Wednesday 10 December 2008

New skill

The new skill I would like to learn is Flash with action script. The only experience I have had using Flash is on my previous course, I tried to use Flash to make a presentation for some images.

I didn’t get long on the project so I didn’t get much done with the presentation, as it wasn’t an important part of my project and I was learning it my self and in a rush so I did learn anything really. What I did learn I can’t remember and I doubt I was doing it right anyway.

I am not really into the coding part of web design, so I wanted to learn a skill that could include a bit of design work. I know the action script is coding but Flash isn’t all about writing coding.

The only other skill I was considering learning was PHP, but I thought if I didn’t find CSS interesting, so what is the point in doing something similar. It will be good to learn how to make an interactive document using flash. In previous years I think they did games and clickable image. I’d like to know how to make an animation or a little simple game.

When I was looking at the job adverts for the I Me assignment I saw a lot of the job I choose asked for flash as a skill they were looking for. So today I have found some recent job adverts and again they all say flash is required for web designer. Most of the skills on the job adverts we have covered in detail with our assignments but there are a few that I don’t know and flash is one of them.

Flash is a skill I want to learn and with wanting to learning it, it will make it a more enjoyable assignment.

Advert 1, Advert 2, Advert 3

Wednesday 3 December 2008

Reflection of the second year so far

Start of the year
I didn’t really start this year that good because I knew that I wasn’t going to pass the summer assignment. The week before the summer assignment hand in date I hoped to get all the assignment finished within good time, but loads of things seem to happen that week, which didn’t make it easy for me to do that. For example my friend’s house flooded so I had to help trying to stop more water getting in her house, so that lost me at least a days worth of work.

With us starting later this year it means we have assignment work to be done in the holidays. I did prefer it when we got a break from the coursework and a week off to get ready for the next new assignment. I feel like it’s just course work all the time and it would be great to have a break and not have to worry about it.

Summer assignment
I liked doing the summer assignment, but if I was ask again to choose whether to do a summer assignment, I wouldn’t want to. If I have things I need to do I like to get them done and out of the way or they are always on my mind. So the summer assignment seemed to be always in the back of my mind. I think it was because I had loads of time to get the assignment completed, so I didn’t make aims to get tasks done for certain amounts time, I just did bits when ever I had time. At least I know were I went wrong and I can do it differently if I ever have to do anything like this again.

CSS assignment
I had a few problems with the CSS assignment, mainly because I didn’t understand how to edit the HTML properly. The websites I have built before have all been done using the design view so I haven’t had a lot of experience with HTML coding and coding doesn’t really interest me. Once I had sorted out the problems I was having with HTML coding, CSS seemed easier to understand.

Team assignment
The team assignment as been a lot different to the other assignments, mainly because I am not working by self, I have to consider everyone else in the team. In a way that adds quiet a bit of pressure as I don’t want to let my team down. It’s been good to get the experience working as a team and working with clients. One of the main things that I have found useful about this assignment is learning how to handle clients, some are more difficult than others and how to act to forwards them can depend how fast the progress of the project can go.

Assignment 12
I like doing creative tasks so I am really enjoying doing this assignment. It’s good to have a change from sat at a computer all the time.

Wednesday 5 November 2008

Soft Skills

Having a range of skill does makes you more employable, a lot of skills are mainly common sense and building on skill that you were taught as a child. Is include manners, times management (getting to school on time), team work, listening problem solving and etc.

Time management is usually one of the first skills an employer get to see. When going to interview you should be there on time or even better a bit earlier to show enthusiasm. Time management is a really important skill. You wouldn’t want someone to be late meeting you, so why should you do something to someone else that you wouldn’t like. Time management doesn’t just mean getting to place on time, it also means meeting deadlines comfortably.

A purpose of a company is to fulfill customer’s needs and be professional at the same time. Therefore customer service is a really good skill to have, it includes been able to communication in a confident way with customers and been able to keep calm even when a customer are being rude.

Listening is an important skill that everyone should use when been told information. The way you listen to people is to been done in a polite way, always look like your interested and trying to answer questions ask in a professional way.

Team working is not always some people’s strong point but working as a team can make you more confident and help you produce a better working standard. It is good to know you have the support of other people in your team and you get a good understand relationship with them. Problems will always occur when working, so it does good if you can problem solve calmly and simply. Also problems could be fixed quicker in a team than individual, but it’s always good to know you’re capable of doing it on your own.

Word Count: 310

Wednesday 8 October 2008

Junior web designer job

When searching for jobs I looked for jobs close to were I live, this includes Leeds and Wakefield. The Job vaccines that I found and thought would be best for when I have completed course, I read though then I chose the one most suitable for me. The job advert I have chosen is based in Leeds and is for a junior web designer. The salary is £15,000 a year which is about average for a junior designer.

Skills the company is looking for is someone who knows about the print process, able to work with both web and print work, excellent layout designing, artwork skills and have a good knowledge of Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, In design and HTML.

The advert also asks for someone with a degree in graphic design/ multimedia design or a related design subject, even thought when I have finished the course I won’t have a degree, but that shouldn’t stop me applying for the job. If two people applied for a job and one had the qualification that the company was looking and the other didn’t but had a better portfolio that the company really like, they probably hire the person with the better portfolio.

I would prefer to do both web and print work and that was one reason I choose this advert but I haven’t been though the print process before, but from previous assignment we have discussed the print process, so I have a bit of knowledge of it .

The skill I would have to work on would be HTML mainly but also the knowledge of the software’s, you can never know too much about how to use software’s and techniques when using them, so the more practice I have using them the more convenient I will be, allowing me to create better work.

Monday 6 October 2008

Second year, Loves and Hates

The last year as been a total change for me, I seem not to have as much spare time and time flies. The course as been really enjoyable and I have learnt a lot so far and I have much more to learn which I am looking forward to.

At the moment I am really enjoying the team project assignment, it’s something different and it’s good to have a chance to work as a team, because there isn’t many opportunities I could do this before employment.

To be honest I don’t really have an interest for coding, so when I found out I would be doing a CSS assignment I wasn’t looking forward to it. The start of the assignment I couldn’t really get my head around CSS but now I have had a go myself I understand it a lot better. I am always open to learning new things so I am giving it a go and trying my best with the assignment.

Before I started the course I hated presentations, now I am still nervous about doing presentations but not as bad. Now I just get nervous the day of the presentation unlike before when I was nervous at least a week before. I still think there are a lot of improvements I could do on presenting, but with the practice I have done so far, it as helped my confidence presenting and I am not too worried about doing the final presentation.

When I have finished the course I have two options either to carry on with education or find employment, and I haven’t yet decided 100% which I want to do. Although I think I’m more for carrying on with education. Its 6 months away so I still have a bit more time to think about it.

Tuesday 13 May 2008

Year 1, Final evaluation

When I first started the course I had no expectation of what it was going to be like. One thing I did expect was to do as much planning as we have done, but I think planning it's a very important part of creating some thing.

In September I didn’t know much about how to create a web site and how to use professional software. In the first assignment I learnt about CSS and XHTML which I had never heard of before. Now I know what they both are and have created a bit of the code, to make parts of a web site.

From the first blog entry I did, I said that at the end of the course I would either do a third year or get a job at the end of the course. I am still undecided about what I want to do at the end I suppose that decision will be easier to make when the times closer.

Also in the first blog entry I wrote about my lack of confidence, I feel like my confidence has improved over the year and I hope it keeps improving, till I get to the point were I am happy about my self and the work I produce. I still have a part time job and I feel that, my job has also help make me more confident. At work I really enjoy working as a team and getting to meet different people everyday, I think since I have been working there my team skills have improved. I Like how you can do your own thing but still bounce ideas off each other.

Assignment 1
A1 the sketch book assignment, hasn’t felt like an assignment because it has been on going for months. I have kept my sketchbooks neat and tidy and I collected some inspiration when I found some good pieces. Having a sketchbook has made me more organised with my work, helping me keep all my work together. The sketchbook has been good to see the development work that I have done, it’s helpful to go back and look over the work I have done before and read the notes I have. The most important thing I think I use it for is to take lecture notes. One of the things I think I could improve on is to research more about the topics that we have had lectures about, this could help me understand the topics better if I ever misunderstood them.

Assignment 2
The second assignment was a web plan. Web plans aren’t my favourite assignments to do but I don’t dislike doing them. While doing this assignment it was the first time I had, had a seminar meeting. I think they are a really good idea to use on this course, I smaller groups are better to ask questions but larger groups are better for getting feedback. Even thought A2 was a lot of written work, we still had to present it neatly and consistently. This is what we used PageMaker to do, we have been given a template so that all the assignments are laid out in the same way. PageMaker was quiet easy to lean how to use so that when I had got use to the program more I had a go at using Indesign. I find In design easier to use and plus it can create tables, which is good because for A2 I spent ages makeing tables in PageMaker using lines and boxes.

Assignment 3
Assignment 3 was another web plan, from doing the first web plan I had a good idea of what we would need to do for this assignment. We all also got given extra work as well, which was to create the content of the web site. The web site was to contain basic computer terms, because of the course before I had done some work on computer terms so I knew about most of the terms I had to write about. The web plan had to be in a good as amount of detail has we built the web site for assignment 5.

This was the first time we had to do two assignments at the same time, I felt worried at first thinking that I might struggle to balance the work out. After the first couple of weeks of the assignment my worries stopped and I found my own way to balance my work out. This consists of time tables and checklists.

Assignment 4
Assignment 4 was the hardest assignment for me, because it meant using Photoshop. I had not used Photoshop before, so I struggled to know which tools to use, for which area of the image. After referring the assignment first time I redid it and pass the second time. Second time round I felt the image looked a lot better and I felt I had learnt how to use the tools better. I think even though this was the hardest assignment I have done so far I think it has been the assignment I have most improved at, including my skills using Photoshop.

Assignment 5
Assignment 5 was building A3’s web plan, I felt that the plan was in as much detail that it made it easy enough to create the web site. This was the first web site I had built, but I had used Dreamweaver before so I had a slight advantage knowing the basic of how to use Dreamweaver. The lecture we got on, how to use Dreamweaver was still very useful as I learnt about a lot of short cuts and easier ways to do things.

Assignment 6
When I was told that I had to do a presentation for assignment 6, I was a bit nervous but then I thought what the point I have to do so what the point in getting nervous and plus there isn’t much to be nervous about. I didn’t mind doing the presentation, I was a bit nervous while presenting and I could not say some of the French words but apart from that I felt it went ok. I liked researching about the typographer but I think I could have improved my assignment by including some more about the typefaces.

Assignment 7
The assignment I have just completed is A7, I have enjoyed this assignment the most. I liked it because it has been the must creative and there has been less written work. My spelling and grammar isn’t the best so I prefer to do less written work because it takes me ages to check thought my work when its complete and I can still miss errors. The thing that took me a while to do for this assignment was the measurements for the CD cover.

I feel like have learnt a lot over the first year, I can now see an improvement in the work I produce. There are still things I need to work on like, my concentration and confidence in my work. Hopefully I should work on them more in the second year and in the summer, so that also the quality of my work can improve.

My aims for the course next year are …
*Is improve my skills that I already know
*Get to know software better (Photoshop, Dream weaver and etc)
*To improve my self motivation to complete work sooner
*Not to refer my work
*To get merits

Thursday 8 May 2008

CD cover 2



This is my CD cover with the text, logo and bar code added. Please leave a comment with any feedback. Thanks.

CD cover background

This is my background for the CD cover, if you could give any feedback that would be good. Thanks.

Tuesday 6 May 2008

CD cover and final finishes

The hand in date for assignment 7 is next Tuesday and I am abit stressed about it. I have a complete logo that I am happy with, the pre flight document is ready to be filled in and I am looking forward to writing the evaluation for the assignment. I enjoy writing evaluations as they are a good way to finish an assignment, as it makes me look over what I have done and how I have felt though out the assignment.

The only thing that I am worrying about is my CD cover, I still have to finish it. Tomorrow I am getting it complete so I can have the pre flight and evaluation done on Thursday and check though my work Friday. So Saturday can be used to do final checks and changes. I am going to have all my work complete and ready to hand in on Monday, so I can show my work in the seminar meeting so if any improves need to be done I can get them done Monday.

The checklists I did last week, will come in useful this week as they will help me remember what needs to go were and check I don’t forget to do something. Well doing assignments I like to set aims, like if I have a task I need to completing I’ll set a certain amount of time and make sure I finish the task in that amount of time. This helps me concentrate better, as I have something to aim for.

So the main thing I need to do this week is finish my CD cover then I should be calmer about next Tuesday. I will need to do some more Photoshop tutorials, so that I can make more changes to the image on the CD cover, so I am showing a range of Photoshop skills.

Tuesday 29 April 2008

CD cover ideas

On Monday the lecture on printing artwork was redo, it was good to go over the lecture again as it is better to understand some thing new when it as been repeated and you have had time to take it in.

Last week my seminar group started researching pre flight documents. I couldn’t find many examples last week but this week I search something different in Google and I got a whole range of pre flight documents. We put the example together and showed each other what we had collected.

Monday I didn’t feel well so I went home at dinner, but the group carried on with the pre-flight document work. They e-mailed me thought out the afternoon to keep me up to dates on the progress of the document and so I could add any input. The version that was completed Monday was a good first copy, it just needs a few details added. This includes a sentence about checking the images used are 300dpi and to add contact details to the document. After those few details are added the pre flight document should be completed.

For the seminar meetings this week two groups were mixed together. I wasn’t sure about this idea, as I didn’t real want to say my ideas in front of a larger group, in case people thought my ideas were rubbish. When we got in the seminar meeting we were asked to put our work on the wall. I put my logos up and my CD cover images. I would have liked to had more work to put up, but I have been finding it hard to settle on an idea for the CD cover design. Now I have come up with the idea using dancers on the front and back cover, I thought of this idea because with the music been described as the next generation of dance music, the dance theme seem to fit. Showing my work to larger group wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be and I got some good feedback from the meeting.

My logo is now complete, I printed out my logo with the different typefaces and colours so that in the seminar meeting this week I could get feedback on the logos. The feedback I got was that, the logo should be kept in black and white as a colour didn’t seem to suit the logo. Also I was told that on the CD cover if I use a black background I could make the logo white so the logos doesn’t mix in with the background. This is a good idea, as I am planning to use a night/space background, which is mainly black.

Today we had a discussion about the second year. The talk was about what kind of assignments we would be doing in the second year. After the talk some people went out of the class room to talk to Steve about going on to the second year. This is a good chance for Steve to tell us what he thinks to how we are doing and tell us what he thinks about us progressing on to the second year.

Tuesday 22 April 2008

Logo feedback

Monday we started with a lecture on printing artwork, which I thought was very useful as I am up to the stage of doing the CD cover designs. After the lecture the rest of the day was a get on with it day, apart from when we got feedback for A5, the builder web site. I wasn’t sure what feedback I would get about the web site. I was happy with the complete site but I still think it could have looked better. The feedback I did get was to compress my images, and change the backgrounds of the images, from cream to white to make them stand out more and to make the images not mix into the page as much.

With the feedback I got for my presentation, which was to spell check. I noticed quite a lot of errors in my spelling. This has learnt me to spell check my work more, using word’s spell checks or any other spell checks because I don’t always pick up on my own spelling errors. Spelling is one of the main things I need to improve on and I am trying different way to try and be better at spelling words correctly.

On Monday I spent most the day looking for inspiration for my CD cover. My music doesn’t really have a certain theme or thing that I can associate it with, so I have been looking at a range of different images to try and get inspiration. At the moment I have ideas for futuristic themes, nature theme like beaches and woods and season themes. None the designs I have done so far I like so I am going to keep trying different designs till I find some I think will suit the music.

My logo is coming long ok, I have to finalise the shape of the logo and I have uploaded the different shaped so any feedback would be good. The typeface that I have is not the final typeface, so I also will be posting the typefaces and colours that have been chosen to suit the logo soon.

Tuesday 15 April 2008

Starting the CD cover designs

For self study this week I have been working on my logos. I have been doing my logos in Illustrator and having a play about with different parts of the logo. I have used a range of different colours starting with the basics and this week I am going to try other colours. When I have finished experimenting with all the different ways of changing logo, I am going to printing them all out so I can see all the logos laid out together, which will make the changes more noticeable.

The other thing that I have been having a look at is typefaces, I looked at a few last week but I carried on looking at more. The type of typefaces I have been looking for is bold but modern, this suits the type of music that the record company sells and plus the bolder it is the easier it is to read/see.For making the different shapes, I have been trying different sizes and thickness for lines. Without seeing the logo it’s hard to see what I mean.

Also for self study I have been thinking of ideas for CD covers. I created some mind maps, to help me make some decide of what I could sketch. I have done a range of different designs, as the music on the CD I was giving had random songs. I could not get any ideas of the music or the song titles. Most of the song titles were foreign, so I am going to try and translate the words and see what they mean and maybe if they are suitable, I could use them to base a design round.

Today in my groups seminar meeting we started off by talking about our logo design, what they are like now and what improves we could make this week. The main topic for this week in the seminar meeting was the CD cover designs. We mainly talked about the designs and we will be showing them next week. I am going to try and get as much of the CD cover design work done and even start trying to get the designs on the computer in self study time.

On Monday we got our presentation/timed tasks feedback. I wasn’t sure how I did for the assignment, I thought maybe my presentation wasn’t good enough. The feedback I got was to change the position of some text on one of the time tasks and check my spelling in my presentation visual aid. I was pretty happy with the feedback as there wasn’t anything major wrong with my work.

Tuesday 8 April 2008

Logo designs

This week I have been carrying on creating logos. I have got over 60 designs, each one as different as possible so I have a range of logos. I have enjoyed doing the logo designs because I like going the sketches and its some thing a bit different from what we have been doing before. Yesterday I chose some of the logo designs which I thought would best suit the company and redrew them also adding colour. Some of the colour I choose didn’t suit the logos and made the logos look rubbish. When I have got the logos on the computer it will be better to start experimenting with colours, typefaces and shapes. For now though I am looking at colours that would best suit the company, and the type of company it is.

Today I went on a font web site and choose a range of font that I could use for the logo. I also got an example of what the logo would look like by getting a sample of the font saying ‘Emit’. I got the typeface in a range of sizes so I can if it is still readable at a smaller size. For this week self study I am going to go though all the fonts I have collected and see which I think would be best for the logo.

In the seminar meeting this week we looked our logos and chose the ones we should develop. I didn’t have a favourite logo design and I didn’t really know which logo design to chose. So the seminar meeting was good this week as it help me decide which logo to develop.

Now I know what logo design I am going to develop it using different colours, typefaces and shapes/lines. When I get my complete logo which I am happy with I am going to test it in different size, to check it is visible when really small. Also this week I have been thinking of ideas for the CD cover. I have been collecting inspiration, like other bands/artists CD covers and photographs.

Mondays lecture was about how to use Free Hand, I found this lecture really useful, as I have not used Free Hand before. Even though we have only been shown how to use Free Hand, I am going to have a go at using Illustrator so I can use a range of programs. Been learnt now to use Free Hand will make it easier to use Illustrator, as the programs do the same thing, but I do expect there will be some differences between the programs.

Tuesday 1 April 2008

Starting Assignment 7

It as been the first week back from the Easter holidays, we started by having a lecture on what the new assignment consisted of. It was good to go through what we needed to do, so I can make a check list which will be useful for when I need check what I need to do for the tasks. For A7 we have to create a logo, CD cover, pre-flight document and conclude with an evaluation. I am looking forward to doing this assignment as I get to be more creative and so far I have started doing some logo designs, which I have really liked doing, the only thing is that I can’t always think of new idea when I want to, which makes me see why the logos and inspiration I have collected is so important.

We then had lectures on designing logos, from the lecture I learnt rules to making a good logo and the different type of logos. I noticed there were different types but I didn’t know there was a type called New generation. New generation logos look more appealing, but when the new generation logos are just in black and white they don’t look that good and can sometimes be hard to recognized.

At about 2 o’clock yesterday a former student, Jonny Haynes from Technophobia came in to talk to use about what his job is now. It was good to listen to him and see some of his work what he had done his self and in a team. He also give me a good idea of what the industry is like, some of things he said me thing about what I want to do after the course, I prefer not to work for someone else and just have my own business but I can now see the good things about working for someone else, and that is that I will learn new skill, for example learn things from people who have different skills to me.

The class did a case study on CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) logo, we had to create a redesign for the logo, I liked this task as we got to work in groups which helped for getting feedback and choosing the final design. The only thing we could have improved on is presenting the logo. I thought only one person in the group was going to have to explain about why we had chosen the final design, but it was meant to be the whole group and only 2 people in our group really talked.

Below I have added some of my logo designs, any feedback would be good.

Tuesday 11 March 2008

Reading Week Tasks

The tasks I was given has all been enjoyable, apart from having to listen to the music. The music isn’t what I usually listen to and I don’t really see the point in the kind of music I was given, in some parts of the music it as some kind of creepy sounds. So having to write a review on music I didn’t actually like was hard. At first I didn’t know what this certain type of music was called, but once I had researched for a bit I found out the music type was called ambient.

I had to listen to the music a couple of times before I could start the mind maps because I didn’t know what to write. Even though I did the mind maps yesterday I went over them again today and added a few extra points so it made it easier to collect things for the mood boards. I have liked making the mood boards, first I choose a colour scheme then I chose the images and fonts to suit the music. I have done mood boards for some songs, the record company and the overall the album I was asked to listen to.

Here is some mood board examples which I have used (It’s for the first song on the album)

Colour Scheme

Image


Font


The thing I have most enjoyed this reading week is collecting the logos, once I had started collecting them I couldn’t stop I ended up collecting 50 and I could have carried on collecting more of them. I tried to get a wide range of logos, so I covered a lot of different company types, from car manufactures to children programmes. It was harder collecting the record labels logos as I had to find the right record label to suit the album I was given and then a lot of the record label didn’t have logos on the internet that I was able to find. I collected just under 30 logos and they all look very different, some I like, some are not that good and some are processional looking. Most of the logos I collected all had the name of the company as the logo but some just had images which I thought doesn’t make you link the logo with it company easily.

Monday 10 March 2008

Gel- sol - 1140 Review

First view of the album cover it looked like water going over autumn leaves, which gave the expression this album, would be relaxing nature music. Once the CD had been put in to the CD player and I started listening the first song my original idea of what of the album was going to be like disappeared.

The first song (Assemblage point) starts off silent making you think that the CD isn’t working then the music is faded in creating a relaxing start to the song. The name of the song gives you an idea of what the song is going to me about, Assemblage meaning collecting. The song is a collection of sound brought together to create comforting symphony. The song is a great start to a wonderful album.

The music on this album can be described as caress and confusing, it relaxes and calms you but at the same makes you think about the music. Bursts of different sounds and voices are added to the songs in certain places, which makes you feel like the sounds as been created right next to you. This making the music create a range of emotions for example calms, upbeat and shocked. The first time you listen to the album the different range of sounds and beats can make you think why have they added that but the more you listen to the album the more it sells its self to you.

This type of music is said to be the next generation of dance music and I can hear why that as been said, the music is different but likely able and once you have listened to it once you wouldn’t be able to stop listening to it.

Tuesday 4 March 2008

A6- Evaluation

Before the first timed task, I thought I might not like doing the tasks but after finishing the first task I was shock that I actually like it. For the first task I had to create a book cover for Font book. When designing the tasks product, I designed as many thumbnails as possibly in the time I had allocated for that part of designing, I found the more thumbnails I had the better it was to choose the final design as I had a wider range of designs to choose from. When I did the final design I made sure I did it to scale of what it was going to be on the computer, so when I got on to the computer I didn’t have to mess about with measurements.

Font book was a practice task, the first real time task was Hokai. This was one of my favourite tasks out of them all but I did have a problem while making the design. I lost a lot of time because I couldn’t get the page size to the correct size, but in the end it was because the margins weren’t set at 0. So I added all the information I had to use, laid out the design, spell checked and handed it all in on time, but if I had not had the problem I had, had I could have got feedback on the design and done some improvements on it. This did teach me to set the margins to my chosen size and allow leeway time, so if problems do accrue I have time to correct them.

The second task was to create an advert for Vodafone, advertising a designer’s job. When I did the design for the Vodafone advert I liked the design and I still do but I think I could have done a bit better. For this task I finished 20 minutes early, this gave me plenty of time to check my work and get feedback. Learning from the errors I had with the Hokai task, I got feedback on my designs all the way thought the stages of the designing of the Vodafone advert. Which made me fell more confident about my work because I wasn’t having to worry if my designs were ok.

The Jonathan Gee task was my least favourite, I wasn’t happy with the design I produce. Near the end of the time I looked at the design and thought it looked basic so I try to add some things to make it look better but I still aren’t happy with how it looks. I handed the design in 5 minutes before the end, so I was pushing it a bit that task. Improvement I made from this task was to stick to my time plan, has for this task I used more designing time then I planned to use. So when we were asked to remove out least favourite piece of work, I removed this one. I thought the design looked plain and boring. As I wasn’t happy with the design I did and it was the last minor task before the major task, I felt a bit nervous about doing the major task.

Before I did the two tasks today I thought I might do designs that I wasn’t happy with. So I wasn’t really looking forward to doing the tasks today, but once I had started them I really enjoyed them and I was pleased with the designs. One thing that occurred while doing this task, when I was put my design on to the computer, the image that had been given didn’t really fit in the space I had chosen to put it and not all the text would fit on with the size of the image. So I swapped for one of my other final designs because if I had tried to make all the content fit on the page, the text would have been unreadable.

When I first found out I was going to after do a presentation I wasn’t really bothered. I like creating presentations, I just don’t really like showing them. When doing a presentation I find it better to be all prepare and ready for the presentation so I am confidence about what I am talking about. The only thing I didn’t like about this presentation was the French words, I am really bad at speaking French so I tried to break down the words using a web site that help break them down for you. I have enjoyed doing the research on Roger Excoffon but there isn’t a lot of web site with information about him and his typefaces, but I did find some very useful articles by two men that came in useful. One was called Grace and speed of Roger Excoffon, it described about his life and what he was like, which made it better for me to understand what Roger Excoffon and his life was like. A lot of Roger excoffon typefaces were display font that would be hard to read small and they give a lot of impact to words.

Roger Excoffon only designed about 11 fonts so when choosing 3 to go into more detail I chose 3 of his most popular typefaces. I found a web site that shows Roger Excoffon typefaces used in everyday life. These images were good to add to the presentation as example and it also shows that the typeface a used for a range of different things, like on shop signs. For the hand I chose a different way to show his typeface examples, this was the alphabet typed out a number of time using Excoffons different typefaces.

The feedback I got on the last presentation I did was that I didn’t finish well, so I am going to try and improve this time by firstly adding a slide at the end of the presentation asking if there is any questions, so it will remind me to ask if there is any and also I need to remember to give my handouts out. The main improvement I wanted to do was to try and keep it to 5 minutes, which I did today.

Overall this assignment as made me do things I didn’t think I was good at or liked. I use to hate presentations the thought of having people’s attention just on me made me really nervous, but I can feel improvement in my confidence in doing presentations. Improvements I think I could make when doing presentations is to start stronger and carry it on though out the presentation.

Improvements for the time tasks would be stick to time plans and received as much feedback as possible so that improvements can be made to my work, which will help me make a better standard of work.

Tuesday 26 February 2008

A week till the hand in date!

Today we did another timed task, for this one we had to design a newspaper design for a Jazz artist. I wasn’t happy with the final design I produced. Near the end of the time I looked at the design and thought it looked basic so I try to add some things to make it look better but I still aren’t happy with it. I handed the design in 5 minutes before the end so I was pushing it a bit this week. Improvements I could do next time are stick to my time plan, I used more designing time then I planned to use.

After dinner today we had seminar meetings, we went over what should be handed in next Tuesday. It was good to go thought what is needed so it’s fresh in my head. We were also given an idea of what we will be doing in the reading week, I am not sure what to expect. It sounds like we are going to be given some strange music to listen to and ask to make designs for it.

A5 work isn’t as good as I wanted it to, at the moment I am a bit lost with it. So tomorrow I am going to work on my A5 and hopefully get the web site done, so I can continue with the testing and start thinking about the evaluation. For the web site so far I have created all the pages and I have the feedback form nearly finished I just need to validate it and link up the e-mail button. I have tried linking the e-mail button, but I haven’t been able to do it yet, I am going to keep having a look tutorials, till I get the button to work.

For my self study last week I work a lot on my presentation work, I have cut down the amount of information per slide, made the text larger so it’s easier to see and used more slide so the information is more spread out. I have had more images to the presentation as I thought too much text could make it boring, the images are examples of Roger Excoffon’s typefaces and an image of Roger Excoffon. I have also added to my handout, I have added typeface examples and web site addresses that have information about Roger Excoffon and his typefaces. When I did the presentation last week I had my speech wrote down on little pieces of paper, so this week I have typed up my speech and have printed it out in A5 size, so I have less pieces of paper when I am doing the presentation and I can update my speech a lot faster and easier.

Tuesday 19 February 2008

Finished my image restoration

Over the holidays have been doing a lot of course work, mainly working on my image restoration work. My referral work was due in on Monday so I had to get all my A4 work to get done in the holidays. For the image restoration I have to remove the fold line and do the corners of the image. I had a few problems doing the image because at first I couldn’t see any improve and that made me stress that I wasn’t going to get it finished in time. So it took me quiet a few attempts till I was happy with the image. I can see a difference between the image I did before and my new image, the image is been more sharpened, as more contrast and the fold isn’t as visual as before. I am glad I have got my referral work out of the way so I focus on my other two assignments now.

On Monday morning we did the usability testing. Before I did it I thought that I wouldn’t like doing the testing, because I wouldn’t know what to say about people web site. Give feedback was easier that I thought all the web sites were good and there were only little errors that I notice. The feedback I received was very useful, a lot the same things got mentioned. Including homepage needs more link to, the logo was already a link to the homepage but I am also going to add other link. People also commented on that not all the terms had pictures, so I am going to get pictures for all the terms. There are other things I need to improve but the two above were the main things that were mentioned.

Using the feedback I got on morning I did a few improvements to my a5 website. I made the size of the page smaller, before the width was 900px now it is 750px. This make the website look better as the text isn’t has spaced out, so there is thicker text blocks which makes it easier to align the images with text. For this weeks self study I am going to try and get all the improvements done before next week, so I can get more feedback. The website will be uploaded again this week, feedback on improves would be nice. Click here to view the site.

Today we had a presentation on newspapers design terms and then we did a timed task. The task was to create an advert for Vodafone, advertising a designer’s job. I enjoyed doing the task and I even finished 20 minutes early this gave me plenty of time to check my work and get feedback. Last time I did a time task I think I used too much time for designing so this time I just used 10 minutes for some thumbnail design, 10 minutes for the 3 final designs and 10 minutes for my final design. I got feedback on my designs all the way thought the stages of designing the advert. Which made me fell more confident about my work because I wasn’t having to worry if my designs were ok or not.

This afternoon in our seminar groups we practice our presentations. I did my presentation in CS3 In Design, and I forgot to change the file format so I could open it at college in CS2. So I had to use an older version of my presentation, so my presentation didn’t go as good I wish could have. Hopefully next week we can have another practice and I will a lot better. This week I am doing work a bit more on the presentation then I am going to do a lot practice, so I can get better at the presentation.

Tuesday 5 February 2008

Image restoration progress

For self study last week I started doing my referral work for A6. The main thing I need to do for the assignment is the image restoration. So last week I was shown the first stage of what I needed to do to improve restoring the image. Last week all I did was take the blemishes out, It took me nearly 3 hours to take them all out, but I do think the image looks better at this stage then it did last time. Using the guides made it easy to break the image into stages, so I didn’t feel I had loads to do. I also sharpened the images more than last time which made more blemishes come out but it make the image looks better and you can see more details. This week I am going to have a go at doing the main scratch and the corners. I was going to do the top corner last week but I didn’t estimate to spend as long as I did taking out the blemishes.

On Monday I did a lot of work on the back to basic web sites. I have got all the pages made but I am just not happy with how they all look at the moment and I had a few problems while creating the site, but now I have discussed them with Steve I know how to revolve them. One of the things I didn’t understand about was the template, I used the template to start the pages but I thought I might be able to update the template which would update the rest of the pages, but it didn’t. The thing that looked bad on the web pages was the massive spaces between the texts, and if I didn’t have a space between the body text and the title, the paragraph would have to be the same font style when I wanted the title bold and the rest of the text not to be.

Today at 9 o clock we had a timed task, I did enjoy the task but the only thing that I messed up with I lost a lot of time because I couldn’t get the page size to the correct size, but in the end it was because the margins wasn’t set at 0. So I added all the information I had to use, laid out the design, spell checked and handed it all in on time, but if I had not had the problem I had, had I could have got feedback on the design and improved it. Hopefully next time I will not have a problem and get my work done a little quicker so I am not rusting at the end and get some feedback.

Tuesday 29 January 2008

Presentation work and building a web site

This week I have been carrying on with my A5 and A6 work, which as been the presentation for a6 and building the web site for A5. The presentation work is going good, there isn’t loads of information about the typographer I am doing about but there is a bit about where he lived and few details about career. Roger Excoffon only designed about 11 fonts so I have chosen 3 of his most popular typefaces and I have gone into more detail about them. I have also found a web site that shows the typefaces used in everyday life, like on shop signs which will be good to add to the presentation or the handout as it will show an example of what the typefaces look like. The feedback I got on the last presentation is that I didn’t finish well, so I am going to try and improve this time by firstly adding a slide at the end of the presentation asking if there is any questions, so it will remind me to ask if there is any and also I need to remember to give my handouts out. My main improve thought is to try and keep it to 5 minutes and I would be happy if I could do that.

Last week for my A5 self study I started building the web site, I haven’t got that far with it but I am happy with what I have done so far. I have already had to make a few changes from the design, because when I have put the design in Dreamweaver it just didn’t look right, so I am going to screenshot changes I have made and stick them in my sketchbook and annotate the screenshots, so that when I come to write the evaluation, I can look back and see what changes I did.

Also for self study this week I collected inspiration, I found a couple of web site with some good inspiration, so I took a hour or so collecting some then I printed it out and stuck it in my sketchbook. I haven’t annotated all the inspiration yet but I am going to finish doing the rest this week and hopeful I will finds some more inspiration.

Tuesday 22 January 2008

First timed task

On Monday morning we had a demonstration on basic CSS. When I first started this course I had no idea about CSS, but from the research I have done for web designing assignments and from the demonstration, I now know a bit about CSS. When I researched about CSS I thought it was all confusing, as I don’t understand programming languages. We were shown I few CSS tags and shown how to create CSS using Dreamweaver, I understood all the information we were given and showed, which made me think if I can understand the bit that we had been shown maybe I will be able to understand more about CSS.

The course I was on last year I had to create a web form, but I had to teach my self how to make the form. I did make a form but I had problems, so I was really happy when on Monday when we got shown how make forms in Dreamweaver. It was simpler that I thought to make a form properly, but I am just not sure how to link the form to the CGI bin. I should be able to find the information I need to link it up, so I might have a test before I have to do it for the assignment.

For A5 we made a checklist of things we need to do. The class came up with 30 things, some the points were obvious things like spell and grammar checking, but that is really important thing to do and it is something I need to do regularly when doing pieces of writing. The checklist is going to be useful and I will use it to check my work so I include all the things I need to pass this assignment, but I am also going to do my own checklists. When doing assignment I found it useful to have checklists. I have main checklists that have all the tasks I need to do, and then I break it down into smaller lists. I do this so I don’t feel over loaded with work and I know what needs to be done.

This morning we had our first timed task for assignment 6, I really liked going the task but I didn’t expect to. For A6 I didn’t really know what to expect, so I haven’t been looking forward to it or not wanting to do it but I have been a bit nervous of what the tasks were going to be like. When we were first given the brief, I panicked that I wouldn’t be able to think of ideas, but once I had started designing I got some idea. I did about 10 small designs then I choose 4 of the 10 designs that I thought looked the best. After I had done the 4 final designs, I choose and drew the final design that I was going to develop on the computer. For planning I estimated 45 minutes, for putting the design on the computer I estimated 30minutes and 15 minutes for checking my work. I completed and handed my work in on time which I was happy about, but I don’t think the work that was produce was excellent. This task as made me a bit more existed about doing the other tasks but I am still nervous about what the tasks might be.

Today we had a seminar meeting in our new groups. This week I learnt I have to collect more inspiration and read though unit 4 again. For next weeks meeting we have to have a draft the typographer presentation ready, the presentation I did last time about the colour yellow was too long so this time I am going to aim to get the presentation the right length.

Tuesday 15 January 2008

Another week back

All holiday I wanted to know my results, I had to wait untill Monday afternoon to get them as we had a talk in the morning. I was already nervous about get the results for the assignment and then the talk in the morning didn’t make me feel any better. The talk was about the results not been good enough. I always try my hardest, So some of the things said I found a bit upsetting, and it came across to me as we hadn’t tried.

After the talk, we had a demonstration on how to use Dream weaver. I have used Dream weaver before so I know some basics, but I learnt easier ways to do things, which will make the web sites easier to make. We got to have a play about with Dream weaver. After the demonstration I went over all the things that we had been shown and then I went on the internet and look at some tutorials, and looked up solutions for problems I had, had before.

While we were experimenting with Dream weaver, people went to get their results individually. When I found out I had passed A3 and failed A4, I was more bothered about failing A4. I am glad I have passed A3 it’s just doesn’t seem like I have.

Today we went over what the new assignments include. For assignment 6 we have to do a presentation, which at the moment I am not that bothered about presenting it but I am sure I’ll get nervous when I have to. The presentation as to be on a typographer and the person I am aiming it on is Roger Excoffon. I have researched for hours today but I can’t find a lot of information today, all I could find was a bit of information about him and some information about some of his typeface. So I am going to do more research at home because a lot of web sites wouldn’t open at college.