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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.