Tuesday, May 13, 2008

End of the Road

This past year has been a very mixed one for me. I have learnt so much in the space of 9months I would struggle to fit it all into just one blog post. I have picked out the assignments that I feel I have learnt the most from and will explain where that assignment has helped me develop my skills into what they are now, and also explaining some difficulties along the way.

CSS Beauty
This was my first experience with CSS (that I didn’t use a template for) and anyone with website experience could tell by looking at my code that this website was built by a novice. We had to give an existing HTML document a distinctive style using a CSS style sheet.

I have looked at the code recently and I have made quite a basic, static, one page website very complicated. But I now realise that this was vitally important at the beginning of the year because it is important to learn these things as a novice so you can improve with each website.

Team Work 1 - Team Work 2
The team assignment was one of the biggest of the year and also one of the most important for two reasons, 1; it was a double award assignment so it was worth two grades and 2; it was for real clients in the real world, so if they weren’t happy with everything we might not have had a project to hand in.

I was nominated as project manager by Marc and Ben. I was reluctant to be the manager because I didn’t see myself in this role at the beginning of the assignment but I am glad I was made project manager in the end because it was one of the most rewards experiences looking back at it (even though I didn’t feel like it at the time).

Our group found two external clients that were both prepared to have a website designed and created by students. The first was a hairdressers in Pontefract and the second a playhouse/nursery in Normanton. They wanted static websites with a small number of pages which was perfect for this assignment.

Both clients were very different, the hairdresser was very talkative and welcoming and told us what she wanted and what se didn’t. The playhouse owner was hardly in when we went to talk to her about the website so we had to talk to her secretary who didn’t really want us there, this was very beneficial for our experience of dealing with clients, but did give us some headaches about the final website.

Overall I think I have learnt more from this assignment than any other on the course because it is real life experience, and that can never be a bad thing.

Coca-Cola
This assignment was the only assignment that was design for print and not web. But this was not all that straight forward because we had to design lots of ideas that could be adapted to suit any product. This was because we didn’t know what we were designing for until we had finished our design phase.

This was strange for me but one I really enjoyed. I found myself drawing whatever came into my head at the time so after a couple of weeks sketching I had over 100 ideas.

Once we had been told it was a CocaCola bottle we were designing for I decided on a coca cola city and adapted the buildings to curve along with the CocaCola trademark curve. I also wanted a different website to show off my design even though it was print work so I made the tile effect I had used into a frame to go around the design. I think this worked well and I think it is one of my best pieces of work on the course.

PHP
This assignment was the second part of iMe the first being this blog and the last being the presentation I will be giving over the next couple of days (15/05/08). PHP is a scripting code that allows a web designer to design with more dynamic content. I didn’t consider myself to be a strong website coder but I wanted to learn PHP because I had seen it in a lot of job adverts that were looking for web designers.

I designed quite a striking looking website that was really very easy to build. By doing this I could give a large amount of time to learning the PHP code that would make the site dynamic. I had an idea of a user coming to my site and finding the right car for their requirements. A user would have a small number of options to choose from and this would generate the most appropriate car and display an image of that car on the driveway.

My experience with PHP was one of a lot of head scratching and annoyance that you had to upload everything to the host server to test it. I always like knowing that when I change a normal HTML site I have got the original as kind of a backup saved to the server just in case anything goes wrong and I need to recover it.

After handing this assignment I realised that I can work with PHP and do the basics but I certainly don’t see myself as a PHP expert in my chosen career.

iTunes
I like this assignment most out of all the second year and I think it showed in my final product. I think I am a design orientated website designer rather than a coder so this project allowed me to build a website that simply had to look good and make things easy to understand.

I would happily do this kind of task for a living, as I’m sure so many other people would. I think the fact I had used one very large stock photography image for the PHP assignment was the reason I decided not to use one as the main image of this site. This could have back fired on me but its is a decision I can look back on and say was the right one.

I think my final product is different but still easy to navigate and is a massive step forward in CSS/XHTML compared to the first project of the year. Everyone kept repeating to me that CSS would just seem to click in the second year and I think it has although I know I am still not using everything it is capable of I’m sure.

JavaScript
The last assignment of the year was something of an anticlimax. I went into this assignment full of confidence after just receiving my first distinction and I had recently had a successful job interview for a digital printers as a print designer. So I had high hopes that I could create something that would look good on my portfolio.

Half way through the assignment Steve told me I could use the images I wanted to on my website because they were copyrighted, which I knew but thought I could nudge around (stupidly). This meant I had to start the design phase again and thing of a new theme.

I thought of a weird sport theme and with time running out I decided to create something that I liked design wise. This is by far my most complex website I have created on the course. I have learnt some JavaScript but as I have mentioned before I am not the best coder so I am a little unsure as to why it works I just know it does.

First Blog of the year
Looking back at my first blog post of the year I have achieve most of the things I wanted too. I have more merits and distinctions than passes, I can edit and create CSS to work with an XHTML document and I have found a job in the design industry which is the ultimate goal for any student.

If I were to do the whole year again I don’t think I would want to do much differently because where I have made mistakes I have learnt from them so it has all been a worthwhile experience. I am really glad I decided to join the course two years ago and I have made some good friends along the way.

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