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.

4 comments:

Tom Smith said...

One piece of advice... you say you've printed out your speech on A5 paper for your presentation next week. Make sure you have the text in a size large enough so that you can read it without having to stick your face right into the paper. With it being on A5, I can imagine the type being quite small.

Just make sure you can read it comfortably!

Mark Torrington said...

Validation has definitely been a problem for many of us. I posted a link on my last blogger that may help you get to grips with this issue. Stick with it and I’m sure you will validate it.

Gary Benn said...

Sorry to hear you don't like your newspaper article you produced in the timed task.

I think if you make a comment like that you need to post an image of it on your journal. This will help us understand what you are talking about a little better and enable you to receive feedback on the design.

Regarding your comment about it being basic, if you put it into perspective, it was an article for a newspaper. Newspaper articles aren't usually anything fancy. The key to a good newspaper story is to make sure it is to draw people's attention and to communicate the information in a very clear and easy to read format.

There is little you can do to stop it looking basic to a level, other than adding interest with the typefaces used and applying a very high contrast to headlines to catch people's attentions and draw them in.

I didn't see you design so I cant really comment on it specifically, If you post it up though i will be more than happy to give you some feedback.

Rebecca Bradley said...

I didnt really like my design that I did in the task this week but its not allways a bad thing to keep it simple becuase you could have done a really good design on paper but when you start to design it in Indesign the harder the design is the more likely you wont be able to create it and may not get the work in for the time set.

But there should be improvements in are work now, as I think every one is getting use to planning for the time tasks so are designs should only improve.