Richard Foley

End of the Road

2008-05-13T19:01:00.003+01:00

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.

Final Portfolio Design

2008-02-27T16:06:00.005Z

I have added the Homepage for the design on this weeks blog so people will get a better overall impression of the site. I was reluctant to add a banner because I didnt want anything to clash with the work on the site.

The image on the homepage will be more polished and less pixelated I have just edited this quickly to give the idea of what I will design.

Final Portfolio Screen Design

2008-02-20T15:46:00.002Z

This is a development of idea 1 from the previous week. I have decided not to use a large image as a background purely because it might not suit everyone.

I have purposefully left the design as white as possible to illustrate a blank canvas because I want to show of my work and not my website. I have used a grey text so it appears softer and less harsh against the white background.

I’m not sure how to get the image gallery to work at the moment but this should be something useful to learn for the future.

Portfolio screen designs

2008-02-14T12:44:00.004Z

Screen Design 1

Screen Design 2

Screen Design 3

iTunes Screen Designs

2008-02-13T12:52:00.007Z

These are my three final ideas for the iTunes redesign and feedback would be appreciated.

Idea 1 -
This design would have album images on the lower half of the page, these are represented by the white boxes. At the bottom of the page there would be genres and the albums I would choose would relate to the genre below.

Idea 2 -
This is a design inspired the ipod. The circle at the top of the page would control the music just like on the ipod. The album/singles images to the left and right of the page would get bigger on rollover and they would link to that album.

Idea 3 -
This design was also inspired by the ipod but from the TV adverts more than the product itself. The links would dropdown to reveal more options and the sub pages would change colour to suit whatever genre it was.

Competitive analysis

2008-02-06T22:32:00.000Z

A Website Design Business
http://www.vibegraphics.co.uk/

This is a website design company in Liversedge, West Yorkshire. They offer a range of products from websites, to any kind of graphic design. The website at first glance looks very polished and professional. But on closer inspection the sites white font blurs with the dark grey background and the rounded edges create a lot of background noise.

The site uses quite a lot of flash and things often sparkle and change colour even if you don’t move the mouse. This is off putting and could distract a user. I can see why the developer has done this because they are trying to show what they can do but it is a little to much especially on every link. I would say this company is aiming for people who would want a mainly Flash website rather than a static XHTML one.

The portfolio of work is well presented but the links on the right aren’t really links in the way I expected. I expected the links to open up external website, not show up in the main window for you to click on again. It is only because I am investigating this site that I actually clicked on this image, I user may over look this and not get to see any of the work. Most of the websites the company says it has created is just an image or screenshot of the website. This means there is no real way to check to see if it is actually being used. This is the major let down of the site, as I think a potential client would want to have a good look at the sites they have produced in full working order.

The site is quite interactive and does invite you to click around the page. I think the colour scheme is a little dull and doesn’t suit what the website offers. It would remind me more of a funeral colour scheme if it wasn’t for the ocean image right in the centre of the page.

This website dose not validate XHTML 1.0 Transitional, it has 30 errors. This is not a good thing for a web design company to do because it is very bad practice. If a client paid for a site that wasn’t valid the next major web browser to come out may not display the code as it should which would mean a redesign, and more money, which would have an adverse effect on the company.

Overall I like the way the website is structured; the layout and how things work give it a real modern feel which gives the impression that they know what they are doing. I would improve the site by changing the colour scheme to something more inviting that would appeal to a wider audience. I would also add real links to the work I had produced especially if they were on the companies profesional web hosting as it advertises on the homepage.

A Website Design Student’s Portfolio
http://www.matt-gibson.co.uk/

This is a website of a student who has just achieved a first class BA (Hons) Degree in 'Interactive Media Design'. He has got a range of work on his portfolio in the categories of Web, Print, Photography, 3D and Games.

The first impression you get from this site is that it was made by someone young who is trying to give his portfolio a cool/street look. I think he has done this well and the blue really works with the black textured background. I like this style but I know a lot of people may not because it is quite dark.

I think the about me page contains a little too much information. I think someone viewing the site would pay more attention to the portfolio of work rather than read a full page of text. Although having read the text it is quite interesting and relevant I think because of the quantity a client may just skim over it. This is not helped by a solid black background with white text which makes if hard to read for any length of time.

The work section of the portfolio is very clear and all the links are clearly marked with a healthy amount of room separating each of them. I like how all the images change to black and white on roll over because it lets you know that it is actually a link to another page. Again however this links the other page that is dark and will not be everyone’s style.

With every website there is a separate page with a description of the work you have clicked on. This is a good feature and lets people read the text if they are interested but also enlarges the image to a full page and gives you a launch site button if you want to see the site working.

Again as with the other site this website is not validate XHTML 1.0 Transitional even though he states in his “about me” section that he uses valid XHTML and CSS. An external client is not likely to validate the site like I have but it just shows that some people say one thing, but do another.

Overall this person obviously knows what he is doing and has got a good personal style in my opinion. I think his website is a little dark and wouldn’t suit everyone but even a novice could navigate through and see all the work with ease. I like this no nonsense approach to a portfolio.

Delivery Requirements

2008-01-30T16:10:00.000Z

XHTML (Extensible HyperText Markup Language) 1.0 strict
This will allow me to build all the content of my portfolio. I will use this version because I believe it is the industry standard at this time. I will be validating at strict level because it means my code will be the cleanest possible which should make my portfolio future proof.

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) 2.1
This will be used to give my portfolio a unique style. This seems to be the most up to date version that most browsers support and offers good features and accessibility.

PHP (Hypertext pre-processor) 4
I have recently been learning about PHP and most of the tutorials and the book I bought were on PHP 4. I will use PHP to create a feedback form and any dynamic content on my portfolio.

MySQL version 5.0.22
This version of MySQL is the one which my host server supports. I will use a database to work with PHP 4, so I can create a section where all my feedback can be easily accessed rather than the feedback going to my email inbox.

FTP (File Transfer Protocol)
This is used to upload files onto the host server. I will use Dreamweavers FTP facility for this.

SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol)
I will add my email address to my portfolio so visitors can contact me and it looks more professional if SMTP is used rather than in text.

Target Audience

2008-01-23T16:56:00.000Z

College Assessor
Stuart is 45 years old and works for BTEC as an external verifier for a number of colleges in the North East of England. He has been doing this job for 6 years and has a number of years experience in the education system as he has been a college tutor at Sheffield College previously. Stuart enjoys his job and likes going to different places and discussing education with new students.

Stuart has a passion for reading and likes to buy and read at least two books a week. He enjoys fiction and historical books especially those based on the two world wars. He likes to go on walks in the country side with his wife, Ann and Dog, Buster. His favourite show on TV is Top Gear and he drives a Alfa Romeo 156.

Stuart shops online for books at Amazon and often visits Ebay to find interesting war memorabilia. He has a 2 year old PC with a 17inch monitor with a resolution of 1024x768, uses Internet explorer 6.0, runs off a Windows XP operating system and has a 2MB broadband internet connection. Stuart would look at my portfolio after visiting the college to view peoples work on a different medium than paper based.

Web Design Employer
Mike is a 32 year old recruiter for Alpha Design Solutions in Leeds. Mike interviews a number of people for various positions within the company and his knowledge of the company is second to none. He enjoys his job when he manages to find the right person for the post but tries not to let work affect his personal life if there is pressure put on him from other departments. Mike is very talkative and enjoys interacting with people.

Mike takes an interest in new technology as he has studied as an Interactive Media Designer at university and worked in the industry for many years. He has a weekly subscription to several of the latest design magazines. Mike likes going out for meals with his newly pregnant wife Catherine. His favourite TV programme is Lost and he enjoys playing on the Nintendo Wii in his spare time.

Mike shops online for all the latest gadgets and accessories for his iphone. He has a 1 year old Apple Mac book with a 15inch widescreen, resolution set at 1440 x 900, uses Firefox 2.0, which runs of Mac OS X operating system and has a 10MB Broadband internet connection. Mike would look at my portfolio after receiving my CV and job application form.

External Client
Helen is 29 and owns a hairdressing salon in Castleford. She wants to put her business online. Her main objectives for the website are a home, pricelist, products, map and feedback page. Helen has been a hairdresser for the past 10 years after she qualified from Whitwood College. She enjoys the job a lot more now after she decided to set up her own business with an old friend from her college days.

Helen has a boyfriend of 3 years and likes to go into town for a social drink on a weekend. She is passionate about fashion and likes to buy new things even if she can’t always afford them. She drives an Audi TT and her favourite program on TV is Easterners.

Helen shops online for various things but mainly goes online to talk to fiends on Facebook and Myspace. She has a brand new laptop that has a 15inch widescreen, with screen resolution set at 1280 x 800, uses Internet Explorer 7.0, runs Windows Vista Home operating system and has an 8MB broadband Internet connection. Helen would look at my portfolio after a friend recommended it and would contact me over the telephone rather than by email.

PHP Research

2008-01-23T14:27:00.000Z

Introduction
PHP (Hypertext pre-processor) is a server side scripting language that allows web developers to create dynamic and interactive websites. When someone visits a PHP webpage, the host server will processes the PHP code. It will then interpret which parts it needs to show to a user (content and images) and hides the other content (file operations, math calculations, etc.) it then translates the PHP document into a HTML one. After the translation into HTML, it sends the webpage to a user’s web browser(3). This means the user only gets code that’s relevant to them and their specifications.

PHP.net describes PHP as “an HTML-embedded scripting language. Much of its syntax is borrowed from C, Java and Perl with a couple of unique PHP-specific features thrown in. The goal of the language is to allow web developers to write dynamically generated pages quickly.”(1)

PHP can be combined with a number of different databases, such as; MySQL, Oracle, Informix and Sybase. PHP and MySQL are cross platform technologies, this means they can be developed on one operating system such as Windows, but serve on a completely different one like Unix.

Some advantages to PHP are:
Free to download and use(2)
Open source software (OSS) this permits users to use, change, and improve the software, and to redistribute it in modified or unmodified form(2)
Supports many databases (MySQL, Informix, Oracle, Sybase, Solid, PostgreSQL, Generic ODBC, etc.)(2)
Runs on different platforms (Windows, Linux, Unix, etc.)(2)
Compatible with almost all servers used today (Apache, IIS, etc.)(2)
Reduce the time to create large dynamic websites(2)
You can create a customized user experience for visitors based on information that you have gathered from them(3)
Allows creation of shopping carts for e-commerce websites(3)
If you have basic knowledge of HTML the code is not that difficult to learn(3)
Operates on the server side so can save bandwidth

Some disadvantages to PHP are:
Can support too many ways to do the same things(4)
The naming conventions for functions and variables are not always consistent(4)
Error handling is not standardized and requires more effort(5)

Conclusion
As you can see from the bullet points the advantages of using PHP far outnumber the disadvantages. I think the main reasons a web developer would use PHP are; because it is free to use and to change in any way, so that it suits you and your needs. It is cross platform compatible, so anyone who wants to access the information would be able to do so. It allows a developer to create a more focused website that is more suited to a users requirements rather than a standard web page that may contain irrelevant information.

After researching PHP I have decided to develop a specialist car website where a user will select a number of different options such as; car make, engine size etc. and it will display their chosen car depending on the criteria they pick with a corresponding image. Once they have a car they can go onto a mini guestbook section where they can comment on the car they have chosen and view other people’s car choices and comments. This will allow me to use basic and more advanced PHP techniques.

References
1. www.php.net
2. www.w3schools.com
3. www.tizag.com
4. www.gamedev.net
5. www.oreillynet.com

Competitive analysis summary

2008-01-22T14:17:00.000Z

I have decided to post my competitive analysis summary on my blog so I have a solid reference point for when I write my full report next week.

http://music.nokia.co.uk/IE/frameset.aspx

This site was by far the most technical site I have analysed. It contained a lot of information and used a lot of advanced web design techniques, such as CSS roll over’s.

This site would suit anyone because although it contains a lot of information it is all well structured and the colours used are not offensive in any way.

The site is very clean and has a number of different ways in which to search for a song, such as, naming the artist or clicking a genre of music. All these good features however are let down by the fact that this site doesn’t support Firefox web browsers at all. I think in today world a big company like Nokia should support all web browsers and it shouldn’t say you have to change what you are using if you want to use the site.

This will annoy a lot of people and they will probably go somewhere else for the songs. I would say this site is a clean, modern looking website, but has no real wow factor and this would appeal to most people who use the internet to download becasue you dont really notice the design, just the images.

I would put this site in a modern/technical genre.

http://www.woolworthsdownloads.co.uk

The Woolworths download site really suffers from sticking to the Woolworths corporate identity. I think this is one case you could argue that they could have tried to distinguish themselves from the store a little to appeal to a more select market.

The images are all compressed poorly and the purple and red colour scheme is a poor contrast. I think the fact that half of the big links on the right hand side don’t work shows that this site looks and feels amateurish and when you are paying money over the internet this is the last feeling you want to have about a website.

I think this website is aimed at young girls and I would put it in a female/teen genre category.

http://www.bleep.com/

Evan though Bleep uses small images with no track name or artist to start with, it was by far the easiest to use. Its one page layout never changes and if you knew the song you were looking for you would find it pretty difficult to get stuck or lost using this website.

This was the only site I reviewed where you could look up a record label and it would give you everything they had released to date. I think this is a good feature to have some labels tend to stick to one kind of music, so if you like an album by a particular label more often than not you will like something else in their collection.

I think if the text colours were more contrasting to the background it would improve this site which would then give the site more visual cues which would lead you over from the left section to the right. I like the style and the big chunky “1 2 3” as a background is a good design and makes the site look modern.

I would put this in a street/urban genre of design.

Portfolio Goals

2008-01-16T15:58:00.000Z

Portfolio validates as XHTML 1.0 and the CSS 2.1 with no warnings.

I will do this because it means consistency throughout the website. Different browsers render different code errors differently so the website may be viewed differently in different browsers. By reducing the code errors it lessens the chance of consistency errors between browsers. Validating the website also makes it future proof so the site should still be viewable for many years to come. I will use the XHTML and CSS validator at http://www.w3.org/. This will tell me if the site is valid XHTML 1.0 and is the CSS is valid 2.1.

To use a new technique in the portfolio that I haven’t learnt on the course.

I want to either use some very basic Flash on the site or develop a simple Content Management System. I would like to have some knowledge of both but I think the portfolio doesn’t need to have both and I may struggle to learn two new techniques in the required time.

To create a portfolio that has a working print style sheet.

I have only ever created a Print CSS style sheet for one assignment and it didn’t work as intended. I would like to create this style sheet just in case any potential clients or employers view the portfolio and decide to print anything off. I think this may impress them and could lead to job prospect because I am thinking about this kind of thing.

To have the portfolio tested by five people in and outside college.

I would like to user test my portfolio on my peers and people outside the course. I think this would give me a good insight into the quality of the site and also find any errors in the design. I would do this by creating a prototype and then a short survey to test people with.

The Last Half Semester

2007-12-12T14:46:00.000Z

Looking back over the last semester I have realised this has been one of the hardest on the course so far, but hopefully one of the most rewarding. I have realised what it is like to run a project as the project manager of a team, deal with real clients in the real world, design and present a presentation on a design icon and be creative in reverse.

Our team assignment, A11, has turned out well with two websites that I believe suit the client’s requirements. Both the clients we found for this assignment have provided me with a great deal of experience because they couldn’t have been any different from one another. Our hairdresser client always had positive things to say and when we showed her ideas she always liked them and told us what we needed to add in a clear and straight forward manor.

Our second client owned a playhouse and we got always got the impression that we weren’t that welcome when we were presenting ideas and showing them our work, that’s when the client even turned up for a meeting we had arranged. There were two women who we say in the playhouse one was the owner and the other an employee who seemed to do all the computer work. This meant it was has to get the right feedback because we never knew who we were going to see. But over all I think it has been a valuable experience and one I am glad I took a major part in.

The team has worked relatively well together and has produced work I set, on time and to a good standard so I am pleased about that. I only threatened to hang Marc out of the window by his foot twice on the while assignment. If I am honest I will be happy to see the end of this assignment as I have found myself getting a little stressed at times with a number of things. I think this is something I could improve on for the future not to let myself get too worried about things that our out of my control.

The first three or four weeks of the A12 assignment were very interesting. The first part of this assignment we had to plan and then present a presentation on a design icon. After a lot of thought I chose Concorde as it would be interesting to learn about while planning the presentation. I think I enjoyed this presentation a lot more than previous presentations because I did enjoy the subject. I found I had a real interest in Concorde and learnt a lot more than I actually needed for the presentation, I think this is the main reason the presentation went so well and I was one of the few who didn’t have to do it again.

The second part of this assignment was to design for an unknown object. This meant designing in reverse. We simply had to design a number of ideas that we liked that could be adapted to suit any object. We had no idea what the object would be so I came up with a number of random designs that wouldn’t suit anything. I think I took the idea of just drawing anything that came into my head too literally, such as the drunken Packman and the lion shopping for zebras in the supermarket!

We have only last week discovered that the object we have been designing for is a Coca Cola bottle. I have around 100 ideas and a good 90% in my opinion wouldn’t suit a Coke bottle, so I was a little worried about the next phase of the task. I narrowed the designs down to three and then one final idea. I am fairly happy with my design but I do think I would have come up with a much better idea if I’d have known the object we were designing for from the beginning with.

To sum up this semester I would have to say it has been a though one. Planning and organising a team has been very difficult and something I’m sure I will learn a lot from. I don’t think I will ever design in reverse again because I have realised there are some pretty strange things hiding in the back of my head, but I have enjoyed this assignment much more than the team one.

BTEC Vs Skillset

2007-12-05T22:42:00.000Z

About Skillset
This is what Skillset states in the introduction of the document. “The following core units are intended to cover the main areas of competence that are at the heart of interactive media.” I have highlighted main because this document acts as a guide which shows people what they should know in order to work in a specific job role within the Interactive Media Community.

About BTEC
BTEC is an academic document that shows someone who wants to learn different aspects of interactive media where to go and what to do to achieve that goal. It is a much more in depth document and generally has six sections on each unit, ranging from, Summary of learning outcomes to Support materials.

The key differences
Skillset is a list of what you need to be able to do in order to work in a specific job role in the interactive media industry.

Example:
IM10 Initiate Interactive Media Projects
Title, Account Manager,
Task, budget and resource requirements

BTEC is a description of the units someone working in the interactive media sector should preferably have knowledge of and the ways in which someone can achieve each unit.

Example:
Unit: Cultural Interpretation
Task: Utilise and manipulate imagery for a communication task

Skillset is written by people in the industry and updated every couple of years.

Example:
Written in 2005, updated 2007.

BTEC has been around for may years and not updated as regularly, so some units are out of touch with the industry.

Example:
Unit: Design a web page imaginatively and creatively using advanced HTML code
Advanced HTML: tables, forms, frames, targets, CGI scripts

Skillset is more straight to the point and easy to scan through to find the information that you are interested in.

BTEC you have to really concentrate on the document and read each section to find what is relevant to you.

Skillset tells you what personal and technical skills you need to have in order to work in the industry.

Example:
IM1 Work Effectively In Interactive Media
How to respond constructively to feedback, whether negative or positive

BTEC is a strict structure that wants you to stick to its guidelines even if some are outdated and not practiced in the industry anymore.

Example:
A section of text after the introduction "Each unit sets out the required outcomes and content and includes advice regarding appropriate delivery and assessment strategies."

Conclusion
In conclusion I think that BTEC is a lot more academic in a way that would help students develop there understanding of what is required of them in order to work in the industry and Skillset is more useful for people who are looking for a job in the industry and want to narrow there job roles down, or see what they must improve on.

Skillset is good for people who already have a little knowledge of the industry because it doesn’t explain what is required in order to meet each goal, where as for a beginner the BTEC document would give someone with little knowledge of the industry a lot more information on what areas they need to learn and develop in order to do well on te course.

I think because Skillset is updated more frequently that it is the document I would prefer to look at more regulary. I think it will come in very useful in the future when it comes to finding the right job for my skills. I think BTEC is more for students to look at and almost record there progress while studying, this will ensure they have the best possible chance of getting the job they want after the course has ended.

CD Playlist

2007-11-16T13:49:00.000Z

01. Daft Punk - Da Funk
02. E-Z Rollers - Walk This Land
03. Alterbridge - Metalingus
04. Antony & The Johnsons - Hope There's Someone
05. DJ Tiesto - Adagio for Strings
06. Kasabian - I.D
07. Faithless - Drifting Away
08. Eric Morillo - Shine on me
09. Green Day - Time of Your Life
10. Prodigy - Smack My Bitch Up
11. Incubus - Drive
12. 3 Doors Down - Smack
13. Lucie Silvas - Nothing Else Matters
14. Groove Armada - At the River

Power, Presence, Impact

2007-11-15T23:56:00.000Z

I would have to say my favourite colour scheme would have to be red, black and white. Red and Black give an incredible amount of feeling to an image. By adding red text to a black and white image you seem to add passion and menace to it. Even if you have no idea what the films Scarface or Sin City are about, you just get a feeling from the images that there not going to be love fests!

A good use of red on a black/white background draws your eye more than any other colour combination there is. It jumps out at you and almost turns a flat image into an image you can touch.

White, Black and Red doesn’t have to be menacing however as Coca-Cola has shown for many years. Coca-Cola have managed to create movement and life with the colours, but is still holds the same amount of presence in their products.

The Colours are not only effective on a flat service as the White Stripes proved with their video for Seven Nation Army shows. It has to be one of my favourite videos because of the way it changes to the music. So simple but very effective, almost futuristic use of the colours.

Many great designers and artist such as the Designers Republic (Brain Aided Design SoYo) and Andy Warhol (Campbell's Soup I and Campbell's Soup II) have used this colour scheme to great effects.

So to conclude this blog entry Red, Black and White is old fashioned, but futuristic, menacing, but shows movement and life, and always in any circumstances extremely eye catching.

And if all this hasn’t persuaded Steve to agree, the last image just might.

Yorkshire Sculpture Park

2007-11-07T16:50:00.000Z

Today, we went on a cultural visit to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. I was looking forward to the trip as I had been one or two years ago, but to be honest I didn’t really take full advantage of what was on show the first time around. We started by looking at the map of where to go first. None of us (Me, Ben and Drew) are good at map reading so we just decided to head for the nearest sculpture and work our way around the entire park. I am glad we did this because it meant we were surprised more about what we saw rather than seeing an image of the sculpture on the map, before seeing the actual sculpture.

We had walked half way around the park before we came to the first sculpture that I found interesting (Most of the inspiring objects were in the other half of the park). The object was called, “Basket #7 .Oxley Bank”. It was just a large steel box at the top of a hill that you could climb up and sit inside. I think the fact you could interact with this exhibit made it my favourite of the day. The views from within the corrugated steal cage were stunning, even in the wind, and, well worth the steep walk up to it.

The Longside Gallery which came just after the Basket was for me the most disappointing part of the Sculpture Park. I just didn’t understand why people would, 1 – bother to do this in the first place, and, 2 – donate money after seeing this exhibit. It was a large room with hanging displays of Sheep’s excrement that had apparently been done by the sheep walking around. A lot of people would consider this art but I don’t. Art should require some skill to produce or make you see things you don’t see at first glance. Tucked away in the back room was a sculpture of a Pineapple which I though was far superior to the buildings main display and I would have liked to have seen this taking up an entire room rather than a load of sheep waste.

Back at the start of the park I found the Underground gallery very inspirational. The Underground gallery had rooms with sculptures that had obviously taken a lot of effort to produce. The first sculpture in the entrance was a huge pine cone made of thick wooden branches all intertwined called the “Stacked Oak”. It was apparently free standing. The second thing in the Underground gallery to inspire me was the “Leaf Stalk Room”. This room had a wall of twigs all tied together that hung from the ceiling with a large circular hole in the middle. This again must have taken along time to produce and in my opinion it was well worth it.

Walking around the park has been a good experience and I fully recommend it to anyone who wishes to be inspired by objects that are far from ordinary.

Here are some other interesting images -

Kiss

2007-11-02T00:23:00.000Z

I have listened to the feedback I recieved from my last post about the image I had breated for our A11 assingment. I have been playing around ith the setting of Freehand but I think i will keep the image as it was. below are some examples of what I have been doing.

I think I should design the images in a similar way to the logo design in the previous year and keep in mind one of Steves most memorable phrases, KISS, Keep It Simple Stupid. I also had this in mind when I created the fireman image.

I decided to replace the axe head with a banner that would welcome you to the site. I think it is a much more gentle and friendly looking image because of this.

Tracks with feeling's

2007-10-31T15:32:00.000Z

Incubus – Drive
This song always reminds me of my first year at college in Wakefield. I had left school and decided to go to Wakefield college rather than go to Pontefract with most of my friends. I knew no-one else on the course but soon made friends with people from Normanton. I couldn’t drive so I got a lift with them on a morning and this song is all they used to play, for what seemed to be the whole of the first year. I haven’t heard it for years and it does bring back some good memories.

Mark Ronson Amy Winehouse – Valerie
I don’t like this song because my girlfriends middle name is Valerie and I happened to mention that to my dad, so every time she sleeps over we are woken up in the morning with a very loud chorus of Valerie. It was quite funny the first time but after the 47th morning it has started to get to me. It should be interesting to see what ideas I come up with while this song is playing.

Green day - Time of your life
This is just a song for any occasion really. By this I mean I can listen to it no matter what kind of mood I’m in. It is quite an uplifting song and one many people will know.

I don’t really relate feelings to music that often. It has been quite hard picking the songs for this blog because I can either take music of leave it. It is just something that disrupts the silence in the car or background noise at work. I think listening to music while designing will be an interesting approach however, and, I am certainly looking forward to the next part of this assignment.

First half-semester

2007-10-24T12:02:00.000+01:00

The first half semester seems to have flown by. The first two assignments back have been a Team project (A11) which will last up until Christmas and a CSS assignment (A9) which we have just completed. We also have a year long assignment which is a Personal Development Profile (PDP) which you are reading now.

My feelings on the first semester are that it has been a big step up from last year especially with the team project and the Personal Development Profile. Our A9 assignment was in the same mould as the majority of assignments last year, essay writing and learn a new technique. This doesn’t stop me being nervous about this assignment however because I didn’t have the internet at home for the last task which was writing about CSS3. All the information about CSS3 is on the internet with little information in books, this made the task quite stressful and I found it hard to complete.

The reason the team assignment is a step up from last year is that we are a team completely responsible for our assignment with no lectures or prompts from Steve saying “you should be doing this at this stage” or “this should be completed by such and such a time”. I have been given the responsibility of Project manager so this is my role. I do feel this gets on top of me at times because I know if the team doesn’t pass the assignment it will all come down to me because I should have planned for every possibility. I do think the assignment is going well at this stage however and we have one website nearly completed and another in the design process.

The PDP assignment has been one of the most controversial assignments of the first half semester. Last year we were able to write about what we liked, this year we have to be given themes for our blog posts. I found myself struggling with this because I didn’t get chance to complete any of the blogs in college time. This is something that will change once back at college and something I feel can only help my posts. I also have struggled to comment on other people’s blogs but with the first years to comment on and all the creative work we will be doing for our next assignment I don’t see this being a problem anymore.

Looking back I enjoyed the designing of a CSS Shuffle webpage for our A9 assignment. I will admit that I didn’t enjoy it much when testing it in different browsers. Elements on the page started to jump for no apparent reason, they looked fine when the page opened but when you rolled the mouse over the text would jump down. I think with more experience with CSS I will learn a lot and feel much more comfortable, it is defiantly a tool to learn once you know the basics, by playing around and fiddling with rather than reading about it.

It was good meeting a client that had nothing to do with college. This is a client in the real world and all she is asking from you is to design and build her a professional website. The number of client meetings we have had have been worthwhile to see just how little the client knows about what they want, yes they want a website but they have little knowledge of what can be achieved. Although the website is only small we want to do a job the client will be proud of and one she can use for a number of years.

If I could have done anything else I would have commented on peoples blogs a lot more and given them feedback. I know this is something that I have let slide over the past month and something I will improve on in the future. I also should have written in my time plans an hour or two to complete the blogs.

Next half semester I will be adding time for my blog posts into my weekly time plans and making sure I get them uploaded on time. I will be posting at least 4 comments on other peoples blogs and I will try and be more professional in my approach to blogs.

I think for the team project I will create much more strict deadlines to make sure the tasks are completed on time and to a high standard.

How do you make fire and a man with an axe look friendly?!

2007-10-21T23:56:00.004+01:00

This is a task I created for myself after taking some images of the playhouse we are designing a website for in our team project.

I created the first vector image from one of the designs in the ball pool area of the building and the others are images of the playhouse.

Image 1

Image 2

Image 3

Image 4

Image 5

Please comment with any thoughts or suggestions.

Interview part 2

2007-10-17T10:59:00.000+01:00

Describe yourself in three words
Friendly, Smart, Hardworking

How would your measure the effectiveness of your interactive media products?
I would measure the effectiveness of my interactive media products on the opinions of the target audience and the client. I would be happy with any product if the end user and client were happy, a designer can have a style of his own as long as they are professional enough to realise that what they like isn’t always right for the client and end user.

How do you handle criticism?
I feel I handle criticism pretty well. I’m still leaning about design everyday and the new techniques I can use so if I took criticism badly I wouldn’t go far as a designer.

Describe a problem and how you solved it?
My most recent problem was creating a Print CSS page. I had the title image in a container div so when I tried to remove the image from the website so it wouldn’t print it removed the whole website. I soled this by reading the Web design solutions book about creating a print document. I will always try to solve a problem myself but I wont hesitate to ask if I am still struggling for a solution.

Describe how you fit into a team?
I think I am easygoing and would work well in a team. I am also hard working and have worked in a team a number of times before with no conflict whatsoever.

Do you have any questions?

Are there good job prospects working for this company

Does the job give me the opportunity to learn new things

Just the Job

2007-10-06T17:25:00.000+01:00

Junior Graphic Designer

Job Location:
Leeds, West Yorkshire

Salary:
£14,000 - £17,000 per annum

Job Type:
Permanent

Why do you want this job?
The job advertises great future prospects and would allow me to develop my skills with Photoshop, Fireworks and Illustrator/ Freehand. They are also looking for someone who is able to create web pages so this will mean everything I have learnt on the course so far will be utilised and hopefully developed by doing this job. I think this role would give me great experience in most aspects of interactive media and would give me all the skills needed to earn more money in the future. The starting salary of 14,000 to 17,000 is about what I am aiming for in my first interactive media role.

What’s your greatest strength?
My greatest strength is my ability to work well under pressure and my willingness to learn new things.

What’s your greatest weakness?
My greatest weakness is my confidence in my own abilities. But with the right guidance/experience I don’t see this as problem in the future.

Where will you be in 5years?
I hope to have gained a significant amount of experience within five years and I hope to have worked my way up to a job with excellent future prospects. I enjoy designing my own ideas rather than developing other peoples so hopefully I will have a stable job as a designer at this time.

What current interactive innovation attracts you most?
At the moment I would have to say CSS excites me the most. At the moment it is all a bit alien to me, but I have seen some of the designs that can be achieved using CSS and I cant wait until I feel more comfortable using it.

Who is you hero/heroine, and why?
I think my heroine at the moment would be Jane Tomlinson, I have only realised over the past couple of months what she has been through and everything she has done for cancer charities. I think being local, from Rothwell it really gives me great inspiration that someone so close to home has accomplished so much. Anyone that has been through what she has and made such great achievements is worthy of being called a heroine and proves that anything is possible - if you want it enough.

Design Mechanics

2007-09-28T10:38:00.001+01:00

If I am offered a job after the course I will probably take it because experience counts and I can top up to a degree after working.

In an interview, show work that the interviewer will want to see, that relates to their business, the best designer doesn’t always get the job.

Email and post your CV then phone to see if it has been received, if you really want an interview.

Clients are hard people to work with and sometimes they need to be told no that isn’t possible, the customers not usually right!

First three weeks back

2007-09-24T12:39:00.000+01:00

Week 1 was straight back into work. I new the first assignment would be another CSS assignment. This time however I would really have to develop my CSS skills and design a CSS website from scratch and not just download a template from the net and alter it to suit my designs. This task would come later in the assignment because our first task was to write a report on the way CSS has changed the web design industry. I new very little about CSS before I researched for this report but I have found a lot of advantages to why a web designer would use CSS appose to tables and cells. This task was in the same mould as so many we had done in the first year so I was pretty confident of doing a good job.

The following week, I had my report read by John and he made sum crucial points to where I was going slightly wrong. I was repeating myself in different paragraphs and talking about the same kind of thing but put differently. This is something I need to look out for when proof reading and I need to set more of a structure for my reports. John did seem quite pleased with what I was writing about, so with a little restructuring I think I will have written a decent report.

The second part of this assignment was to create a CSS webpage. I had spent most of the morning designing a Graffiti style website that would use a lot of images and looked quite good on paper. I had an image of a brick wall as a background image that went all the way down the page. I hadn’t taken into account that this file size would be very large so this would need to be changed. Realising this made me feel disappointed in myself because I have done a number of website plans now and I should have realised this at an early stage. I have altered my screen designs now and it looks a lot cleaner than my first but still has a graffiti feel to it.

Our A8 Assignment has been similar to those we had completed in the first year. We would be given a lecture, told what needs to be done and then basically get on with it. Our A11 assignment however was nothing like this.

Assignment a11 started off with our team (Me, Ben and Marc) trying to assign team roles. We decided on Project manager, Designer and Developer. We all published a skills profile and had a long discussion about who would suit each role best. I think myself and Ben both decided that Marc would fit into the designer role because everything on his skills profile was geared towards this and this is the role he wanted. We then left it up to Marc to decide who would be Project manager, I didn’t mind either way about being Project Manager or Developer as both roles required me to learn a lot of new things. Marc chose Ben to be Project manager because of his time keeping and organisation skills. This left me as the developer. I new if I was going to be the developer I would have to learn CSS to a fairly good standard in order to create the designs. I left that day fairly happy with the team roles and fairly confident we could create a good website for our client.

The following week we were to create a website screen design in order to show Steve and try and win one of the clients he had found for two of the teams. Our designer Marc had worked on the designs in self study and managed to upload a couple of them onto his blog. I think we weren’t as prepared as the other teams when it came to presenting our ideas to Steve on Thursday morning. I think our designs would have looked good with the right images rather than images represented by colours and roughly drawn vector shapes. I didn’t tell this to Marc at the time however so I am not blaming him. After seeing all the other teams’ designs after the break I wasn’t confident of our team being given a client. Just before dinner Steve took the Project Managers into his office and told them who would be doing what, we weren’t given a client which meant we had to go out and find our own.

I knew a small playhouse/nursery and both Ben and Marc new hairdressers that wanted a website. So finding a client wouldn’t be too tricky our problem would be arranging the team around to suit the project more. That afternoon we changed the team so I was Project manager, Ben would be the Designer and Marc would be the Developer. I and Ben seemed happy about this but Marc was less sure. I think this would be a good change for me though because it meant I would be more hands on in the development and meeting the client which would give me a great experience that I would hopefully learn a lot from, for the future.

We decided to go with Bens Hairdresser client (Caroline) at first and I arranged a meeting with her the following Monday. I had looked through the web redesign book about scope documents and found their own scope document on the net. I realised after developing my scope document that the client being a hairdresser probably wouldn’t know what I was asking her about when it comes to things like bandwidth and screen resolution. I altered this to be geared more towards target audience and competitors. I feel we gathered a lot of information and the designs should go down well on our next meeting.

The first three weeks back to college have been good to get back into a work environment and have made me realise I do still want a job in this industry. I just hope that CSS “clicks” sooner rather than later, as most people I talk to say it will!

Why you should employ me!

2007-09-12T22:43:00.000+01:00

Personal Development Profile
My self evaluation skills have improved while creating the blogs last year and I am very confident about most tasks I have to take part in because of this. I know my own strengths and weaknesses because of this. Creating this profile I can look back on everything I have achieved so I have evidence of all my skills as a designer. This will also help if I am required to complete time plans in a work environment because I will be able to evaluate my progress.

Attending Lectures, Seminars, Tutorials
Attending lectures improve my listening skills and note taking skills which will be very important in job situations where information cannot afford to be left out. Tutorials have improved my personal skills and help me gain in confidence about the work I have created. They also allow me to give and receive feedback on other peoples work.

Group work, Team Project
The group assignment will allow me to show my team working ability. I hopefully will get some good feedback from my team members which will show potential employers of my ability to work in a team. Working as a team helps you communicate more about course material rather that just talking to colleagues about what you’re having trouble with I have found myself talking about all aspects of the task. This will help when working as part of a team in the design industry because it is always reassuring to know that other people are there to talk to who have been in the same situation.

Oral Presentation
This is one of the things I was nervous about when joining the course at the start of the year but as I have developed my knowledge and participated in a number of Presentations I find I font get as fazed as I used to. This shows the confidence I have gained over the year, both in my own ability and in standing up in front of an audience. This is a very important skill in the design industry as I may be required to show my ideas to people and try to convince them to invest in my product.

Writing essays and forms of academic writing
The essays and reports required on this course always involve a large amount of research before them so this has helped me learn new things. I feel my English has improved as well as the language I use. Using the correct spelling and grammar will can only be a plus point when working in the industry as it will help me when creating HTML code and writing CSS from scratch.

Maths and Statistics
I am able to use programs such as Microsoft Excel to create spreadsheets and graphs. Although this is really not what I intend to do as a job it is always a useful skill to have, especially when presenting information to potential clients.

Observations
One of our biggest assignments last year was to gather influential images for our sketch books. This was a good exercise as it gave us time to analyse good and bad design practices. I do take more notice of colour schemes and especially fonts in others peoples design work a lot more after the first year. By doing this I feel good design practice will be imbedded in my brain a lot more quickly which means good ideas will happen sooner and sooner into the idea generation process.

Research
My research and reference skills have improved a great deal over the duration of the course. I have a number of books all about web design that have been very useful and which contain information that will be invaluable to me in the design industry. I am confident about searching the internet for the information I need.

Exams + Revision
I consider myself to be hard working this is why I have always studied hard in exams and will put myself under a certain amount of pressure in order to gain good results. Although we don’t have any exams on this course I still like to maintain the same level of intensity for each assignment. If I am going to achieve merit and distinctions I will have to go above and beyond the assignment criteria this will mean I have so revise each subject so it is second nature to me. This will show I am developing my knowledge and working at a professional standard.

I would like to improve my communication skills and talk more like a web designer. I feel the language I use is still at a baby designer level and this will not impress potential employees. I think half the battle when trying to find the right job is to impresses the interviewer and if I’m not using the correct terminology this may detract their attention from my work.

Planning Ahead

2007-09-05T22:26:00.000+01:00

Over the next six month I hope to achieve more merits and distinctions than passes. This would be my primary goal as it would show future employers that I am capable of doing professional standard work and also show I am willing to learn new and more technical things if needed in the future.

At the moment I know very little about CSS. I am happy the first assignment back is a CSS assignment because this is my second major goal that I wish to achieve this year. When the course ends I hope to be able, not only to edit XHTML and CSS code but create new websites from scratch. This is one of the reasons I enrolled on this course over a year ago now, so I am looking forward to learning something new over the next coming months.

I plan to take everything one step at a time and make sure my time plans are correct, not just to get merit grades but to use them as a check list. This will show me what I have done and what still needs to be done in order to complete all the tasks required. If I adopt this too all the assignments I don’t see any reason why I can’t become successfully employed in the industry at the end of the course.

I am not that confident about becoming a freelance web designer at the end of the course. The assignment we did over the summer opened my eyes to how hard it is to find clients and the amount of work that is required to even break even in the first year. I will not rule out this entirely but at the moment I am in the frame of mind that I would like to get experience in the industry before starting up on my own.

During the next few months I will look at jobs in the industry as it will give me a good indication of what an employer is looking for. By doing this it should give me the motivation to complete all tasks this year, as this year is going to be a step up in difficulty from the last.

If I can get the right job when I finish the course I will be very happy, but If I need to develop my skills or need any additional ones I will be more than happy to go into a third year of education and earn a degree, whether it be at Wakefield college or elsewhere.

Evaluation at the end of first year (10th May)

2007-05-11T11:17:00.000+01:00

When I started I wanted to learn and develop new creative skills so that one day I could get a job in the industry. After only one year I feel I have learnt so much I’m finding it difficult as to where to start. At the beginning I had no knowledge what so ever of any the software applications we have used on this course. Sometimes I felt this left me behind especially with Photoshop but the course is well structured and gave me easily enough time to learn what I needed to learn to achieve things on the course. I am very pleased with all the software applications I can now use such as, PageMaker, Photoshop, Freehand and especially Dreamweaver.

The first assignment we were given which we are only just ready to hand in has been a year long assignment about our blogs and sketch books. This is the first higher level course where my sketches and design processes are going to be marked. This did make me quite nervous at first because I felt I could come up with some good ideas but iv never really had anyone else agree with me like the way people have especially in the blogs. Although I have said in the past especially to John that I was doing the blog every week just to pass the assignment looking back I do realise it has been a very good tool which has let me show my work off, which has let to some good feedback form the group.

The second assignment we were given was assignment about creating a web plan for a famous Briton. The amount of work at first was hard to cope with because I had been out of education for some time and everything was new and a lot more intense than I had previously been used to on other courses. But looking back at that first assignment, with the knowledge I have gained that assignment would not take nearly as long if I were to do it again now.

The next two assignments we received at the same time one to do on a Wednesday and one to do on Thursdays. This was quite a big jump at this stage of the course because it meant less time to complete things so the pressure was on a lot more I felt. A3 was another website plan but this time we were going to have to create the website later on in the year so it was important to get this one right. I thought this assignment went well I felt I knew what I was doing a lot more after the experience from the previous one. I learnt some very important terms while doing this assignment. I think the way it had been set up was key to me learning all the information because it would have been easy for Steve to say you need to know all about a computers internal components, external components, software etc. so go out an learn it and you will be tested on it later. But the fact we had to build a site based on all of this information really meant it all just seemed to sink in somewhere down the line. I think it was a much better way of learning al the details that we needed.

A4 was my first experience with Photoshop. Even though the assignment only wanted me to use the very basic of its functions I still found it difficult. This assignment also introduced me to vector and bitmap images. When I look back I actually enjoyed doing this assignment but reading a couple of my old blog entries back you wouldn’t think so. I was happy with my banner designs and the image restoration. I new I had only just touched the surface with Photoshop however and that I would need to improve with this software a lot if I wanted professional quality results in the future. I am still learning Photoshop now but I feel I can defiantly create a finished product using this software.

A5 was the building part of the A3 assignment, and my first look at Dreamweaver. I was nervous about this because there was a lot of feeling in the group that using Dreamweaver and tables and cells would be hard work. I regret I got stuck straight in to designing my site without looking what I could have done. If I had created a template for my site it would have saved me a lot of time and effort in the long run because I had to go back through the site and change every page and having around 20pages to my site this was very tedious and I soon learnt from my mistakes for the next website I had to create.

The next assignment Steve built up to be one of the most nerve racking assignment of the year. This was because not only did we have to create a presentation about a famous typographer we were going to be given secret timed task that had do be done in a very short space of time. I feel my presentation went well and it has given my more confidence for when I will be required to do the next one. I didn’t like the timed assignment really and I was very nervous after completing all of these about what grade I would receive. But the fact I gained my best marks of the course so far made me realise that Steve’s rule by fear method must have worked on me. I was only one point of a distinction and this shocked me but it just shows what I can do if I put some real effort in and really concentrate at the task at hand.

A7 is the current assignment that is due to be handed in next week. This assignment we have to create a new company redesign a company logo, give the company a new corporate identity and put it on the internet in the form of a style guide and create a new CD design on a CD that we weren’t allowed to hear the music from when we chose it. I think the website I have created is much better than the first two and I think it is clear to see my progression from first to present website. Creating the logo took a lot longer than I thought it would it seems so small most of the time but I have realised a logo has to appear on everything so it has to fit in and not look out of place, this means getting the logo right is just about the most importing aspect of a company re-branding. The CD cover I have produced I am a little concerned about because although it is very eye catching it doesn’t seem to print off with the same vibrancy. This is probably going to be my next big lesson that I learn from the course and Steve has said many, many times that just because it looks like that on screen it doesn’t mean it going to print the same.

I have really enjoyed my first year on the course. I have learnt so much in just one year that I can’t wait for the next. I am a little nervous about the step up that the second year will be but I do know I will have to step up a lot if I want to get the kind of job I am after at the end of it. I don’t think I could go out and find a job in the industry at this stage but I certainly know a lot more about the industry and the job I may be doing at the end of the course. This was due to the old students that came in to give us a presentation about what they did when they left the course and what there day to day life is like working in the industry. I regret not going to the design mechanics studio but if another trip is on the agenda next year I will defiantly have my name down to go.

Goals For Next Year

Next year I hope to have created a full working website using CSS.

I hope to have a profesional Flash project added to my porforlio.

I hope to create a professional standard portfolio in the second year.

I want to have gained more merit grades than in the first year.

I want to achieve at least two distinction grades on the second year.

Weird Tourists and CD covers (2nd - 3rd May)

2007-05-03T16:36:00.000+01:00

This weeks self study I have concentrated on collecting images for my CD cover designs. I have designed a cover that requires a large number of images. I set out to find images that could come under the category of:
· Space
· Graffiti
· Alcohol
· Water/Sea
· Fire/Fireworks
· Blurry images of light
· Kebabs
· Aircrafts/engines
· Aliens
· Computer devices
· Solar systems

I managed to get some ok images with my digital camera while in Manchester. I must have looked like the worst tourist in the world taking Photos of brick walls and fences.

Back in college on Tuesday and it was very much a get on with it day. I had quite a lot to do this week so I was glad of the time. My CD cover all came together and I think it defiantly draws your eye in. I also think it suits my audience because I see this CD as more trance than ambient so the vivid contrasting colours and shapes give that design a unique edge.

I had time to get the CD booklet digitised ready for the feedback meeting the following day. I am not too happy with the design of the inlay and think I am going to change the centre image on each page. I like the contesting pages but the old fax logo doesn’t really suit what I am going for.

Thursday I concentrated on the CD Back cover which I decided to do white as another contrast to the very lively front cover. I inverted the colours on all the borders images and I think this gives it good contrast. I was frustrated my Freehand because every time I tried to add anything to the page it froze and told me it wasn’t responding. I don’t know wheather it was because I had a number of Photoshop images open which was slowing the computer down but it was annoying after 3-4 attempts to use Freehand.

I had a look at some pre-flight documents and found the information on the net to be quite confusing. Most of the sites I looked contained information that I didn’t need. After a lot of cutting and pasting I think I have got a good skeleton of what a pre flight document should be.

I think this assignment is going at about the right pace I hope to have the CD finished and prepared for Print by the end of next weeks lessons, leaving me the whole of the self study time to write a good evaluation and spend time error checking for anything I might have missed. I also would like time to concentrate on some sketch book work at the end off the assignment so it is ready to hand in with no stress.

I think the last task of the year will be something to do with marking each others work and trying to give it a fair mark. Maybe marking each others sketch books. I wouldn’t like doing this but I hope I’m right in a way because I hope I haven’t just given Steve any ideas!

The Fat Of The Land (25th – 26th April)

2007-04-27T14:08:00.000+01:00

It seemed like a lot longer than three weeks had passed by the time it came to Wednesday morning. We were given a lecture on the CD cover designs and then had a general question and answer session.

In the afternoon I continued to work on the style guide I hoped to get that finished this week. I designed everything in Pagemaker but to get a good quality image I designed the letterhead and continuation sheet in Photoshop also. Wednesday was a productive day for me and I was able to get everything I wanted to be done by the end of the day. On the night Steve emailed us all with a question about if we wanted to know the groups we would be in next year. I told Steve I wasn’t really concerned either way because I will be busy over the summer. I don’t mind who I work with for the group assignment I think everyone works hard in the group, obviously some have more knowledge on the subject through experience than others but were are all trying to achieve the same goal on the course, so I think some people will have to raise there game (especially me) for that task. But I see this as a good thing.

Thursday I spent creating a email template and touches to the business cards and letterhead. In the afternoon I got some good feedback from Steve, Craig and Julian about the look of my site. The main one was the use of the links on the left, if you were on a specific page away from the homepage a user would not know which link was for each page. This means poor usability and I want to keep the site simple and easy to use so I made those changes in the afternoon. Also in the feedback I found out that one of the album covers I had been looking at for inspiration was a particularly good one. It is an album by Prodigy called, “The Fat Of The Land”. I bought this album nearly 10years ago and its given me an excuse to annoy the neighbours with it all over again.

After the feedback I was able to show Steve my referral work for the Back 2 Basics assignment. I was nervous about this because I honestly thought when I handed the assignment in the first time that I had finished it probably and that I could achieve a pass grade at least. Steve seemed fairly pleased with the new look if the site however so I was pleased with that. He also game me some feedback about adding information to the bottom of the site so I added this to my current work in the style guide. It does make the site look more professional.

http://www.richardfoley.co.uk/Style_Guide/index.html

I still need a press release but I am going to do this after I have the CD cover designs digitised. Over the next week I will be developing my CD ideas and hopefully creating something that looks professional and suits the target audience.

Manchester Art Gallery

2007-04-18T12:06:00.000+01:00

This week I hadn’t planned to do much work. On the agenda was to gather more sketch book work and draw business card sketches. I have spent most of the week in Manchester. On Sunday walking around to find sum where different to have dinner I walked passed the Manchester Art Gallery and decided to go in for a look. I wasn’t expecting to find anything relating to the course but it would be a good opportunity to get some inspirational art work for my sketch blog assignment.

The gallery was completely empty (except for the very bored looking employees stood in every room). After looking around the rooms on the bottom floors I wasn’t really that inspired because it was mostly based on very old religious paintings.

I wasn’t until we went upstairs and looked around their numerous “please touch” exhibits that I began to get inspired. The exhibits upstairs were a lot more modern and I managed to sneak a couple of Photographs from the exhibits.

The one that really appealed to me is called Zephyr by Bridget Riley. It immediately court my eye because it was an optical illusion of waves using contrasting colours. It reminded me of my logo design and something I could adapt to recreate a CD cover.

I am glad I went into the gallery because I was stuck for design ideas for the CD cover but I now think I have several ideas that I can start the design process with next week.

This week I am going to be changing my Back to basics work to try get it to a pass grade and concentrate on my sketchbook work.

Inertia, it doesn’t stop

2007-04-06T11:34:00.000+01:00

Over the past week I have been focusing on the ambient world style guide and listening to the CD. I have also altered my time planning sheet to work from a Wednesday to Tuesday basis ready for the last couple of weeks at college.

I have created a website template for this assignment something I failed to do on the last one. This saves me a lot of time and effort creating each separate page and hopefully I would have to worry about the pages staying consistent throughout the site. I have tried to make the navigation fool proof by having two links to each page on the homepage and two links to the next page if the user wanted to travel through the site one step at a time.

http://www.richardfoley.co.uk/Style%20Guide/index.html

I still need to work on the sites aesthetics but I wanted to get something up on the net for feedback before we go back to college, because this is on the agenda for our next feedback meeting.

When listening to the Inertia by Glitch I find myself writing things down that are opposite to ambient for the majority of the CD. I can’t stop thinking of Wipeout, the old fast paced futuristic racing game for the Playstation. I am worried about the target audience for this assignment because my opinions and interpretations of the music wouldn’t match theirs.

I have also researched the definition of "Inertia",

“The property of an object to resist changes in velocity unless acted upon by an outside force. Higher inertia objects require larger torques to accelerate and decelerate. Inertia is dependent upon the mass and shape of the object.” www.servomag.com/reference/glossary.htm

I can only think of a spiral galaxy image with bright colours because it is constantly moving, but even that would be pretty obscure to the target audience.

Disappointed/Pleased (28th - 29th March)

2007-03-29T16:33:00.000+01:00

Wednesday began with a group feedback session about the logos we had produced. We had to choose four of our logos and get the groups opinion about them. The four images I chose are below.

I really like the logo I had done most recently (the first one in the image) but I also knew that it didn’t suit the purpose for this project. I seemed to get the best feedback about the last logo which to be honest I only decided to include that night. I thought the lines where too thin and the text would be too small once scaled down but after receiving the feedback I decided to develop this logo further, making the lines a lot bolder and using a simplified font for the text. I am quite happy with the final logo and I think it suits the purpose more than the others.

After this feedback were received our assignment marks for our website A5 builder. This turned out to be my first referral on the course (hopefully the last) the main reason this referred was because I had overlooked the title of several of the pages and spelling errors. This is very annoying because it is a simple error to change and something I should have picked up on before the hand in. In a way this could be a good thing because I am determined not to let this happen again on future assignments.

In the afternoon I was able to develop screen designs for the corporate identity. I have tried to design a clean looking site that is simple and easy to use. I have used blue and white for colour because I think they give an ambient feel.

Most of Thursday I spent researching logo guides in style guides, letterheads and business cards. I found a website about these which gave me a lot of information about good design practices. http://glossary.ippaper.com/default.asp?hlite=true&querytext=letterhead&req=knowledge/article/410 . It is based more along the printing side of design but still shows some useful examples and guides on what makes a good letterhead/business card.

During the day Steve had been busy marking our A6 assignments so we could have them by the end of the day. I wasn’t looking forward to the marks from this because I felt I had more chance in passing the website assignment than the typeface one. With Steve marking mine fairly early and telling me after that I had invented a new term “flogging” I was even more anxious when the time came to reading my mark. I was very happy to have got a merit for this assignment, I think shocked would be an understatement.

I am going into the holidays in a pretty good mood I think the current assignment is going at a good pace, which I hope to continue over the first two weeks of the holiday at least. I will have to focus some hours on my referral work which I hadn’t planned on but hopefully with that experience it shouldn’t happen again.

2007-03-23T13:35:00.000Z

I have just found this on http://music.hyperreal.org/labels/fax/catalog-1.html. It shows the colour scheme and style Fax used for its releases

I also go alot of information about Fax from 2350 which is a FAQ page all about Fax, its worth a look.

Freehand and logos (21st - 22nd March)

2007-03-23T10:23:00.000Z

Old logo

The week started with a review about what makes a good logo. I thought I had designed some fairly decent logos over the past week but on reviewing them in class I found I only really like one or two. This is quite disappointing and something I didn’t expect when I was creating the ideas. I think I have gone off some ideas because they don’t meet the principles of what makes a good logo.

Shape, Presence, Weight and Contrast. I was thinking about all of these in design work but it is very difficult to create something that would suit the company, be memorable and keep its shape scaled down.

That morning I also read the assignment sheet through again and for each pass criteria there is an element of software appreciation. I had not even opened a document on the computer at that point so I was a little worried about being left behind and that I had done a lot of idea development in the sketch book for nothing because I have done far more on this assignment than ever before.

We also received our CD albums before dinner, this was something I was looking forward to and I couldn’t wait to play it for Drew and Ben in the car. At first the music was very hard trance which nearly burst my speakers but as the album went on it began to take a more relaxed feel. I am lost about where to start in developing ideas for the CD cover. I will be doing a lot of brainstorming and writing down anything that pops into my head whilst listening to the music, this is quite a scary thought because who knows what I might come up with.

We then were given our first tutorial on MX Freehand as all new software does at first Freehand looked very complex and I knew it would take some getting used to. As the day ended I thought I had got a lot done the logos were in there final development stage and I just hoped I was doing the right amount of work at the correct pace.

Thursday started with us getting straight into the work, I started designing a site structure which consisted off,
Homepage
Logo
Colours/Fonts
Letterhead
Continuation sheet
Business cards
Email/Signature
Press release

If I have missed anything please let me know.

The afternoon I finally opened up freehand and started developing my logos I found it wasn’t too tricky developing my star idea but the others were much more difficult to produce. I think the star also holds its shape well when scaled down and is also visible in black and white which is very important. I got my idea from a book called letterhead and logo design 9, by Christopher Simmons, published by Rockport. It basically shows examples of what dozens of companies have produced. I would recommend it to anyone as it has got hundreds of ideas and will come in very useful when I am designing a professional letterhead.

Brain surgery and a new assignment (14th- 15th March)

2007-03-15T16:54:00.000Z

This week started early for me as I had a meeting with John on Tuesday. Steve had made me nervous about these meeting because leading up to this he told me that John would be getting into my head in these sessions. This obviously made me apprehensive that morning because I wasn’t really sure what to expect. We mainly talked about blogs and how to improve mine. So I will be adding a lot more pictures of my work from my sketch books. John does seem to have given me more confidence in my ability to write more confidently in my blogs and I feel now my blog will improve because of this.

We also talked about asking questions after presentations, or my lack of. John told me I should be a lot more prepared for upcoming lectures and set out some questions that I could ask. I knew Marc (an ex student) would be coming in to talk to the group the next day so I went home and prepared around 20questions ready for the lecture. This proved to be a wise thing to do because I found out some really interesting information. Marc said if he could go back and focus on something in particular he would focus on CSS and Flash. These are two things that we will be studying next year. There is a lot of talk about CSS and I am eager to know that all the fuss is about. Marc’s presentation was in a way better for me because he wasn’t super confident like Johnny a few weeks earlier and talked more on my level (No disrespect to Johnny intended at all).

We also were given our new assignment on Wednesday. I am looking forward to this assignment because it is one of the most creative assignments of the year without question, but it is also one of the biggest. We have to create a logo, corporate identity (which includes several things, including a full website), a CD booklet, CD inlay, CD body and pre-flight document. This week I will be gathering as much information on logos as possible because if I design a bad logo I know it is going to appear on every other piece of work for this assignment, so it has to be good.

We are creating all this for a music label. I chose an album called Inertia by Glitch. It is supposed to be a hard trance album from Germany but Steve wouldn’t let us hear the music until next week. This make me quite nervous because I am totally in the dark about what ideas I should be thinking of to produce a good album cover design, but I suppose this is good practice for the future because we are not always going to like the subject we are working on.

I am looking forward to this assignment and have a good feeling about it already which is strange for me at this stage of an assignment. We haven’t received ouR mark for the assignments we handed in a week ago yet however, so I am still nervous about getting those referred.

If your stuck for logos many are on this site most with plain white background so will look good in the sketch book. http://www.goodlogo.com/

Evaluation (A6 - Revert to type)

2007-03-11T23:34:00.000Z

I came into this unit not knowing what to expect at all. We were going to be given small assignments that we had to complete there and then, with no preparation in advance at all. We would be given a short time at the beginning of each task to ask questions and then that was it. This wasn’t all the unit was about however because we also had to create a presentation about a given typographer. I was given Claude Garamond a famous typographer from the 15th century. I knew right at the beginning of this assignment that this was going to be a tough.

The first timed assignment was to create a newspaper style sheet about Jonathan Gee. I was happy with the designs I had created and the finished product looked fairly professional. I was very relieved to get the first task completed. I chose to leave this one out of my folder however because I think I could have done more planning focusing on type faces and styles because, after all, this is a typography unit.

The second task was to create a paint tube label. I found this task much harder than the first because the label we were creating was a very small size, but all the text had to be readable. I enjoyed the designing work but it felt like I had done far more planning for this task than the previous one. I did have problems creating the design on PageMaker, but as Steve keeps telling me, it’s all experience and I feel I have benefited a lot from these small design tasks. The main thing I will take from this is drawing whatever is in my head without thinking too much and actually seeing how it looks on paper because this is where my best ideas seem to come from and I think I could do pages and pages of different designs so I think this is going to be one of my strengths.

The third task was to create an advertisement for Vodafone. I personally think this was my best design and used every second of the assignment time being the last person to hand it in. I do know however that my design wasn’t perfect. I received some good feedback from John after the deadline about making the heading only going half way across the page. I think I was trying to fill all the white space because my logic was the company are paying for each little square of space so I really should fill it all or they may feel they are wasting money on space that contains no information. I have realised that filling all the space is not necessary so this is something I have learnt from doing this task.

The next task was to deliver the presentation. I was extremely nervous about this because I knew a poor presentation would lead to a fail and maybe even expulsion from the course. I don’t enjoy presentation and practicing in front of my feedback group did not go well at all. I will admit that I wasn’t overly prepared for the practice session because I had created a presentation in Microsoft Powerpoint and decided to create another in PDF format. I will create all my presentations like this from now on because Pagemaker does give you a lot more options when it comes to typography.

The morning of the presentation I got up early and practiced and practiced trying to memorise the introduction and conclusion in order to start and end well. I also created cue cards that helped me a lot when making eye contact with the audience because I wasn’t turning away to remember the slides. I think the presentation went quite well, I talked about everything I wanted to and the changes I had made resulting from the feedback meetings seemed to go down well. I got stuck on some of the questions and realised I needed to read all my notes over again because I was worried about the presentation which put the final timed task to the back of my mind. So when the questions came about typography I couldn’t remember as much as I should have at this stage of the assignment.

So it was time for the final part of this unit, the exam rules timed task. This was the hardest of all the tasks and the one which made me most nervous. We were given two tasks to create a grid for a fact sheet and then create a fact sheet all about typography terms, with images for each. Only for this assignment we weren’t able to access the internet, look at our sketch books and not talk at all. So we had to remember all the information about newspaper design and typography details and give a definition of these with an image to represent them.

I started the task by designing a grid on paper. I decided on 7 columns, with a 4mm gutter between each and a page margin of 18mm. I did this because it would give me a flexible space to work on. The design work as in the previous tasks went quite well. I spent some time sketching designs and decided on a design I wouldn’t normally pick. This I think was a risk that did not pay off in the end. I was not happy with my final product at the end of the assignment. I think the text was too big and the headline didn’t match anything else in the document. I also didn’t leave myself enough time to actually create the sheet on PageMaker. I chose to describe the newspaper details first which was a mistake because I found myself spending more time on the images that accompanied each one rather than concentrating on the simple terms of typography that would be much easier to illustrate.

I am very nervous about my mark for this assignment because I am not sure I have been doing enough typography development in sketches. This was the hardest assignment of the year so far and I have learnt a lot about how I work under pressure. I have enjoyed creating ideas under these conditions and if I develop ideas at the same rate as in these tasks I will have much more ideas for future assignments, which can only be a positive thing.

Spelling Errors? No. Why not? (14th - 15th February)

2007-02-19T11:38:00.000Z

The day for testing each others websites had arrived. I was quite looking forward to this not because of all the feedback I would be receiving but because I could have a good look at everyone else’s site. We arrived Wednesday morning and got straight on with it. I had designed a 3page feedback testing sheet which may have been bigger than was required.

We moved around the class clicking trough each others websites and completing the feedback forms. I was relieved to discover that most people were around the same stage as me, everything worked but the small details needed altering.

After the testing it was time to go through the results and try to decipher the important things that need changing to the less so. I found out that proof reading is something I need to do more as one of my questions was, “are there any spelling errors, if no why?” I got some strange comments about that question that made me laugh.

After dinner we had time to change all the things that were necessary from the feedback testing. I increased the cell padding to allow the text more room in the boxes and changed the sub headline box. I think all that is left to do for the website now is proof read everything on the site as there were one or two spelling errors found in the testing and re-do the feedback form validation. Please have a look and comment if you have any improvements - www.richardfoley.co.uk

I knew Thursday would be another day of timed assignments because I overheard some comments made by Steve on the Wednesday afternoon. I quite like doing these timed assignments they seem to make the day go very quickly. I am not sure if I am any good at them at this stage however so I might be in for a disappointment when we get our results back.

The first thing we had to do was to create a masthead and layout for a newspaper. This meant creating a newspaper headline, setting up column guides, margins and gutters for text. We should have known by doing this that for the next task was to input some text and an image onto that template to create a newspaper front page.

I found this task fairly tricky because this is a typography unit so we will be getting marked on the quality of the layout. I found it hard to align all the text and get it looking professional without splitting too may words over two lines. I received feedback from Steve that rather than trying to edit the while block of text to remove hyphens it would be better to do small changes to paragraphs of the text and see if this works better.

With only one timed assignment left I am a little concerned that I have been doing more work on the design of these projects and not concentrating enough on the type and layout especially in my planning. I will try to typeface research and planning for the final task, what ever that may be?

Team Skills (7th - 8th February)

2007-02-12T16:22:00.000Z

This week’s blog is all about my thoughts on team work and which roles I think I will be most suited to when asked to work in a team next year. I will be required to work in a team of four each with a separate job in which to create a finished product.

If I had to split a project up into four sections I would assign these jobs,

Project Manager/Co-ordinator
Researcher/Designer
Developer/Implementer
Evaluator/Team worker

Project Manager/Co-ordinator, someone to create a time plan and who keeps people working to mini deadlines so the project runs smoothly. I don’t really see myself as a project manager. This is one part of projects I don’t really enjoy doing because it means planning every little detail and sticking to it and I would admit I’m not the most organised of people. I also don’t think I open my mouth enough to give my own opinion, which a project manager should do in order to keep the team moving forward and to keep to the deadlines.

Researcher/Designer, this is a job I’m sure most people on the course would like to do we are on a design course after all. I enjoy designing and I think my designs in the past have been easy to understand so that if I did give them to someone else to develop they could understand my ideas. I do however tend to listen more than I talk, which can be a good thing because I don’t miss much and take feedback onboard but a designer has to be able to talk about what they have designed if they are not going to be the person who develops the idea.

Developer/Implementer, this is a job who knows what there doing, in our case software applications. A developer would have to have the skills in which to create a professional product from the designs received from the designer and have the skills to read the information and interpret what the designer was trying to achieve. I think the developer would have to have good communication skills and take feedback well in order to work closely with the designer and the project manager. They would also have to be able to work well under pressure. I think I am quite calm in most circumstances of work and enjoy doing this kind of work as it gives my brain a chance to work. I am very much a “get on with it” kind of person and like to get straight into the work rather than have a discussion in a group.

Evaluator/Team worker, this job would be to evaluate every aspect of the project and each person’s personal successes and failures. This is a vital job for each persons development. Because this ob requires someone to be responsible, confident and not scared to hurt peoples feeling. It is this kind of person that I believe will go far and reach their full potential, but I know it is also something I need to work hard on. I think I am a good team worker and will always want to do my fair share if not more but when it comes down to telling people there doing something wrong in my opinion is where I may struggle. Hopefully this will get easier with more experience and I start to believe in my own skills as a designer.

www.belbin.com

Lost in London and timed design tasks! (Jan 31st, Feb 1st)

2007-02-03T11:31:00.000Z

This week has been one of the most tiring weeks of the course so far, both physically and mentally. The physical side was our trip to London I was really looking forward to this trip as it would give me the opportunity to see real professional art work up close and get to see some of the famous landmarks of the city. After the long train we arrived and bought our day ticket for the tube. We headed straight for the Tate Modern art gallery.

We arrived at the gallery only to find the vast majority of the building had been closed off or most of the art work covered up. I was very disappointed as we had travelled a long way to visit this gallery. After an hour of walking around the building and watching people on the slides we all headed to Leicester square.

Once at Leicester Square we were given the opportunity to walk around on our own and do the things we wished to do. I have never been to London before so I had no clue what to do. This was a bad thing as for most of the afternoon we spent walking around trying to decide where to go and what to see! If I were to go again I would defiantly do more research and also visit the designers museum which some of the class were really impressed with.

Another 10miles walking and it was about time to meet back up with the group and head back home. I was extremely tired and just wanted to sit down, so the train home was quite a welcome site. We arrived back around half 10 and I got in and went straight to bed completely exhausted.

Thursday was back in class and back to hard work. This was a very mentally tough day because we were given two timed assignments that we could be marked on and if we fail we would have to leave the course.

The first task was to create a newspaper style sheet about Jonathan Gee (not Jhonathan Gee as I noticed I had written on all of my designs after it was too late). I was quite happy with my designs and the planning went fairly well. Pagemaker still caused me a little headache but I was able to get a finished product, handed in on time at least.

The second task was to create a paint tube label. For me this was a much harder task as there was a lot more to think about and quite a large amount of information to go on a very small space. I enjoyed the designing work but once again trying to create what I had planned on paper led to far too much hassle for my liking.

All the text looked a good size on the screen but when printed at half the size it was tiny and very hard to read. I also noticed that I was trying to fill all the white space in my designs this was something I became aware of when I started to create the designs on the computer, so I was able to slightly modify it . I finished with something that was ok but if I were to do it again I would change the whole design. I did enjoy designing on paper I do like the technique of just drawing whatever is in your head and actually seeing how it looks. I hope to carry on with this more as I’m sure there are more timed tasks to come in the very near future!!

Dreamweaver Nightmares and Claude Garamond (January 24th - 25th)

2007-01-26T15:49:00.000Z

Wednesday was a day dedicated to our A5 assignment. I had played around with Dreamweaver over the past few days to get my head around the basics but now it was time to put into practice that id learnt. I managed to get everything set out and aligned in the right place fairly easily. But when it came to putting text onto the website I found it to be frustrating. The double line breaks every time you press return got to me at first and no matter what I tried I could not get my links to justify across the page as in my designs did nothing to ease this. The website looks ok at this stage (index page) but only if view in internet explorer. For sum reason Firefox stretches the logo and headline.

I left college thinking that the biggest part of the website was up and ready because I got the definitions uploaded and all the links working (I think). But I now know after looking through the site in more detail that there are a lot of things I need to do to create the site I had planned for A3 that’s the plan.

Thursday was a short day as some of our class were gong to a business in Huddersfield with Steve so we were given the afternoon off. I mean sent home to work. I used this time to gather information about my presentation subject Claude Garamond. I decided to print pages and pages of information off, far more than was needed as I intend to go through the notes and highlight all information I wish to include. I think doing the assignment this way I won’t miss anything out that really should be included in the presentation and it will also show my progress along the way which is needed for higher grades.

This week seemed to have flown by but its London next week which I am very much looking forward to.

Glad to be back (January 17th - 18th)

2007-01-20T12:24:00.000Z

It felt good to walk back into college on Wednesday morning. Iv missed having something to focus my mind on other than crashing cars and the royal mail. I walked in and sat with my new feedback group, Jamie and Marc. I worked with Marc in the last feedback group and I think we worked well together. I have not yet worked with Jamie but we have talked on breaks and he seems to know his way around most of the software so I’m sure the new feedback group will work well.

After break we received our grades. I was very happy to have achieved a merit for A3 and a pass for A4. I am eager to know what I did well for the A3 assignment, because I felt I had done a lot more work and certainly stressed a lot more over the previous assignment A2 where I only achieved a pass. Maybe if was because A3 was fairly similar in layout to A2 so I was more confident in how I spoke about things.

In the afternoon we were given our assignment A5 which meant we had to learn the basics of Dreamweaver. I found the basics quite confusing, but I do think it is a software where you need to spend time, for lack of a better word playing with to learn through trial and error. Dreamweaver is a major part of web design so I am looking forward to creating my first website and hopefully continue to achieve a high grade.

Thursday was a day that confused me a little. The assignment we received is a bit of a mystery. The first part is to create and give a presentation on typefaces. I was given Claude Garamond to talk about, I have never heard of him before but we do have a lot of time to research and plan a presentation. The second part of the assignment is a timed exercise, we will be given a task on deadline day and have to plan and create a finished product in order to pass that unit. I think this represents what working in the industry will be like more than anything we have done before but is also unnerving that your place on the course could be in danger if you buckle under the pressure and not get anything handed in within the deadline.

So to sum up the week it does feel good to be back and the new feedback group seemed to work well together on the time plans we created, so a positive start. For both assignments I will basically have to get my head down and put the hours into learning the software and gathering as much feedback as possible.

Evaluation on 1st Semester

2007-01-15T13:50:00.000Z

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.

Christmas Pressure (December 20th -21st)

2006-12-23T17:41:00.000Z

This week started with a quiet confidence that I had everything in order for Thursdays hand in date. But as the week went by my stress levels grew larger and larger until I had to work until 3-4am Thursday morning just to get all the little details ironed out. I didn’t enjoy this one bit. I will avoid this as much as possible for future assignments and try and get everything ready the day before!

I think with Christmas and work being really busy lately it hasn’t been my best couple of weeks, college work wise. Not to sound like Scrooge but I am certainly glad it is only once a year!

I hope I have done everything required for the two assignments but I have to admit I am pretty nervous about the result. The feedback I received from people who have seen my work has been mostly positive which gave me a bit more confidence. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t looking forward to the time off college but I do now feel very settled on the course now and feel have made some good friends.

2006-12-15T20:57:00.000Z

Wednesdays was all about getting on with our A3 assignment. I felt quite ill the morning of college which steadily grew worse as the day went on. So ill that I was only able to copy the work I had done from Microsoft Word into the Pagemaker template by dinner time. This was seriously annoying as I new the next day I wanted to have the assignment very close to finished in order to get feedback from my feedback group.

After not eating anything at dinner because I didn’t think I could stomach it, I felt really drained and tired. I did manage to get half of the image I will be using on my website into the template which I am glad about. I only have minor changer to make in the A3 assignment now. I wish I could have gotten more work done in college but feeling like I did my head really wasn’t up to it, so I left college at three to get an hour in bed before work.

I felt much better Thursday morning and was looking forward to completing the A4 banners. I spent quite a long time looking and changing the fonts on the banners. I tried to look at books in the library and use a similar font to those. All the fonts seemed to be bold or italic so I have tried to mimic this in my designs.

The group feedback in the afternoon helped with a lot of small but crucial details that could mean the difference between a pass and a fail. I will have to change 3 of my goals for a start this is something I did so long ago I thought it was completed but it is a key part of the assignment and sets the tone I feel for the entire report so they must be right. I will also have to create a homepage for my site, as I had intended to go straight into the definitions. I am glad to have found this out at this stage as if I had handed the work in next week I’m sure it would have failed which would have disappointing.

Action plan for this week is to make sure all the little details are completed over the weekend so I can have a few days to concentrate on both conclusions.

Crazy Colours and To Scale (December 06th - 07th)

2006-12-08T13:09:00.000Z

The week started with a review of what we need to do in order to pass our A3 Assignment. I then handed out the feedback forms I had produced to people sat around me in order to get important feedback about my designs. I found this useful for the look of the website but not so much the colour scheme. I had tried to use the colour wheel as examples of colour I could use and found most of the colours I had developed for people to pick wouldn’t look that great on website. This led to me choosing a colour scheme from the colour index book.

Developing the screen designs I was able to learn a lot from past mistakes. I simplified the measurements of the template by doing the site to scale as soon as possible. I felt this was a good approach and it worked well for me when putting everything into Pagemaker. I have to admit I chose I final colour scheme once the template was up on the computer because I have had trouble in the past in trying to use the colours in my sketch book, which don’t transfer well to the computer. I think this will improve only with experience.

Thursday we started with a good test of our design skills we had to design banners in 120, 90, 60 and 30 second intervals, and create 6 designs for each time limit. I enjoyed doing this as there was very little thinking involved. I don’t know about anyone else but I was just concentrating on not making all the designs look the same, so when looking back some of the designs were awful but there one or two I liked from each section.

After break we had to chose our best design from each section and develop that idea in 3minute sections. We had to draw the banners to scale and think about font styles, sizes, colour and background colours. This was a lot harder for me than the first task even with more time trying to get something that would look good on the screen as well as the sketch book as I said before I have found to be quite tricky.

The afternoon we were left to get on with our A4 assignment part 3 and 4. I was reluctant to do anymore work on the image restoration (part 3) just in case Steve told me it needed to be started from scratch in the feedback sessions later that day. I started work on the banners for part 4 this was the first thing I had created in Photoshop and stress really wasn’t the word. I realised I had done the to scale banners in my sketch book to the wrong scale doing the designs 75mm x 80mm instead of 75mm x 90mm.

The afternoon wouldn’t get much better, I first used Pagemaker to create the banner until Steve told me it should be in Photoshop, one hour wasted. When creating a space in Photoshop to work on I created a banner to 75mm x 90mm when It should be the actual size of the banner and not scaled down. I was working on this scale for a good 1-2 hours before I realised.

So after wasting the best part of 3 hours doing the wrong think I was very annoyed. Iv tried to put it down to the fact I was tired rather than just my dimness but Il let u be the judge. I did however still get to grips with Photoshop basics eventually and was able to get a banner half finished that I could show Steve in the feedback.

Marc said the letters at the to were to squashed in and the D was too close the edge, and Steve didn’t know why I had a diagonal line at the bottom and not the top. Any different feedback would be a great help.

My action plan this week is all about learning from my mistakes which there are so many of this week! I will create a better feedback sheet including fonts and a better colour scheme sheet (A3) make sure my scale measurements are correct (A4), know what software were using to create the images (A4) and create the image outline correct first time (A4).

Endless Definitions and Image Restoration (29th - 30th November)

2006-12-01T14:50:00.000Z

The week started with a presentation on fonts I know very little about fonts and only know the basic Times New Roman and Arial fonts. I have discovered over the last few weeks that fonts are a lot more important than I first imagined. After this we were able to concentrate on our assignment A3. For me this was trying to simplify my definitions in a way that would suit my target audience. This was split up by a demonstration on how to use the tools of Photoshop we will need to complete our other assignment A4.

Thursday started with a talk on what we must do for our Photoshop work, we were given an old image and told to rotate, crop, create a border, retouch scratches, blemishes, fold lines, adjust levels of, contrast, brightness, sharpness and finally add colour to the image.

After college I went to work as usual. After work at around half 10, I’m usually exhausted and just want to fall asleep in front of the TV but for sum reason all I wanted to do was add colour to the image. I spent around 3 hours on this from around 12pm to 3am.

I enjoy the lectures first thing on a morning because they always give me something new to think about. The work for A3 over the past couple of weeks I have not enjoyed doing. Each description only has to be 75words long but it is the research and then trying to put everything in your own words seemed to drag on an on.

I think I may have made a couple of errors in my definitions by making them too technical. I am going to look back through them and change the language a little so they would suit my inexperienced target audience more. This is annoying but something that needs to be done.

I went home Wednesday evening pleased with myself that the definitions were all complete and looking forward to the next day because it would be my first serious look at Photoshop. I liked working with Photoshop all morning it wasn’t until after dinner when I started stressing about small blemishes that I could see when zoomed in.

Colouring the image also was very stressful I found each colour I added to the image turned out to be too bright and unnatural. The image as it stands now is below I would take anyone’s feeling on how to improve it onboard. I still think I have someway to go but it is a good contrast to the original.

The colour I added to the image on the monitors at college changed completely when I opened the image on my laptop at home. This surprised me but it does give me first hand experience of how colour can change depending on the computer settings and the monitor it is viewed on.

I think working on Photoshop until 3am was not the best way to work as my eyes would have been tired and my senses muted. If I was to do it all again I would wait till the morning. I have found I am defiantly a night time person. I don’t like getting up but find it hard to get to sleep on a night at times so I often find myself working till the early hours of the morning.

I no conclusion I am happy about how the two assignment are progressing an I’m glad we are starting to reach a more design orientated part of the course as the next few weeks is all about screen designs and Photoshop work.

I am going to create a feedback sheet that I can hand out to people to get there feedback on my designs. It will be a quick and simple way of getting specific feedback that I can use and hopefully achieve at least one of the merit criteria.

I Feel A Bit Yellow (22nd November)

2006-11-23T16:42:00.000Z

This week’s entry is all about Wednesday. The day started off with a presentation all about presentations. I knew this was coming because a couple of weeks ago Steve had asked how we feel about presentations and I replied “I can’t stand them to be honest”. I have never liked presentations I have done around 10 in my life but they never get any easier.

So after the presentation when Steve said the day was devoted solely to our presentation skills my heart sank. We had to research, create and deliver a presentation on a colour given to us by Steve.

After being missed out when he was assigning colours, I was given the colour yellow and partnered up with Jamie. It seemed a suitable colour for me as I was feeling a bit chicken at the time. This was good as I had never spoken in any detail to Jamie before.

I think the nerves of the presentation eased off a little whilst gathering information from the internet, it didn’t seem that back stand up and talk about yellow for a few minutes no big deal. But after dinner the nerves really started to kick back in especially when I rehearsed the presentation in front of Jamie. I managed around 5 real words before blurting out I need to remember more I think.

After our Rehearsal period it was time to start with Gemma being the first up I was more nervous now about the presentation than any other time in the day and this was not made any easier by the people coming back down who said they were going to have to go back up later on and try again.

As the time went on and on I tried to get some work done but found I couldn’t concentrate on anything other than the presentation and in 3 hours I managed to get a grid for my screen design planned for my A3 project. As more and more time went past though I started to calm down I know bits of what I’m talking about I should be ok and Steve and Diane will only give me positive feedback its not as if they were going to laugh in my face if I got it wrong. This was good for me to realise and made me more confident when taking the long walk up the stairs after waiting for nearly three hours. We were also able to have a laugh in the canteen which eased the tension it was good to talk and realise everyone else was feeling the same as me.

I can’t remember what I said about the presentation as I was focused on standing still and speaking slowly. I also tried to show the palm of my hand when pointing to the images on the screen because Ben and Drew had reminded me that this is supposed to a good sign.

After the presentation I received some good feedback and overall the comments were good I think. I was very pleased it was over though I have to say.

I would say the day taught me that if I am well prepared and take confidence from other people I can do a good presentation. The nerves are never going to go away for me I don’t think it is just one of those things that I have no control over so I have to learn to manage it in a way that suits me.

For next time I think I will rehearse more and create a better guidelines sheet so that I can remember key words from the presentation because the sheet I had confused me more than anything but it was good to have it there to reassure me.

Colour Theory and Image Compression (15th – 16th November)

2006-11-19T13:59:00.000Z

Wednesday began with a lecture on Colour Theory. I have never looked at colour in so much detail before. The Colour wheel I’m sure will help me a lot over the next few years. I think I am coping quite well with all the new terms we learnt in the lecture but I’m sure my mind will go blank by next week as it always seems to when put on the spot.

In the afternoon we were able to concentrate on our assignment A3 back to basics. I was grateful for this time as I didn’t complete all the self study tasks I had set myself the previous week and was a little worried about catching up. I was also able to find a new cheaper web host for my delivery requirements and complete the competitive analysis.

I am not sure what is needed to be done to achieve merit grades, the feedback I got from the first was basically to improve everything especially more detailed research. I would like to get merit grades but also think I need to be realistic and realise I’m not at the required standard… not yet anyway.

Thursday started with a lecture on the new part to our A4 assignment, all about image compression. We have to compress four images using Gif, PNG or JPEG file types and evaluate the results. At first the essay we have to write seemed straight forward, get images find out what compression type is most suited that image and repeat this four times each part containing 250 words. After spending all afternoon writing down figures, creating graphs, changing images enough to get good screenshots and writing everything down in the sketch book I realise it is not that simple, as nothing has been so far on this course. Steve also said there are a couple of Red Herrings in the images we had to choose from and with my luck I’m sure to have picked at least one of them if not both.

Today was the first time I used Adobe Photoshop, I had just received a book about it in the post and I’m glad I did as in the next few weeks we go much more in-depth with the program so I’m sure it will come in very use full. It does seem like a tricky program to get your head around but like most things it will be a matter of putting the hours in and learning the basics first.

Tests and Art or Design (8th - 9th November)

2006-11-10T16:34:00.000Z

Wednesday Morning began with a little test from Steve to see if there were any natural designers in the class. We had to design business cards for Widget World. This was a good way to start the week as it got all of the class working on something much different from report and essay writing. After break Steve gave us a lecture on what makes a good business card and designs in general the four key parts were Proximity, Alignment, Repetition and Contrast.

In the afternoon we were given time to work on our assignment A3. I think I am progressing at a good pace in order to have everything done for next weeks group feedback. I have most of my competitive analysis, goal and target audience researched ready to be put into words. I am happy to say my sketch book looks a lot neater for this assignment compared to last, theirs more colour and it seems a lot more structured this time around. I think I am learning from my mistakes, which is important.

I also got my first assignment feedback from Steve on Wednesday afternoon. I had been looking forward to this all week as I was curious to know what I was doing well and how I nearly failed the assignment. The main reason I nearly failed was because work had been done but in the wrong place. I had done a lot of work on web hosting and domain names in my sketch book but only written a small amount in the report. The second reason was my spelling mainly capitalization or lack off Internet Explorer was a main one. I do find it very difficult to spot these mistakes but it is something I am going to work hard on over the next 6 weeks or so.

Thursday began with a test. I now defiantly know PPI and DPI because this was the question I was asked. I will defiantly be reading my sketch book through in the future especially all the work we have done over the past few weeks as Steve has made it very clear we need to know this information by heart if we are going to make it in this industry.

We then had an important presentation about Colour Space for our assignment A4. I had only heard of the RGB colour space so it is important that I look back and take the information in. This image below shows the colours visable to each colour space.

I think the essay is very difficult to put into words for A4 because there is so much information that could be written I have re-written the essay 2 or 3 times already because I chance my opinion on what people say all the time. At first I thought my bitmap image (below) was artist work because I would gladly put that image up on the wall in my house. But listening to peoples thoughts I changed my mind because it has obviously been designed through a number of stages to meet a required purpose. In my opinion this is what the main difference is between art and design. It is difficult to tell.

Grade Nerves and New Assignments (1st – 2nd November)

2006-11-03T12:32:00.000Z

Time had finally come to discover what grade I had achieved for the first Assignment A2 That’s the plan. I was nervous at the start of the day as I was thinking what I am sure a lot of other people were at the time, what if I’m the only person who had failed and I hope I haven’t done something stupid like written the CD incorrectly! My nerves were not made any better by the lecture that Steve gave to the class about things that people had missed out which meant they had not passed. At break I was sure I had missed at least one thing off. But I was so relieved after seeing my grade that I had passed both units. I had put a lot of effort into the assignment and it is comforting to know I can still pass these types of assignment. It has been years since I have actually really tried at something the jobs I have done and past courses never really tested me to this level.

I am eager to get my feedback for the assignment off Steve next week, as he said in our group feedback my assignment failed and passed a number of times before he finally decided on a pass, which makes me think I just managed to scrape through. I am a little worried as the next assignment we have to do is to further investigate a website plan (A3 Back to Basics).

We were given our next Assignment A3 Back to Basics, on Wednesday afternoon. We now have two assignments to complete rather than just one like last term, but we have eight weeks to complete the assignment this time around. I am looking forward to the next assignment because hopefully I will be able to learn from my mistakes and progress at a high level along the course.

Thursday we were given a talk about Resolution, Bitmap Images and Vector Images, I knew a little about resolution and bitmap before the lecture but nothing on Vector. I think the notes in my sketch book will come in very useful over the next few weeks as we were given our other assignment, A4 Picture This. I am going to try really hard to improve my sketch book work. This is a Photoshop assignment. I am looking forward to using Photoshop as I always hear people saying how good it is, but I have never used the software before. It is a little daunting also however because it will be my first real creative project since school and I hope I still have a creative side left in me in order to pass the unit.

Over all I have enjoyed the week back at college and am looking forward to the next.

Garden Wire and Work Free

2006-10-30T12:02:00.000Z

First I should apologise to Steve for using green garden wire to tie around my folder to keep my sketch book secure. It looked like a good idea at home because I new nothing would fall out for sure but once I tied it I realise it would be quite hard to remove. So I will not be using it again for future assignments!

This week has been a nice relaxing week for me. I booked the week off work and travelled to Manchester to spend the full week there. I enjoyed the week and spent time with my girlfriend and some old friends.

I have tried not to think about the first assignment too much but it has been hard. As the week has drawn to a close it has been playing on my mind more and more. All I can do now though is sit back and wait for Wednesday.

My only concern is that I am still waiting on my student loan because I had to use my overdraft for the account without ever having money in that bank account. I am hoping to sort this out this week now college is open again.

Fingers Crossed (18th-19th October)

2006-10-19T08:34:00.000+01:00

I am fairly pleased with the way this week has gone my self study all went to plan and I think I have got everything in order for Thursday (Today at 12). I drafted my evaluation and ended up with 1500 words after writing for only half an hour! I realised I have learnt so much over the past few weeks it was hard editing it to meet the 500 – 1000 word criteria. But I had to so now it is 1000 words exactly. I am happy with the evaluation and hope I have left all the key elements in.

My sketch book could have been better presented as now there are a number of stuck down A4 sheets; this was something I took out of the evaluation so I thought id mention it here. I have tried to improve my sketch book lately but you couldn’t really tell. I think for the next assignment I will start of them well so I will want to carry on in the same way and with two assignments at once organisation will be even more vital.

All is left for me to do today is print my assignment off. I got my mum (I felt 10years old again when asking) to proof read everything as I was bound to miss some obvious spelling and grammar mistake.

So fingers crossed the assignment will meet all the assignment targets, we’ll just have to wait and see…

Dark Text on Light Background Please!! (11th-12th October)

2006-10-16T12:37:00.000+01:00

The week started with a talk about blogs and what they are used for. We were set four questions to ask which we answered in groups of four, they were:

What is a blog?

How do you use a blog?

Who are your target audience?

What content should be on a blog?

I have to admit I found this lecture useful as this is the first blog I have ever had and wasn’t sure what they were used for, which means I wasn’t sure what to write or how to write it. I now understand that this blog is not only for my assignment A1 SketchBlog’s benefit it also is a key part in other assignments too. My blog allows me to get a wide variety of feedback from other people which will lead to higher grades if I take the information on board. I do find writing this blog quite hard as I am not good at discussing my feeling at the best of times but I can see the advantages of it now. I felt for sure I would have to stand up and show my blog to the group because I had just changed my blog’s template to a black background and white text as you can see I quickly changed it back!

The second part of the morning was all about not failing our assignment and little things we could do that would achieve a fail so we knew not to do them. We came up with a long list and there were one or two things that I took on board. I also should apologise to the group for disrupting the lecture because my mobile went off in my pocket.

Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning was about the assignment again. I was a little stressed with my designs because I had realised all my measurements in pixels were wrong! This took me most of the afternoon to sort out but I am happy now I can put that to one side and say all my screen designs are completed.

Thursday afternoon we had to have our assignment finished as if we were going to hand it in, however I did not have my CD labels, assignment sheets or name on anything but I will defiantly have everything in order by next Thursday. I can’t wait for this assignment to be over, not because I am sick of it or it is boring, it is that I just want to know the grade I will achieve as I have not done an assignment for over two years and am worried that I am not at a high enough level anymore. I think after the first one is over I will be able to relax more knowing I can still achieve at this level (with any luck).

Lots More PageMaker and Good Feedback (4th-5th October)

2006-10-07T13:08:00.000+01:00

This Wednesday we were asked as soon as the lesson started what we wanted to do, as our assignment is only two weeks from the deadline that’s what we decided on. My assignment has progressed along way over the past few days. I like last week have found using PageMaker quite confusing and a little frustrating. I just think my design is looking good and is finished when I notice something wrong which needs changing. The report template I have tried to use this week confused me also as I have only ever used Microsoft Word to write reports. I am making progress with PageMaker and I am sure after a few more days of intensive work I will find it much easier to use.

In the afternoon Diane came in and showed us some of her work, I enjoyed seeing someone’s work that had just completed the course as it shows me what I will be able to do myself (hopefully) when I finish the course. Diane also came around and talked to us one on one she gave me some good feedback comments which led to me changing my navigation bar on my designs.

Thursday was the same again straight back into PageMaker and on with the assignment. Today I realised that I am progressing at around the same rate as everyone else in the class, this was a good thing for me as I had been a little worried.

In the afternoon my group had our group meeting, at first we didn’t really know what to say about each others designs in a way that would be useful. I think we both didn’t want to cause offence because I know how hard we both have been working over the past few weeks. I did get some good feedback off Mirhad and Steve which I have used to change my design once again. With all the changes my site should appeal to the widest audience and not just look good to me.

This week seems to have flown by, maybe it’s because we have been constantly working and there is so much to do that you never get a chance to watch the clock.

PageMaker and Site Design (27th-28th September)

2006-09-28T23:32:00.000+01:00

I haven’t had a lot to do this week socially so I could concentrate on my work, this was good as I have done a lot of research and tried to get everything completed ready to go on to the next stage, by actually designing the website template on paper. I have learnt a lot about what is required in order to create a website and I now know that there is a lot more to it than I first thought.

On Wednesday we started off with a lecture on PageMaker (a piece of software by Adobe). I had never used the software before and it was good to learn how to use an alternative to Microsoft Word. I am now pretty confident with the basics of this software now and I’m confident that I will be able to implement my design onto the computer. In the afternoon on Wednesday I had my one to one with Steve to talk about the course and how things are going. I am happy on the course and couldn’t complain about any area so far. I am worried about work however as I need to work but my shifts start at 6 o’clock and end at 10 o’clock Monday to Friday. This means I am rushing around after college to get to work on time and when I finished work I am tired and don’t want to stop up too late doing any self study that might be required for the next day. I am thinking about changing jobs at the moment to try and get better hours that would suit me more. I am still waiting for my student loan to come through so work is even more important at the moment because my MOT and tax on my car runs out on the 30th September and I am convinced that it will need some work doing!

On Thursday we started with an English lesson about note taking and referencing. Steve had already given us a lecture on referencing so this was not too helpful. I found the lecture on note taking more interesting as this is an area I could do with improving. I don’t feel my handwriting and spelling is as good as it could be this is annoying for me because I feel that I am old enough to know a skill like this as I have been studying at a high level all my life.

Self study was about designing screen designs I thought this would be a nice self study but I was wrong. The designs are easy for me to come up with and I enjoyed this part but the final design stage I found very complicated and time consuming. I knew exactly what I wanted to put on the paper and even when it was on the paper it still looked as I wanted it, but when I thought about actually putting it on the computer I realised it wouldn’t work such as the spaces between objects would be bigger and the fonts would look tiny leaving lots of free space. I think I am getting to grips with the design finally (after my 3rd final design) and I’m confident about the final outcome.

This week was better than the others I would say because it was a little more art based than other weeks with more colour and less text or notes.

Web Hosting and English (20th-21st September)

2006-09-21T23:46:00.000+01:00

On Wednesday we started off with a lecture to help us with our assignment 2a, it was about web hosting and what we should be looking for in order to get the best host for our website. This helped me a lot as I knew very little about this at the start of the day. I have researched it more on the internet and analysed three separate hosts for my assignment especially the costs involved. I still have to finish it off, add more detail I would like to get a good impression of the costs in order to create a realistic budget statement for the assignment.
In the same lecture I also learnt about FTP (File Transfer Protocol) and CGI (Common Gateway Interface) I had never heard of these before the start of Wednesday. I now know what both of these are for. I am learning more and more each week and this is good for me because I have been out of study for a year and it feels good to learn new things. The course is quite intense over the two days we are in but we get study time where I have the time to review my notes and let things sink in a little more.
On the Thursday we started with a lecture about English. This was a little dull but I do feel my English lets me down heavily at time especially with my notes. I have tried to improve my note taking and hopefully with these sorts of lectures I will do so. In the afternoon we were able to concentrate on our assignment and take part in a feedback group. This was important for me at this stage because I have done a lot of work on three key parts to the assignment and it helped me to think about different things that I could do or add to make it better.
I am pleased with the way the course is going and I am enthusiastic about my future in Interactive media.

Week 1 - 13th-14th September

2006-09-19T13:40:00.000+01:00

In the first week we got our first assignment “That’s the Plan” assignment 2A we have to in simple terms investigate and research a famous Briton and then plan out a website about that person. Sounds easy? If only, I have written more in two days than I have in the past 3 years put together, but this can only been a good thing for me. At first the assignment looked pretty difficult with a lot of important sounding words and phrases, but after we had been through everything in detail I do understand what I am doing. I have picked Bobby Moore to do my plan on because I will find the research very interesting because the man is an English football legend.
We also have a second assignment 2A which is an ongoing assignment throughout the year that involves what we put in are sketch books and our blog entry’s. After looking through some past years sketch books I have realise I am going to have to discover how to write properly again as I haven’t written anything in hand that will be marked since school.
We have also set up a Blogger account (as you probably know if you’re reading this) so I can record my thoughts and opinions about the course and input them weekly.
I am looking forward to the course more and more especially now the nervous first couple of weeks are over with and I feel I am settling onto the course very well.

Formative Statement

2006-09-15T13:13:00.000+01:00

Where have I come from?
I enrolled on an ICT AVCE course at Wakefield College straight from school which I passed with grades B, C. After this I enrolled on two courses a HND at Wakefield College which didn’t allow me to use my creative side at all and was more about the business side of a company and a computer video games design course at Salford university where financial issues and lack of knowledge about the course before I enrolled meant I didn’t know what the course involved which was only my own fault this led to me trying to change to the HND in graphic design course too late.
I have worked as a data imputer in the last year for the Prescription Pricing Authority which is part of the NHS imputing drug codes onto a computer system for 8 hours a day 5days a week. I didn’t enjoy this and I left to become a part time postman in Castleford.

Where am I now?
I am doing a course I should have started three years ago and looking forward to a course where I can develop my creative skills. I am looking forward to learning about every aspect of interactive media to give me the best possible chance of getting a good job with a good salary at the end of it. I see this course as my last chance to get me out of a dead end job working for a big company in an office block or large factory warehouse earning a basic wage.
I am a little nervous about the financial issues involved in doing my third higher level course as this will be the third time I have received a student loan and the debt is building. I am working part time in a royal mail factory to earn extra money that hopefully will help reduce the amount I need to borrow for the second year.

Where am I going?
I would like to meet people like me with the same interests that I could keep in contact with both as friends away from work but with the knowledge that I could always go to them with work problems and hope to get the right solutions or ideas that might help. I hope to pass the course with the best grades possible distinctions and merits so I have the best options at the end as I am 80% sure I will want to top up my qualifications to a full degree as this will appeal to a wider range of employers. If I achieve passes I will not want to go to university and join a course on its 2nd year which will mean another 2 years of study and debt.
After I have a degree I would like to work in the in industry picking up as much information as I can. When I feel I have the experience and knowledge I would like to go into business for myself and be my own boss.