the information into the report. I had a lot of statistics that I had recorded that I didn’t use in the report. The final compressed image I am happy with but I am not confident about the report I produced to show my findings.

Part 3 was image restoration, we had to completely restore an old Photograph and add colour to the image. I found this task to be a very long and tiresome process and think I may have altered the image a little too much. The fact I added colour at home to the final image and took the finished image to college and all the colours had changed was very frustrating. There is no way to get around this however and it just meant changing the colours over and over again. I think if I were to do it again (and I think I should have) I would try and keep everything simple use simple plain colours and try make the image sharper so that the lines on the jackets stand out more.

Part 4 was about creating banners, I really enjoyed this task and think I came up with some good ideas. The technique of drawing down ideas in short time frames I will defiantly use again because I got ideas that I wouldn’t usually use from the designs I created because to be honest I was just trying not to create designs that all looked the same.

The first semester at college it does seem to have flown by. I am very happy with the way the course is heading. Looking back at my formative statement I pretty much feel the same way except I have met some good people that I can get along with and some people that will give me good feedback on my work. I hope I can get one of the merit criteria for the two assignments but I will settle for two passes. The feedback groups I have been in last semester enabled me to get a good picture of other peoples work and meant I could get good feedback on my work. I like this was of working because you always have one or two people there to ask small details and you know you are progressing at the same rate as everyone else. I have never had this with other courses and it does give you more confidence when getting to know new people and wit work.

I have got a diary with a page for every day of the year, I think this will improve my time planning and hopefully help me with merits because this seems to be a key to gaining merits for most assignments.

I am looking forward to getting back to work so I can focus my mind on something more interesting than TV and sorting the mail at work. I am learning all the time on the course, but more importantly for me I am still very much enjoying the course and want to learn as much as I can.