John Browne / HND Interactive Media / Wakefield College.

Evaluation (end of year one)...

2008-05-13T17:45:00.003+01:00

End of year evaluation.

Introduction
The end of year is in clear sight, all the assignments have been handed in and there is a great sense of achievement flowing through the air. I can’t help but feel disappointed that the end of the year has come so quickly and the fun will soon be over till the next college year. I must say that I have really enjoyed everything in the first year, from building a rocket to presenting typography.

A1 - Sketchblog
This assignment to me has been both good and bad. Bad things first, it occasionally felt like a chore, especially if I fell behind at all during an assignment. An example was that I forgot to collect inspirational art work for a number of weeks, and catching up seemed like a job that was going to take forever. All was done though and quite surprisingly the feel of achievement was and is still their along side it.

The thing I like most about this assignment was when it came down to planning during assignments. The whole sketchbook drawing tasks were at a point where it did not matter what your designs appeared like (with in reason). But the idea’s behind, is where it all counted. A task that was really liked in this form was the static banners task for Assignment 6 – Revert to Type. During the creation of the banners, Steve incorporated a timed atmosphere, getting shorter after every design. Such fun was found in doing that, and if I could find my self in such a career that incorporates this type of design technique, then I must say I have found heaven.

Another aspect of this assignment was to create a weekly journal entry showing weekly progression and to gain feedback on designs. I must say that this fulfilled its expectations and provided me with mountains of design feedback, which was all greatly appreciated and taken in to consideration. Some of the suggestions hold the reasons for me passing each assignment, especially in the designed tasks.

A2 – That’s the Plan
This assignment was most probably the hardest for me. Been the first ever assignment at a HND level I found it pretty difficult to adjust to that methods of submission and appearance. Firstly I cannot say that I have ever needed to reference work before, and the amount of research needed as evidence seemed almost impossible to complete. Speaking of difficult, this was the only assignment that I failed on the second hand in. Not good I must add but I believe I made up for this in the second web plan assignment Back to Basics. Other then that I believe that choosing Charles Dickens may not have been the best choice of character, as looking back I do not like the design I created in that web plan. Besides that I remember there not been much to make the web template on, with only a small number of images to work with as inspiration.

A3 – Back to Basics
After failing A2 I knew there was no option but to pass this and my aim was to do it in the first hand in. Unfortunately, I referred the first time but brought it back with taking on the valuable feedback and amending where it was necessary. During this assignment I had mixed feelings on equal measure. There was the frustration that it was a similar task that I had recently failed, the sense of enjoyment working on more technical goals, and annoyance to how the amount of information there was to research. Having a total of 40 computer components made it very time consuming when trying to obtain the right image and find the correct information.

A4 – Image Restoration
This is where the real fun began for me. Not only did we have a black and white image to restore and two static banners to create. But it also allowed me to become more fluent in Photoshop. When entering the course my skills in Photoshop were almost un-existent and this been the first real opportunity to really get my hands dirty was a god send. This has to be the second best assignment during the first year and I feel it to be stupid if no one else feel a similar sense of joy towards it.

A5 - Builder
Building the website from the plan created in A3 could only be known as one hell of a rollercoaster ride. Just as you feel you’re at an all time high, there is a shear drop just around the corner. Inserting all the information and imaging in to Dreamweaver was as easy as riding a bike. But when it reached the validation stages I hit a huge snag. With coding been one of my major weaknesses in this roll of the assignment I found it really difficult to get through it. Also another aspect that was difficult was the form JavaScript. At first I validated the form using Dreamweaver applications only later on I was notified that JavaScript was supposed to be used in this case. Great, more coding and one hell of a task to work around with my in-experience. All was completed though even though I hit the referral mark. Luckily it wasn’t too much to amend.

A6 – Revert to Type
This was quite possibly one of the assignments that came like marmite. Unfortunately there wasn’t as much love as there could have been. The whole building process of the presentation was a huge struggle and the hand out wasn’t any better. Having been given Stanley Morison and the limitations of his work, proved to quite a task. For starters the design of the presentation and handout lacked in inspiration and images able to implement. I did in fact get to really love the presenting part. It was just the building part that was disliked.

The other part of the assignment included timed tasks. These were set up similarly to the banner creations in A4, which really struck my liking. Most of all I really like creating the Vodafone and the Snake Bites advert as I feel the sense of creative typography was at an all time high and the opportunities were almost limitless.

A7 – Wailing Whales
This has by far got to have been the most enjoyable assignment up to date. It really gave me and I believe the class to really dig in to their creativity barrels. First of all there logo design included rough drawings in our sketchbooks and adjustments drawn in from feedback. The logo did take a number of weeks to complete with its ever going colour tryouts but it was all fun.

The CD artwork was by far the best task of the entire year. The creativity was overflowing with the mood boards and mind maps created over the reading week before the assignment start. Gaining a good feel towards the music was also a newly formed skill and something that will be looked at in the very near future.

Class atmosphere
Looking back at past memories and the tasks performed in the first week, it has come clear that everyone is now more then ever part of this group. From lift of with thunderbird one, the height of friendship among fellow students has soared in to high orbit. The trust is getting greater every day and there is nothing I would change among anyone to improve the atmosphere. It really is that perfect in my eyes.

Tutors
Where would we be with out Steve and John? Admittedly John hasn’t had the biggest role out of the two this year, but sources say that will change at the beginning of next as John joins our group more often and even takes us through an assignment on CSS. That will be something to look forward to. Seminars and lectures have been a vital role through out the course to date. There have been things disliked but its all in the part of learning. I will be looking forward to September when we come back to college to carry on with the remainder of the course, and yet another step in education.

My aim

A short list of thing I will do in time for next year:
- Get a head start on CSS, ready for the upcoming assignment sometime after the summer holiday.
- Keep my creative skills on an all time high by setting my self random design task over the summer.
- Complete the summer assignment as soon as possible, giving me more time and a complete frame of mind to work on my own set random tasks.

A short list of aims for the second year:
- Complete the year with up to 3 merits.
- Complete the year with as little referrals as possible.
- Continue to be optimistic towards the course.

Conclusion
This year has come and gone at light speed. It is almost unbelievable that it is almost nine months since the majority of the HND Interactive Media students of 2007/2008 first met. It has been a real blast working along side everyone and I look forward to doing so very soon. Over all I feel as though I could have done better if a few certain weaknesses of mine were at rest, but as things are what they are. I’m pretty easily distracted, and something will need to be resolved in the very near future. This has really been a great year and something I will not want to forget. So, the end is here, Progress, support, and I have a feeling next year will be even better then this.

Short and Sweet!

2008-05-06T17:42:00.003+01:00

Today is quite possibly the shortest journal entry I have ever posted. This is merely because it is reading week, and through out the week so far I have been working on my CD artwork. Through out the week I have hit certain complications in software which has held me back a little. This is to do with installation. I have tried to re-install relevant software but Windows been the pain that it is, is disallowing my attempts saying I don’t have the relevant privileges. The funny thing is, I own the hardware and I am the administrator. But I intend to get back on track over the week and hand in the assignment completed and on time. So to all of you that are going through the same as I, I wish you good luck in this final assignment of the college year. And I will see you in college on Monday.

It would be a great help if I could gain some feedback for my current CD artwork. My apologies for the CD outer not containing the emit logo. I will sort this in the week when I have resolved the software implication. My artwork can be found in the directory of http://www.j-browne.co.uk/a7

Things to do for this week:

- The usual weekly comments.
- Problem solving with software application issues.
- The amendments of my CD artwork (if any)
- The addition of the emit logo to the CD artwork outer.
- The input of the assignment in to InDesign.
- And finally the evaluation.

Show Time!!!

2008-04-29T16:42:00.000+01:00

The time is drawing near. Next week is the final week before the hand in date of the current assignment, Wailing Whales. Only next week we will be working from home. By this I feel both anxious and a little scared. The anxious feeling comes from the urge to crack on with my design work and having the freedoms to work from home. The scared feeling comes from the fear of distraction, the un-office like atmosphere I will be working in, and whether the work produced over the week will be enough to gain me a pass first time.

Through out this week I have been continuing work on the CD designs, and the pre-flight document. But before all this we had a re-cap of a past lecture on print work. Don’t get me wrong, but I feel both glad, and disappointed at the same time with this. The glad feeling draws its way up from having a second chance to look over this lecture and pick out any valuable points I may have missed the first time round. While the disappointment came from wanting to crack on with my designs and pre-flight material with no hold back.

After lunch on Monday I took the time to research in to the pre-flight task. By doing so I found out quite a lot about what it is, what it does, and the type of questions and checks it contains. Pre-flight comes from a pilot term for checks that occur before a plane is ready to take flight, clever huh?

The pre-flight document I have been creating contains mostly checks for my self and information boxes that will contain data on where to find each file, colour codes etc. I believe I will have this at a completed state further on in the week.

Through out today (Tuesday) I have been working on my CD artwork. The position of the information I need to put is pretty obvious with its location. But finding the correct place to fit in the emit logo is proving to be a tricky task. I so want to add the gradient used in the CD artwork using Photoshop but I believe that would go against me in this particular assignment. Talk of rasterizing the logo in Photoshop were advised to me by Steve, but for some reason Photoshop will not allow me to select the option to rasterize on the EPS file.

I will have to add my CD art work on to the forum for feedback ASAP to gain full advantage of the sources available to us. I feel as though I want my days of referring assignments to be over. So its show time!

Over the following week I plan to:
- Carry on with my CD artwork.
- Complete my pre-flight document.
- Stand by the weekly addition of journal comments.
- Keep in touch with my seminar groups as the pre-flight document is planned as a group activity.
- And start planning towards the evaluation of the assignment.

Presenting with Satisfaction!!!

2008-04-22T17:18:00.001+01:00

During the course of the week I have been developing an idea for the CD artwork. Although not yet completed, I’m feeling very confident in the design. I must not try to get to attached though as the next intention is to produce a few more ideas bringing it down to a majority decision for the ‘Undark’ CD label.

On Monday a selected few were require to re-do the typography presentation, due to not meeting specific standards the first time round. I was among that selected few as I presented it in a mere 3 minutes and 30 seconds. This time was slightly better then before but still not good enough. The result of this was another go at it on Tuesday morning, one on one with Steve rather then in front of the whole class, like on Monday. This time I managed to present the information bang on 5 minutes and 30 seconds which I believe is the border line for error. Another thing needed to do after the presentation was to answer 10 random generated questions about typography. Not been able to answer ten out of ten, during the course of presenting on Monday, meant on Tuesday I was asked the questions I got wrong. Gladly I answered them right away, which is an achievement considering we were none the wiser about what was in store for us on Tuesday morning. This brings me to think that been on the spot make me more likely to feel a sense of nervousness causing intelligence to wither away.

The next part of Tuesday required me to re-create the CD artwork I had previously created as I made what some call a simply, common mistake. What I had done was create the artwork at 300dpcm (dots per centimetre) when I should have actually created it at 300dpi (dots per inch). So the remainder of the day was to completely recreate the work from the previous day. Not some thing I was best pleased with but I suppose its all in the process of learning.

Finally, in our seminar groups this week we talked about unfinished logo designs (if there we’re any), current CD artwork, the upcoming of the pre-flight document and the understanding of A1.

It appears that the design of my CD artwork shows creativity that is required for the learning out comes. But it’s quite possible that I may run in to a few problems when trying to change it to 4 colours for printing. For this I have been advised to do a ‘Gamut Warning’ test in Photoshop.

It is an understanding that the pre-flight document in merely a check list for both designer and printer to abide by while printing out the requested work. It has been decided that team beta will take this on as a group activity to be completed by the next seminar discussion.

To summarise, I feel that I have overcome an obstacle this week, with the mistake made at the beginning of the CD design. By making the mistake in the first place I feel that I need to be more wary towards instructions and make sure I fully understand what I am required to do before starting a task.

Having the chance to redo the presentation has made me realise that they are fairly simple and that I kind of like to present. Having this 2nd chance to perform an already performed task made me feel right at home with my nervous suddenly disappearing as soon as I stood attention at the front of the class.

To complete this entry, below are a few tasks I’m going to carry on with through out the course of the week.

- Produce more on screen CD artwork.
- Complete referral work on the web building assignment.
- Produce the standard weekly journal comments.
- And research in to the pre-flight document to gain a better understanding for the group activity on Monday.

Final Emit Logo Designs!!!

2008-04-15T17:09:00.003+01:00

Here are the final designs for the emit logo. Feel free to comment.

The Sweet Smell of Progression!!

2008-04-15T16:44:00.001+01:00

This week was completely a crack on with it week. No lectures, no tutorials, just a week to work on the remainder elements of the logo design task and the beginning stages of the CD case design. For the logo in terms of progression this week I am very near the end stages in its existence. The only thing needed to do now is to reverse the colour fades from been light inwards and working to a bold appearance, to been bold in the centre and fading on the way out.

During Monday I received feedback from the Assignment 6 Revert to Type. As it turns out I need to re-present my presentation, change the over all design of my hand out, and revise the terminologies of type. Not a great deal to do in terms of designing, but the revision may take some time as it will need to be completely understood round for the concluding part of the presentation. As mentioned in an earlier entry it appears I yet again revved up my engines and did a flat out performance with my over rated motor mouth. The result of this meant a supposed five minute presentation was presented in only three and a half minutes. Nerves are some times a factor so all I can do is go out there and try to stay calm as the situation must appear like a regular thing.

Back on to the designs of the current assignment. In our seminar groups we were asked to rethink our production schedule as our previous tumbled attempt haunted us this week with the logo design not been fully completed by the group. When this was complete, the discussion on our current progress commenced. The work I took in to show was the very nearly completed logo designs I have completed and three on screen ideas for the CD case design. Through feedback, a chosen logo was selected with a few minor alterations suggested. Also a bright spark idea from Steve arose, which insisted that I try and implement all three designs in to one as all show a certain part of the creativeness needed for the marking criteria. This will take a lot of thought and some hard timed graft to get perfect, but I intend to complete it for next week so I can gain feedback before moving on to the insides of the design.

Self study this week will consist of:

- The revision of typographic terminologies.
- A redesign of the Stanley Morison hand out.
- A redesign of the Hokai paint tube (by choice).
- The implementation of three CD designs brought in to one.
- The finishing touch to the Emit logo.
- And the general weekly commenting.

For those of you that want to see the final design to the Emit logo I have created. I will post in a following entry a visual.

Colour Testing...

2008-04-09T21:10:00.009+01:00

Here is the chosen logo in a variety of different colours. Any suggestions of colour, or slight alterations in the appearence of the logo, will be greatly appreciated.

The Fun of Design...

2008-04-08T22:14:00.005+01:00

Monday morning started with a lecture on Macromedia Freehand. This is a vector based application in which we are required to use when creating our logos in this new design assignment. The lecture covered the basics in how to use Freehand’s tool and how we can manipulate the vector image.

At around 10:30, the lecture came to a halt for a presented visit from Mark Feathers, who is a former student on this course. While here he talked about his newly found job in the design industry and how much better it is compared to his previous place of work. It appears yet again another visitor has stated a sense of freedom when working in this industry. Mark also took time in showing us some of the work he’s created over the past few months. The work shown wasn’t so major but still seemed to be way ahead of my current state.

After an hours break for dinner, it was back in to the class for a second go of lecture to teach us some more about Freehand. Over this section of the tutorial we were taught about such things as the assets tab and pantone colours included in the software application. Over all lecture learnt me a great deal, although it is fairly similar to Photoshop, containing only a few slight changes in appearance and tools provided.

After this, it was time for a talk with John. We talked about my current state and progress on the course, and if my thoughts were still the same as compared to when I started the course and posted my first journal entry. It appears that I have a slight change in where compared to previous times. Over the previous months I’ve learnt that I enjoy most aspects of the course, but am more drawn in to web design, and the new assignment of creating a new record label cover. Another thing talked about was our current progression on A7, which at the time I was gaining feedback on alterations of previous designs. Hopefully soon I will be able to get my creative jaws in to a smooth bite of the CD cover.

Tuesday morning was pretty much a get on with it day and the progression on logo design carried on with a slow and steady flow. During the course of the day I have been playing around with more logo alterations trying to get them all together for seminar groups in the afternoon.

I walked in to the seminar room with a total 76 logo ideas. The idea of this was so that I would have a lot of choice for feedback, and to keep A1 intact at the same time. It’s now official that I am on my final design as a chosen was drawn to Steve’s attention. Now all I need to do for the logo design task is to manipulate it ever so slightly and test it with a number of colours. I will post the colours I’ve tested in a following journal entry, to gain feedback on what I have done so far, and to possibly fixate myself on the colours available.

So this weeks self study will consist of:

- Gaining feedback for logo designs.
- Generating ideas for the CD cover design using a series of mind maps and mood boards created over reading week.
- Commenting on other journal entries.
- Inspirational search and annotation for A1

More Logo Ideas!!!

2008-04-04T19:15:00.005+01:00

Hey guys here are a few more pages of logos I have created. Comments will be appreciated greatly.

Current Logo Designs...

2008-04-01T19:22:00.011+01:00

Here are the logos I have created up to press. Please feel free to insert suggestive comments.

Block Strikes Again!!!

2008-04-01T17:02:00.002+01:00

Back to the HND department at Wakefield College and it’s on to new things. The break was over and a massive itch to crack on with some design work was slowly brewing. Monday’s time was nearly all used up from 2 lectures with Steve consisting of logos and a visit from Jonny Haynes. Jonny seemed like a well laid back character with some sort of passion for design, showing a certain commitment to his own work. It was a good experience meeting yet another designer from the industry, and something that will be cherished through out the progression of the course. After showing some of his work, we were able to ask huge amount of questions regarding work in the industry and towards design. Yet again a certain motor mouth (mentioning no name…. Shaun!!!) spared him self a great deal of question during the morning lecture in order to pile mass amount towards our visitor.

After the visit we were advised to crack on with some designs in our logos, using the work from reading week as inspiration. Over the last hours or so I only managed to dish out 6 logo ideas. Not a brilliant start I must add, but Tuesday was more productive.

First thing on Tuesday, we had another lecture on logos. Only this was about the Peace symbol, its founders and a reconstruction. As a timed task we were asked to get in groups and re-design the peace symbol. Equally the group provided a huge amount of effort during the reconstruction by dishing out a number of ideas. After the idea’s time had expired we put all our sketchbooks together and had a majority vote for the final creation. The final choice was very similar to the original, only it contained the company initials, the word peace, and some rounded arrows to signify world coverage. After putting all this together, the group was required to present the creation to the rest of the class, in a manner of understanding the design and the terminologies learnt in yesterdays lecture. The terminologies are Shape, Presence, Weight and contrast. Each of these terminologies play a vital role when designing a new logo and can define the difference between success and complete failure.

For the rest of the day it was back to designing more logos. Due to the production schedule plan we created yesterday, we have until next Tuesday to have a fully completed logo to a professional standard. In seminar groups Steve drew out that it may take longer then a week to complete the logo design task. So, the following week will require lots of creativity, and a huge amount of feedback. So I guess Blogger and das forum will be receiving a lot of hammer over the next week or so. Unfortunately at a certain time of today I received a blind boot from designers block. I’ve manage to create 24 logo ideas which will be posted on a journal following this one. So, over the following week I will:

- Produce pages of logo ideas for the redesign of the emit logo.
- Find more inspiration towards the assignment.
- Keep on track with the weekly journal comments.
- Gather as much feedback as possible.

Reading Week - Summary

2008-03-11T23:48:00.005Z

Through out reading week I have been appointed with a task which evolves around music. Firstly I was required to listen to the CD Steve gave us last week. The Music on the CD created by a fellow called Russell Mills and the album name is called Undark. Initially the music is of an ambient nature, containing 8 tracks of chilled out, urban street listening. Along side listening to the CD I set out to gain a number of company logos. The result of this is a collection of 40 well known company logo’s just itching for a place in my sketchbook.

Another task was to write a review of the CD I have been listening to. The main intention of the review is to invite the public in with a warm welcoming introduction to the music in review. I feel that I did jus that. With a few lines of overestimated opinions and personal thoughts of the music in motion, I feel that my review drops in to the category of needs for the reviewing world.

This morning arrived with another task for reading week. Firstly, I needed to gain more company logos. But this time I was required to gain logos of a music nature that suites the genre of the artist I was listening to. Unfortunately a mistake was made and I confused my music with electronic, only to realise after collecting 20 logo’s that is was in fact ambient. Because of this I am going to keep all electronic logos and search for another 20 in the ambient genre. Just a small price to pay for an hour wasted.

During the creation of the mood board I took it up on my self to listen to the music, and then look for image on the internet that crawled in to my head. This was created on an A4 spread in Photoshop. The spread took quite some time doing with its insertion in to Photoshop, inserting only a single image at a time. If I were to have done it on paper I think it will have taken me a lot less time then it did do and I would have been able to get more done. Over all I feel that the productivity of this reading week has been slightly poorer then that done during the college term time, as at home there are too many distractions. (Below is an image of the mood board created for the above task).

The final reading week task has been taken down on paper, as explained before, I feel that a lot more can be done in sort of scene. For the last task I have created a brainstorm and a mood board on how the word emit can visually represented. Unfortunately I do not have access to a scanner at this moment in time so I will post it as another journal entry when accessibility is in reach.

Things to stand by over the remainder of reading week and the further two weeks break are:

- Continue to collect logo examples and inspirational images to put in my sketchbook.
- Work on A1 - Sketchbook assignment.
- Think about how I can develop my mind maps and mood bored in productive terms towards the new assignment task of creating a CD design.
- Keep in touch with fellow students.

Personal Goals:
- Become more developed in using software applications.

Reading Week Task - Music Review!

2008-03-10T17:54:00.001Z

Russell Mills & Undark Review

The astounding sounds of the pair will knock your socks of and drop you right in the centre of Suburbia, were the streets are cold and the action is hot. This all time chilled out action compilation is enough to invite the mean streets of the movies for some fun time swinging on your earlobes. But don’t be fooled! This is a mixture that will send your emotions soaring in every direction with the sole intention of drowning in the real world.

From a very dominant start of vibrant pulses and light subdominant vocals. The work of the artists builds in to a steady moving stroll of the streets, manoeuvring over progression, in motion, failure and completion of a mission. Or so it seems, the mutual bond between listeners and sound, falls in with a different aspect as it moves down the line.

As I sit and listen, I feel the objective of the artists production was intended to hit the box office in some form of action thriller. The way that it is produced and organised, gives an impression of preparation, action, loss, more preparation and a victorious/dominant ending. Another theory is that it was created intentionally to give out the street wise impression or produce a glimpse overlay of the hardcore working life of the real labourers.

A6 Evaluation...

2008-03-04T19:58:00.004Z

Finally the long, gruelling wait is over. The presentation has been performed and the assignment has been handed in. I’m not 100% sure my presentation went as brilliant as planned, from the self notification of cotton mouth and fiddly hands.

Over the last 6 weeks I have been researching in to the life and work of Stanley Morison. Stanley is a famous Typographer who changed the world to how we see it today. Not only did he resurrect a few past fonts but he also created and supervised font we still use today, like Times New Roman. This is one of the standard fonts used in Microsoft applications such as word.

During the first few weeks I fell behind a little bit when dealing with referral work from the previous assignments Back to Basics, and Image Rights. When I finally got them out of the way, I set of to producing my presentation with the handout placed with 2nd priority. The first presentation design was all about Stanley’s life and the work he did. This was ok for the start, but not enough was mentioned in the typography side. Another issue was that the 1st presentation apparently looked similar to another student’s who was researching the same character, so that design had to be scrapped and a new idea was formed. The new idea was to place a hot metal machine in the bottom right corner and have a 3 pixel width line under the heading of every page.

With the handout having 2nd priority it seemed to lack in context on the seminar date it was due. Only the draft of it was required, but I had created only a black and white design with Lorem Ipsum counting up to 500 words. The final idea that I handed in today, had a completely grey background, information on Stanley’s life, work and it even held a few useful links in which to look information on the named character. The first hand out I printed of to take in to the presentation with me, had a different colour grey compared to the back ground colour grey. At 1st I thought it was a design fault, but when I printed it of again in class, it looked perfect. Which means the printer in the library doesn’t like the colours I created for the handout.

Other elements of the assignment were the timed tasks. During the first timed task everything was going riot. We had to make a book cover for font styles I believe it was. For this I created a hugely contrasted design, with a black background and yellow text. Although, it didn’t count too much because mine was one of the designs that didn’t make it to the desk in time for hand in. In fact there were quite a few students that didn’t get there in time. Luckily this was just a practise run to get us in the swing of things, so it wasn’t too disappointing to realise I’d not completed the task correctly.

The Second timed task was to create a paint label for a company called Hokai. This task went a lot better compared to the font book task. From reading through my journal entries, it appears I finished the task with 20 minutes to spare. But with the design been complete to a satisfactory finish, I decided to use the remainder of the time working on the research for my presentation.

The third timed task was to design and create a Vodafone job advertisement. For this I made a vast improvement on my hand in time, completing the task 35 minutes before I was required to. The finished design consisted of a 1 column advert, containing the Vodafone logo at the very bottom, a line to break the headed away from the body text and large style header set to bold for more impact.

In the fourth timed task we had to create a tabloid entry posted about Jonathan Gee and his band on there tours around the UK (including Wakefield). This task was harder than the earlier ones, making the completed state and hand in just minutes before the headline. Lining up the text was the hardest part, as I did not fully understand all of the relevant tools in Indesign. If I understood exactly where the leading button was located, I feel that the task much have been completed a little earlier. Along side this I difficulty with the location of the text, with out providing a huge amount of white space. This caused me to create a pull out feature in which you enlarge a section of the story above the paragraph it lies in to catch the reader's attention and remove white space.

Moving on with the progression of the timed tasks. It was today that we received our final one for this assignment. Today’s timed task came in two parts. There was the page design, and the insertion of its content and image. During the first part of the task I was finding it pretty difficult to provide a suitable layout, not knowing what was going to be in it. At first I designed a combination of two rows and 6 columns. During the on screen build I was advised that two rows wasn’t the correct way to do this task. From this I amended the design to have three full length columns right down the page. Along side this was a black and white banner arrangement in order to give a bold statement about the design. Also I used a white text on a black background appearance on the footer to show the production name, issue date and the issue number.

The second part of this task was to insert the information and place an image, while sticking with a typographic design. From the implementations in the first part of the task I was able to shrink and crop the image to make it cover 2 columns width and about half a column length. Next was the tricky part. I needed to line up the text in every column to show consistency. After much effort of trying to implement this, I came up with a solution. By changing the font size to 9pt, inserting a pull out, and using the leading option I was able to line all three columns up with out any white space. This task was finished 5 minutes before the hand in time.

Over all in this assignment I have learnt a great deal about typography. Sure I got around 3 questions wrong at the end of the presentation, but I feel confident when it comes to talking about most aspects found with in a font style and design. My first thought about the assignment were very bland, as researching a typographer didn’t seem that relevant. But through out the unit it came clear to how much a font can be used to aid design, and how design can be used to aid font. Before I would look at a computer screen and chose a preferred font style not even thinking about how the readability will affect the viewers. I wouldn’t even think about the design and work put in to creating the fonts. And I definitely didn’t know that nearly all fonts have different appearances, even those that look the same.

Tired of Illness...

2008-02-26T16:51:00.002Z

Monday morning I received feedback for my website. It turned out that a lot of changes were needed. As I was and still am pretty ill, I went home at dinner time and carried on with my website from their. The changes I took on were the alignment of the website, the colour of the banner, an insertion of a footer bar, a side bar at either side to show the edges of the website, and I placed 3 explanations on each page which lowered the number of pages. I also took out the index page which allows the user to get straight in to the basics in computing.

A few more things still need to be changed in order to complete this. These things are the browser chrome colour and the images. Instead of using part of an image, I made them all smaller to fit in to the space provided on each page.

Tuesday started with a little time to play about with our presentations before moving on to the timed task. This timed task was about an article regarding ‘Jonathon Gee’. This was a little more difficult compared to the previous weeks, completing the task just minutes before the hand in. Each of the previous timed task are said to be practice work, building up to the main project next week on the assignment hand in day. I am both worried and excited about next week. The worry comes from the precise measurements we need to take on for next week, practically making the design as much like the completed state as possible. The excitement comes from the fact that I find the timed tasks some what enjoyable and the outcomes can be really appreciated.

The afternoon of Tuesday was spent working on the presentation yet again. I am getting to the stages where I feel satisfied with the state of the presentation. All that is needed to do on this now is a little more work on the comparison of the times font line. It does seem to be quite difficult as the typographer made the typefaces so similar, with only miner changes in the style.

So, things I need to do this week:
- Complete the image task on the website.
- Add browser chrome colour.
- Centre the links (Steve suggests).
- Complete the rest of the comparisons on the presentation.
- Incorporate the final parts of the presentation in to the hand out.

Frustration and the Fun Times!!!

2008-02-19T16:32:00.002Z

Monday – usability testing for the website.

Many websites created are fantastic, and I really feel as though my design is no longer working for the website. Perhaps it’s looking at others work and liking what’s in front of you and suddenly falling out with your idea, or maybe its sum psychological feeling that every one gets while looking at other work. After gaining the feedback I immediately replaced my splash page with a suitable home page, containing a welcome message and links to all sections of the website. Other then the splash page there was a few spelling errors, and complaints on the pictures been a little too small. As a result, I have linked all the images to a larger form of its self which can be reached up on clicking the image on the website. The rest of the day was used up by proof reading every page in search of other errors and links testing.

Tuesday – The fun stuff.

Today we had another timed task which was due just two hours after been handed out. The task was to create a typographic solution to a job advertisement for Vodafone. During the planning process I only managed to create 2 designs as I planned to stick with the time plan I created at the very beginning. For this I gave myself 1 hour to complete the onscreen design and the remaining half hour for feedback and error checking. As the production progressed I was second (I think) to handing in the completed design 35 minutes before the hand in time. This for me is some what of a shock as I been pretty much struggling for some time now.

Struggling caused me to question Steve about moving on to the HNC, but after some encouraging words of my improvement from Steve, I think its worth one more shot to get out of this tight situation.

The afternoon came along and I had just started the build of my presentation. Before going in to seminars for a practice run I managed to complete around 4 slides. This is somewhat short and will need quite a bit of work. Also I will need to complete the hand out I am creating, which is half done at present.

After the seminar group, I have been researching away to find the differences between the fonts created by Stanley Morison. This is somewhat of a difficult task because the fonts are so similar and the differences are very marginal. Luckily I completed my website during the half term break, which gives me more time to buff up A6. I do still need to test the website a little more and produce an evaluation explaining all the problems I encountered in the build of the website. With so much work piling up on me, I lost site of errors and carried on with the work in front of me, ignoring to take screen prints of my problems. Luckily I remember all the problems I had, so the evaluation shouldn’t be too difficult.

So this week I need to:

- Complete the presentation and begin to practice it ASAP.
- Complete the handout.
- Test my website on the target audience.
- Test my website in all browsers in my project goals.
- And the usual weekly blog comments

Ammendments!!!

2008-02-11T16:56:00.001Z

Hey guys, I have completed the feedback given on the image restoration. here is the the result of this. Also please take time to view and comment on my uploaded website located at http://www.j-browne.co.uk/back-to-basics

Thanks.

Image Restoration!!!!!!

2008-02-08T22:03:00.000Z

Some much needed feedback is needed people. I would greatly appreciate any suggestions of alterations, and general forms of congratulations.....

The fun of design!!

2008-02-05T17:09:00.000Z

Yet again we had another crack on with it day on Monday meaning my website is entering its final stages. Still to complete is the email form and an index page. On the index page I plan to give a welcoming message that will invite a user on to my creation. Still to complete for the form page is the form mail command that will automatically issue me with an email when a user has submitted data. For what seemed to be working really well, suddenly entered a stage in stress mode. For around 2 hours on Monday afternoon I was trying to get the code and commands correct for this task, but there seemed to be no luck what so ever. Perhaps this task will require my complete attention and a good effort in research.

Tuesday morning and a timed task arrived. Oh what fun it was to crack on with 2 hours worth of decent craft, working to a time limit. The task was to create a typographic solution for a company called Hokai Oriental Gouache that make a profit from selling tubes of paint. We were allowed to choose one additional colour to add to the design along with black and white as the standards. For the task I chose to use the colour red and implement it in to the text on the label. Compared to the previous test in this sort of working environment, this time went one million times better. Instead of creating six full sized designs in detail I jumped straight into the rough side of sketching. Doing this allowed me enough time to create one fully sketched design out of the rough sketches, research the requirements, and 20 minutes at the end to print my design out in colour.

This week I gained feedback for A4 Image Rights, which need a hell of a lot of work in order to pass. With just under 2 weeks before the designated hand in, I am required to:
- Re-restore the restoration image.
- Reword most of the TDR essay.
- Change a few things in the Image Compression essay.
- Include the compression images in the assignment.
- Include graphs to show my finding on image compression.
- And create an evaluation of my work and the progress I am making on the course.

Along side this I am still required to carry on with the website build, and the presentation assignments. This upcoming week is half term week which I intend to take full advantage of, so I can complete as much work as I possibly can.

On a final note I thank Steve, John and all the students for another great half term. I look forward to completing the current assignments and coming back to start another. See you all after half term week.

The Force of Typography is with in!!!

2008-01-29T16:58:00.001Z

Monday came and it was back for another go in the design room. This particular day was a work day, as Steve said ‘there is no lecture, so carry on with your work’. So of I started with the build of the website. During the day I came across many problems which were ever so minor, it took some time to get it back right. I finished my template in Dreamweaver and completed my feedback form. No validation yet though. When I was submitting a completed form entry, the computer was automatically opening the Windows Outlook application. Strange!

In the later time of the day I was called in for assignment feedback on A3. John went through a few things that I immediately altered and reprinted. Let’s hope for a pass.

After feedback I was still tampering with the DWT. For some reason when I was changing the links in the DWT file, it was not updating to any of the pages. The rest of the day was spent trying to get this right, with no luck so far.

Tuesday and it was a late start. Steve went to the Huddersfield with four other students to see Dave Panell, at the design mechanics. We were advised to come in for 1 o’clock and carry on with our presentation work that morning. Upon arrival to the class, we gained some more useful knowledge from one of Steve’s lectures. The lecture was about ‘Type Anatomy’, which is very helpful toward the presentation assignment.

During seminar it became clear that I talked a little too much about the life of Stanley Morison, rather then the font types he created and restored. Another factor was the design; apparently it seems a little familiar with another students work. So I will be changing the design of the presentation over the week. Other valuable feedback in seminar groups was that we can compare typefaces in our presentation and explain any differences if any are found. As I have Stanley Morison I believe that will be a fairly difficult task to concur.

The rest of the afternoon involved looking for all the font styles associated with Stanley Morison and the difference’s I saw between them. So far I have noticed one slight difference in the way the ‘counter’ in some letters is slightly bigger in its own way.

So this week will be a busy week.

- Complete the 1st draft of my hand out ready for seminar group.
- Cary on with the build of the website, concurring all overcoming problems
- Design a new presentation layout
- Insert more information about the typefaces created by the typographer given.
- Make the general weekly amount of journal comments or beat it.

Recovery Point!!!

2008-01-22T16:30:00.001Z

The start of another week and my illness has very nearly cleared up aside the constant weak cough. It started off with the usual morning lectures with Steve. Lasting around 2 hours we thoroughly went through Dreamweaver and its easy desirable way to create a feedback form and produce a CSS document for the content. After the very informative presentation created by Steve, it was back to work for the final half hour before lunch.

For this half hour I took the time to continue with the referral work on A3 which is now finally complete (Thank god). Now it time to get on with the fun stuff. The build of course, as this is one of the best parts of the course yet. With an already experienced mind on the matter I plan to crack on with the project immediately in order to gain a slight distanced lead against the assignment brief. That way I will be able to crack on with A4 – Image Restoration feedback and not have to worry about falling behind on the current project.

Tuesday struck and at 1st I had a slight doubt in matter about whether I was going to make it before the 9 o’clock lock up time. This lead to a light comment from Steve about appearing alert and ready for the job when entering the classroom (I think that was aimed at me, but I could be wrong). Following a lecture about more Typography we fired up the machines to get on with the presentation assignment on a famous typographer. But wait! Immediately after opening the IE application to gain more research, we were prompt to shut down out computers and begin a timed task on typography. This involved creating a book cover on the various different fonts out there. At only 10:40 am we had an hour and 20 minutes to crack on with the job. After running the Olympic printer run for a colour copy of my design it was in fact too late to hand in the deign as the 12 noon deadline was narrowly missed. But luckily this was only a practice run to get us in the mood for future preferences.

Following the time task and lunch we carried on with our work on the presentation. For this project I have been given Stanley Morison, the creator of Times font styles and Blado. At the moment I am a little frustrating at the amount of research I have gained, and how much I will need for the presentation. Stanley really seems like a difficult person to research on as I have had no luck what so ever on finding anything about the companies he actually worked. I was hoping to perhaps get my hands on an article he produced or some information as to how he came up with the font styles. The long winding road awaits.

Seminar this week was a wake up call for the sketchbook assignment. It appears the majority of the class has let it slip a little through focusing completely on the other assignments. I for one do not personally know the learning out comes which is something that was said to be essential in the assignment in order to pass it.

So for this week I have a lot of work to be getting on with. So here we go, this is what I need to do:

- Read the learning out comes of Unit 4 and be sure that I understand them.
- Produce a draft presentation for next Tuesday’s seminar group.
- Manipulate all the images for A5, ready to be placed in Dreamweaver.
- Gain more inspirational images for my sketchbook and fully annotate.
- And produce 4 journal comments on other students journal entry.

A New Term.

2008-01-15T23:54:00.002Z

The start of a new term and tension surpassed the average atmosphere in the room. This was in motion with the grades in which we we're to receive from our previous assignment. As it appears I did not pass this time round, but as it was a substantial improvement from the last web design assignment, I have been awarded another chance to set this right. Failure is not an option!

After the grades we're handed out, it was time for business. Steve produced a presentation about the Dreamweaver application. Following the presentation we got down to to some practice in the desktop application. As I have had previous experience in this application it wasn't too difficult to get to a state where I feel comfortable in using it.

Tuesday arrived and with a bit of bad luck, I came down with some sort of cold illness. I think I can stand tall and actually say it is not the man flu that was going around some time ago. But it did in fact cause me to leave college early on the day. Fortunately I managed to appear for the presentation on the upcoming assignments. As a result of this I am hoping to gain back my health s soon as possible and carry on with the work set out for us.

My goals for this term are as follows:

- Produce higher quality work.
- Set mini goals during assignments to manage it more effectively.
- Progress in terms of the sketchbook assignment, not forgetting to insert pieces of inspirational art/design.

As a closing note I would like to thank John and Steve for the encouraging conversation during assignment feedback.

The End of Term 1!!!

2007-12-21T18:21:00.001Z

Through out the term the course has shown all aspects that are possibly part of the design industry. These are emotional feelings towards work/own designs, friendliness of co-workers (students), a better understanding of the performance needed, more experience in various programs and the frustration it can all lead up to.

Over all this is by far the best, friendliest, and hardest working environment I have ever faced up to this present time. The over all amount of work needed to complete each assignment is outstanding compared to previous courses and can only be described as a good thing, and often known as a challenge.

Through out the last 4 months I have seen all the different types of moods shown by each of the students. Some moods were good and the others bad. But the main thing is that we have all stood aside each other in this difficult and nauseating time.

On a personal level I would like to thank Steve and John for the guidance and valuable experiences this term. And I would also like to thank all the students that have made this time more valuable then I could ever imagine.

From the completion of the latest assignments I can honestly say I have learnt a great deal, even though some of the work seemed as though we were replaying previous tasks from A2. The more informative part of the assignment this time round was the content of the WebPages, as this was something newly added, that is a differentiated asset from A2.

A4 so far is by far the most enjoyable assignment during the 1st term at the HND class. This is due to the designing part, as most of the other assignments were mainly written. Completing the image restoration gave me an immense boost in the Photoshop application, by its demonstration of the tools hosted. Through out the restoration I became very aware of a lot of tools and task that could be created in and by this advance piece of software.

A bright idea produced by Steve was to issue us with a time limited task in creating banners at a professional level. This allowed me (and I’m sure others) to produce a mass number of designs in the time allocated. The completion of these designs were very satisfying, mostly looking back at the ‘Tina May’ banner I created. In my eyes this appeared to me to be by far the best design work I have ever completed.

Looking back towards the 1st journal entry I produced in September, it appears that my knowledge and evaluative experience had greatly increased in terms of wording and productivity. This is to my knowledge a key asset to becoming a progressing designer.

After the full term break we will be progressing onto the build of the A3 web plan. This is in my opinion a very good task to begin as creating a website in Dreamweaver is something to complete that I finally have experience with. Through out the build I have a number of goals that I aim to stand by. In the result of not sticking with these goals, it will only show a state of failure in which I will have shown signs of underestimation. So now I will leave a list of the goals I am planning to stick by and improve during the next term and towards the end of the completing year.

- Improve my workings in the assignment template.
- Show more creativity with progressing ideas.
- Use my current knowledge and progress further.
- Carry on planning my time efficiently and effectively.
- Become more responsive towards email replying and journal commenting.
- And to keep on producing a good standard of evaluating journal entries.

P.S Merry Crimbo every one :D

A Brighter Reality!!!

2007-12-11T17:33:00.001Z

This week has seemed very satisfying and rewarding in both the work load, and the gains of new experience. I speak of this as the A3 assignment is nearly to a complete state (excluding a few images, the assets list, some references and a few amendments pointed out in seminar). Another thing that has lifted the feeling this week is the amount of image feedback in the permission state of the assets. My images have come from a number of sources, complete with licensing and permission. 1 of the website I gained feed back from was IBM. This may not have been an email of permission, but it did appoint me to 1 of its website pages in which contained a permission of use form. Very satisfying is the feeling when gaining feedback from a professional company. Another site I gained feed back from was http://www.webcreationuk.com/. This was in relation to a price of a professionally made website sold in the industry. This information was needed in order to gain a general knowledge of what price could be included in the price list of A3.

A4 hasn’t been worked on a great deal this last week as I’ve been concentrating mainly on A3. At the state of its current form, it only really needs a few amendments, a little feedback and an evaluation, not forgetting to actually place it all in to ‘InDesign’ also. Today I’ve mainly been working on the banner creations for A4. During the time spent on this I believe I’ve learnt a great deal more in Photoshop and the general layouts of a banner in forms of contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity.

A downside to today was that I accidentally over slept, which made me late for class. As a result to not having Steve’s number saved in my phone book, I was unable to get in touch with him to let him know I was going to be late. This meant I spent the morning part of class self studying in the library (not the greatest thing in the world I might add). From this unforeseen misfortune, I have only managed to gain the number in which will prevent me from been sent out of class in the event of this ever happening again in future (thanks Michelle).

Now that this week has been talked about here are a few tasks I am required to do this week in self study:

- Amend errors in A3
- Complete referencing
- Gain remainder of pictures needed and complete assets list
- Gain feedback for the banner creations when amended
- Comment on 6 other students journal entries
- And ensure A4 is inserted into InDesign complete with referencing

Banner Progress!!!

2007-12-08T20:40:00.000Z

Here are the results of further feedback comments. Michelle, im affraid your previous comment was not able to be ammended as the image of Jonathon Gee is how you see it. There is no more image above the hair line that is seen. Please take time in commenting on these designs....

Thanks.

Screen Design Update.!!!

2007-12-05T23:54:00.001Z

More comments are needed people, Ive made it more digital. Now what do you think???

Changed and uploaded. What do you think now Suzanne???

Banner Ideas!!!

2007-12-04T17:17:00.000Z

Feed back please. It will be most helpful. And yes people, they are both under the 20k limit...

Harsh Reality!!!

2007-12-04T16:58:00.001Z

As a result of completely failing assignment A2, it has come aware that play time is over. This course has already lost too many students and I don’t intend for me to be the next disappointing asset in the journey to becoming a designer. Early this week we leant that one of out fellow students had a change of heart about his path in life. This led to an upsetting moment where Tom Wealthy decided to leave this career path in order to pursuit another. Some may feel disappointed, some may feel lost for words, but I feel it is best to just be happy with the decision made by Tom. Cya later buddy, Good luck.

From failing the assignment, that’s The Plan, I can only gain a better understanding of what needed to be included in an assignment for future references. From this unfortunate event, I now plan to improve a great deal in order to pass A3 with flying colours. Been on this course means a lot to me and it would be a great loss if I were not able to complete it for what ever reason.

A3- Up to press I believe I’m on the merge of improving my self as we have 2 weeks in order for me to complete the assets list, budget statement, evaluation and the design feedback. This may seem like a lot to some people but it is as simple as it comes. This could be completed with college time alone provided I knuckle down to the task. But this is something I’m not going to do, as I plan to take full advantage of my home study time, which will give me a lot of progress in this assignment. After completing what I have to do I can only brush up on what I have done in order to get that mark I am aiming for.

A4- The last task as I noticed began to bring out the creative flare in most people. This was the image restoration task. Up to press I have completed it except for one minor fault. It seems to look a little grainy (stated by Andrew Whelan) when up close. So far in my recent attempts it has proved useless in getting this right. I’ve played with just about every setting I can think of and nothing seems to work. Any advice or tips will be a great help on that one, Thanks.

Today we started the banner task. In this task we are required to create a Skyscraper and a Medium Rectangle banner. The theme in which to create these 2 styles of banners we’re given to us by Steve in the form of 5 photographic images. With these images we are required to only use 2, and incorporate them in to the design, being careful not to damage or change any part of the actual image.

The tasks to complete for this weeks home study are:

- Read and comment on at least 4 other students’ journal entries.
- Complete the assets list.
- Design feedback (Images are below if any one wants to leave a comment).
- Budget Statement.
- And the 2 banners.

Web Template-A3!!!

2007-12-04T00:55:00.001Z

This is what ive come up with from sketchbook feedback. The sketch is to illustrate simpleness. Any feedback will be greatly appreciated.

After a few changes from a fellow students feedback I came up with this. Any more takers???

Running on a Low Tank!!!!

2007-11-27T17:11:00.000Z

Monday morning a rather different start then our usual morning lecture. Steve approached us with an on the spot task to create approximately 15 business card sketch ideas in our personal designers tool. He then gave us a 15 minute period in which we were to create a chosen business card idea in either PageMaker or InDesign. With a 15 minute time limit I set of to create a fairly simple design out of the ones created. At the end and after gaining feedback I realised that I wasn’t in the right lines of the task as I added extra information such as name tag before the actual representative’s name. For example: Name: Walter M. Wainwright.

After the sudden realisation of the sort of work needed in the design industry (I think, or is the design industry a lot more productive and demanding?) we began with a lecture about 4 principle of design. In this we covered:
- Proximity, which is using related elements in the same location.
- Alignment, which is basically the placement of an element.
- Repetition, which is a strong form of consistency.
- And Contrast, which is what, attracts the eyes of the viewer.

After the lecture we moved on to our current assignment work for a Monday which is A3. During the time in college I began researching the information in which to use in the script of the website build. Although it’s not yet complete, I gained a very good start in which to inform a target audience of 50+ (Silver Surfers).

During the long extended work criteria on Monday night I gained a very valuable lesson. This lesson is to work on feedback as soon as you receive it and get it out of the way as soon as possible. Failure to do so will result in the lack of sleep.

Tuesday and a very tired ‘JB’. We began the day with the same task as Monday morning but instead of 15 designs we had to create number of 5 complete with annotations. Knowing the results of Monday and from the feedback gained, I set out to create a suitable business card complete with proximity, Alignment, Repetition and Contrast. As a result of this task I received pretty bad feedback just the same as before. Apparently the text regarding the information about the location of the business and the representative, proposing the card, was too small. Perhaps something I need to work on in the near future.

After the Sudden repeat of a design industry on the spot task we began to work on our image restoration which I think is going rather well if I do say so my self (an image of my progress is located below).

In our seminar groups we had a discussion about our progress in the assignment so far and the tasks needed to be completed for this particular weekly event. For this we needed to have a major amount of our image restoration complete in order for checking and the image compression discussion. So far as I know the image restoration needs to be altered slightly in order for the really small detail to be visible to the human eye. A note from Steve, says that if I can’t gain the right tone for the restored image I will need to start it again and place the restoration elements in a separate layer in Photoshop rather then restoring the actual image. From working on the image after seminar I believe it is completed to a satisfactory level of appreciation (in my view).

Also today (Tuesday) we gained our presentation feedback which we produced on the 1st day back from reading week. As it turns out I am a nervous motor mouth with an obsession for comfort. Due to a sudden print of the hand out after entering the room it appears I was also disorganised.

Task to complete over the week:

- 15 web plan thumbnails and a chosen design in full size (in Sketchbook).
- A digital version of the web plan.
- A completed script.
- 8 comment (something Steve says I need to do for missing out on last week’s deadline).
- And any restoration feedback gained from you guys (If people comment and be truthful).

The Excitment of Manipulation!!!

2007-11-20T17:15:00.001Z

1st things first, I must remember to complete all tasks asked of by Steve for the date set. On Monday morning of this week I was yet again told to leave the room as I failed to copy last Mondays lecture out of a fellow students note book. This resulted in me missing out on Monday mornings lecture, which I am required to gain for next week. The task I was required to do during lecture time was to take notes of last weeks lecture in which Michelle gracefully gave us her note book to carry out the task from. Thanks Michelle.

After the task of copying last weeks lecture, we came back to gain a lecture on Type faces. This explained various styles of font and an outline of typography. Back to work after dinner I set out to complete my delivery requirements and competitive analysis. The chosen sites I used for analysing were www.comptechdoc.org/basic/basictut/ and www.geekgirls.com/menu_basic_computing.htm, which were very helpful in understanding the requirement needed to complete the task.

Tuesday. What a day. We started out with a lecture about image manipulation and how to restore an image back to its former glory. In this lecture we talked about the various tools in Photoshop that are required much use in order to complete the task of restoring an old image received from Steve’s own personal collection. Before lunch we were allowed to have a little mess around with the image in Photoshop to get a better understanding of what is required from us.

After returning from lunch it was straight back to work for the 1st years. With the intention of professionally restoring the image, I set out on a mission which has been quite enjoyable. So far I have restored the back ground of the image, the leg on the right, the top right hand corner, the fold cease on the left person, and a few out of place pixels on the person on the left of the image. My intention now is to complete the restoration of the image and import colour in order for Steve to place his opinion on it next week.

During the time of restoration my seminar group had its weekly discussion with Steve on order to talk about our project goals, target audience, delivery requirements and competitive analysis. During this time we talked about whether our goals are measurable, technologies to be used in the delivery requirements, and a brief discussion about the website’s visited for analysis.

Tasks to be completed for next week:

- Complete image manipulation task complete with colour.
- Copy out Mondays lecture into my sketchbook
- Stick to my time planning.
- Insert at least 4 comments on to other student's journal entries

Monkey Pictures!!!

2007-11-13T17:28:00.001Z

What fun we had :D

Monkey Madness!!!!

2007-11-13T17:23:00.001Z

What a week! Monday for a start was pretty mental, as the previous week I had a dare from Steve to for fill. So with the first college day amongst us I began my journey to Wakefield College wearing a ‘Gorilla Suit’ (or at least half of it). The head, hands and feet were additions in which to put on when I entered the building as I chose not to risk getting arrested on the way in. Now that would have really upset Steve. Any ways don’t knock it until you’ve tried it, that’s all I have to say about it. The amount of laughter seen at my expense and the fun I had in Thorne’s park at lunch time was amazing. Above in a separate journal entry are a few of the pictures taken.

Any way, back to the point of this entry. During Monday we talked about the new web plan that was upon us in the new assignment (A3 – Back to Basics). During this discussion (or shall I say lecture) we talked about what was expected of us in this assignment. A new added feature of creating the entire content of the website is going to challenging as we have a basic amount of words we are able to place in the website. The limit was around 2000 words in which to talk about 40 basic computer elements in which to describe to the ‘Silver Surfers’ (members of the community/50 +/interested in accessing the internet). Other tasks during this session were to produce the measurable goals for this project. As it stands I currently have 6 goals which all appear to be pretty measurable.

Tuesday (today) was a day of confusion in the way of trying to understand a lot about colour and the various types of libraries there were in the world we see today. At 1st I thought that there was only one way of viewing a colour library and that was understood because of a previous showing of the pantone colour booklet from Steve. It also turns out that I now also know the answer to a question that puzzled me as a child, when I sat really close in front of the television set. I always used to wonder why there lots of colours shown when sat too close to the TV (I’m sure some of you also did the same thing as a child and wondered why the reason was). Now from the presentation Steve showed us I understood that the RGB colour scheme is the reason for this and that it’s red, green and blue overlapping helps out with creating the other colours viewed other then just seeing the ones mentioned.

In the second part of Tuesday, we had another presentation about image compression and that various technologies which assist in this. We also got to play around with a few images in Photoshop to test the outcomes of each compression method, in which for a photograph, JPEG format won. For graphics PNG was the better in this particular case.

Task to complete for this week:

- Work on the referral in order to achieve a pass grade on A2.
- Follow times sheets accurately.
- Look out for an email from Steve and reply with in the 48 hour deadline.
- Comment on at least 4 other journal entries before midnight Friday.
- Complete the discussion on image compression.

Needs:
- Lots of comments about Gorilla Monday!!!

Dissapointment and Happy Thoughts!!!

2007-11-06T17:53:00.001Z

Monday the 5th of November. Today we received our grades for the first assignment and it appears that I have referred. All though it is not yet known as to why the referral was given, I am willing to carry on giving my all in order to get on with the course and preferably replace the referral with a pass grade. Among the class in our seminar group we have covered a great deal in how we are going to move on knowing our current grades. As a summary of this and from each answer given by the class, I feel that its is right to say that everyone who gained a referral seemed to be some what disappointed and are willing to give it there all in order to achieve that pass grade.

Remember people, this is part of learning so hang in there. I referred this assignment also but I’m not letting it get to me the slightest bit because I have referred a number of assignments in the past, I have recovered and learnt from my experience.

On another note we each had a presentation to show to Steve about a colour. As explained in last week’s journal entry, I was given the colour purple. In my opinion the presentation went really well considering I accidentally skipped a slide (I think). The presentation did seem to go by quite rapidly considering the time taken for most students to disappear and then reappear at the canteen doors. But I guess that could be the suspense and excitement I was feeling at that moment, which suddenly made me fly through it.

Tuesday the 6th of November. This morning consisted of the usual from Steve, but instead of the original heart bursting outbreaks of reluctant disappointment. The lecture was finally something other then a disciplinary about emails. Instead we talked about whether it is possible to distinguish the differences between an artist and a designer. This presentation leads to a very good discussion that should prove quite useful in the upcoming. The main question to relate to is, are you a designer or an artist, and why?

This afternoon the class has been researching hard to gain information about the Design Republic. This is a task emitted in A4 that requires us to discuss (evaluate) the designs created by the design republic and how they work as a company, yet again leading on to what I see my self as (artist or designer).

Finally in our seminar groups we discussed the upcoming assignments to fill in any miss-judgment about what we are expected to do. This took exactly 1 hour in which we talked about how everyone is expecting me to come in to college dressed in my Halloween costume on the upcoming Monday. We talked about the past assignment in which we have jus completed and we were given a talk in which to complete for the upcoming Monday. This was to discuss with my seminar group 12 software applications that could be included on the website we are now planning. This needs to include at least 3 OS’s.

Task to complete for next week…

- Complete the discussion about the Design Republic and figure out what I see my self as (Designer or Artist).
- Gain a constant reminder about wearing my gorilla suit in to college next Monday.
- Keep up to date with my time planning.
- Complete seminar task.

P.S. What do you see you're self as, a Designer or an Artist???

Reading Week!!!

2007-10-30T18:00:00.001Z

So far reading week has proved pretty challenging. As we entered the week with an email to Steve for our current task, we found our selves having to create a presentation consisting of a colour chosen by Steve. The element I received for this task was the colour purple in which seems to be a colour out of my interest, but hey this is all a learning experience that could be vital in the design industry so lets crack on with it. At present I have researched a number of sites in order to find out some information about this asset and what seems to me as the most surprising bit of information so far is that purple is meant to represent Royalty and Sophistication. In past experiences I have often found lavender to be quite relaxing in colour and aroma which is why this was so surprising. In research I have actually found out that lavender may look purple, but it is a lighter form of violet which is generally mistaken for the colour purple.

In this task I am actually struggling a little bit as I'm not sure on how much information will fit in to the 5 minute boundary, with an added question section at the end, so any advise on that will be greatly appreciated. I was considering of asking Steve but I'm not sure as to whether or not he’s annoyed with me for emailing him later then what I should have done.
Things i still need to be cracking on with:

- Before the weekend I intend to have my own domain name in order for me to receive web hosting from John, which appears to be very acceptable. If there are any websites that are recommended please share them as I would like to have full access and licensing to any website I publish in the future.
- Also before the weekend intend to have completed the full presentation in order for me to start thinking about which method I will use to present it i.e. notes, full presentation in hand or read of the board.
- I also intend to come up with as many questions as possible and the answers along with them to make it easier on me when I receive questioning (hopefully I will come up with all the question that may be asked so I wont have to turn down any question).

Half term!!!

2007-10-23T18:37:00.000+01:00

It’s already been a week since our first deadline and I can’t help but feel so relaxed about it. It is also very clear that the fate of this assignment rests in the hands of Steve, and whether or not we've completed the tasks in the correct standard that will gain us at least a pass. As this week has progressed I have gained very useful tips that could be used to my advantage in future assignments. 1 of which seems so very simple, that I can’t seem to think of why it didn’t occur to me until a 2nd year student (Julian Dyer) published it in last week’s blog entry as a comment. Been aware of this task in the past would have saved me from having to rush things at the last minute in order to gain the use of a CD labelling kit.

Thing that could help me in the future (feel free to add comments on other additions):

- Produce a hand in check list at the start of an assignment (include all tasks including labelling CD and time management).
- Constant reminders of time planning (plan a source that is a constant reminder).
- Become literally exceptional which course related programs.
- Find more sources of creativity/inspiring images

A Feeling of Relief...

2007-10-16T13:56:00.000+01:00

Today in the HND Interactive Media section of Thornes, was the hand in date for the 1st assignment. As 12 o’clock had past and Steve stepped foot in to the class, a mass breathe of relief was released across the room with the thought of achievement in completing what seemed to be the hardest task up to press. Early this morning I arrived, with the intention of completing the assignment in approx 1 hour and having the rest of the morning to relax and think about the previous experience, although this didn’t conjure from the original plan. I found my self in a state of panic as I made a quick dash to PC world for a CD labelling kit as this was one of the tasks I overlooked. The over overlooked task was the referencing during the assignment which took me a good hour to configure to what seemed to be the correct standard. Sitting here now, I can gladly say that the experience and achievement has been pretty satisfying, both working on and completing A2 – That’s the Plan.

Next to come is the first experience of what is known as reading week. At the moment I sort of like the idea that ill be gaining more experience about the course and what is needed in order for me to pass it. It is known that a number of tutors through out your education may seem to want a mass amount of work in order for you to complete an assignment. During the previous years of education at Wakefield College I have often wondered why so much is required in order to complete an assignment when I have learnt what was needed. At this moment in time I have now realised that your learning is just as important as the evidence needed to prove what you have learnt.

For the final thought of this week’s online journal entry I can say that I am looking forward to starting some of the future activities on the course to boost my range of experience and creativity. Bring it on Steve!!!!

Final Final Design!!!

2007-10-15T10:16:00.000+01:00

Here is an image fo the design i have ended up with due to that foolish acts of PageMaker.....

Any quick advice will be appreciated.

A good feeling!!!

2007-10-11T22:44:00.000+01:00

The final week has finally come and what first seemed to be a sudden jolt of panic has suddenly turned to a sense of relief. In the seminar groups with Steve it seemed like I had a lot to get on with in order to complete the 1st assignment on the deadline set (hand in date as Steve once stated). During the course of the week I have been gathering evidence and inserting my work into PageMaker, which is now considerably starting to make a lot more sense. The relief I feel is that the 1st assignment is coming to an end and everything I need to get on with is becoming clear with every thought about it. Something I haven’t liked about this week is that I have had to change my original web site plan. Sorry to the people that commented on my design, but by inserting my design in to PageMaker the view was horrendous. Alternatively I have taken away the back ground colouring, inserted text navigation, edited the dickens image and yes people, Charles Dickens is still looking in to the page.

In our groups with John we found out that a certain student (mentioning no names Rebecca) managed to lose a lot of work due to some technical difficulties. From finding out about this experience I can improve on my backing up skills in order for this to not become an issue in the duration of what seems to be a pleasant course.

Also this week I have realised how everyone in the group has adapted in the ways they have. Not only have I noticed a great deal of enthusiasm but also a great deal of friendship. I can honestly say now that I feel to be part of the course and part of a group of potentially dangerous designers that I may have the pleasure of competing or working with in the, what seems to be the very near future.

Final 2 Designs!!

2007-10-06T19:01:00.001+01:00

After more alterations it has come to the final 2. Now whats your opinion???

1st on screen design...

2007-10-05T11:58:00.000+01:00

Finaly i have completed the 1st on screen design. Although a little late it would be very appreciated if i could possibly gain feedback before Monday. Thanks!

Another Idea was to have the banner looking a little like this??? Your thoughts will be appreciated.

After a number of outside sources i have narrowed my design down to this, any thoughts??

There is still time!!!

2007-10-02T17:00:00.000+01:00

This week has gone by quite well considering it still seems that I am a little behind. The task from now until the next session (Monday 8th October) will be to complete all current ongoing work and prepare to insert all of it in to ‘Adobe PageMaker’.

This week Steve seemed to be a little calmer which can only mean 1 thing, he likes us to complete task set by himself (a little bit obvious). In our seminar groups we talked about our current progress in our first assignment. I have entered the ending stages of the design task (my favourite part), but much more work is needed in order to complete the assignment on the date set. Due to writers block early on Monday I postponed the competitive analysis task and moved on to the design part in which I have nearly completed.

This week I feel that I have learnt a great deal about the designing section as I have produced many thumb nail templates in which I have produced 5 on a larger scale. Narrowed down to the final 1 I began to test the making of the site to get a quick look at what it may look like if I were to complete the process.

The tasks I have set my self for this week are to:

- Complete the competitive analysis.
- Finish of the final design layout
- Amend the site structure
- And produce a price list, summarising my time spent and the hardware/software components.

Due to recent experience following the Nikki Iles task, I have come to my own conclusion about ‘PageMaker’. In my opinion it is not at all as accurate as Steve tends to talk about. This is my conclusion as I created the site structure and all seemed well on the computer screen. Once printed a number of errors appeared on the page all been the same error in different places. The error was that a small gap appeared between a various lines that I had connected to show the flow of data in the site structure.

Also I must remember to state the obvious and be able to prove my theory. In a discussion with John on Monday morning, he brought out an error I was making a few weeks ago. This error was that I got the wrong idea about how much detail we needed to go in to. I started to look in a deeper meaning of CSS when I was only required to find out what it is, what it can do, and what I will use it for.

The Design Mechanics!

2007-09-26T17:58:00.001+01:00

Today Steve let some of us (the 1st year students) join the class on our day off to see the presentation set by a Huddersfield based company known as the ‘Design Mechanics’. Residing their 30 minute lateness to the presentation today was in fact a real treat. From this experience I have learnt a lot about how the design industry work and how clients can effect your state of mind. From the way it seems, us college students have currently got it easy in relation to the industry for example: we don't have a nagging client refusing our work cause of it not been good enough or to their expectations, we don't have multiple projects to work on in the day Etc.

After the presentation we had a chance to ask the design team a few questions about anything relating to their experiences and current working environment. The main thing I learnt from this is that all clients have different opinions in a designer's creation, but they are still the boss of the project and their needs are very important in order to complete it successfully. Our roll if to successfully rise up to the design industry will be to cater for the clients needs and not our own personal attractions.

After the presentation and the questions, a few of the second years showed examples of their own work to us and the ‘Design Mechanics’. All of the work shown was at a great standard and this showed me the type of competition I will be working with in the future. All though some of the work was very inspiring like a CD cover created by ‘Andrew Ellis’. Now i have seen some of the work to come, I will be looking forward to the time when we begin to start some of it. Like for instance, creating the web site we are currently planning and designing an album cover.

If there are any questions from the students in the 1st year about the Design Mechanics feel free to ask. Also to add to that note, I am sure that the other students who attended the presentation will be more then happy to answer any questions regarding professional work and ‘The Design Mechanics’. Sorry if your not guys!!!!

The @"!$ has hit the fan!

2007-09-25T16:29:00.001+01:00

Today Steve wasn’t impressed in the way that nobody completed the tasks set in last Friday’s email. This resulted in Steve taking a time out in the library which left us to talk about what had just happened. As a fearless leader Shaun stepped in and suggested that we talk about the task we failed to complete. This formed a class discussion so that everyone had a chance to understand the ‘Web Content Accessibility Guidelines’ 1.1, 2.2, 4.2, 12.3 and 14.1. We also had a talk about these guide lines to make sure that everyone came to terms with what they are and what they stand for. After what seemed to be around a half hours discussion, Shaun yet again showed courage by leaving the room to confront Steve 1-on-1 in the dark corners of the ‘Library’ (Queue in the Horror Music). Shaun re-entered the room around 10-15 minutes after leaving, with a relieved look on his face. He stated immediately that a 2nd voice of what had just happened was needed for Steve’s ears in which Martyn volunteered. A form of punishment set as a reminder that lateness and incomplete work is not tolerated was agreed by our selves.

In other events a big thank you actually goes to Steve for showing us how to use ‘Adobe PageMaker’. By giving us a quick tutorial we were able to create an article about a female candidate known as ‘Nikki Iles’ (Not that the name rings any bells). But, in the tutorial we learnt how to use a number of tools which will come to use when we start to use the application to bring our assignments in.

Also, over the last week I have been trying to get my head around most sections in the delivery requirements such as CGI, HTML and the ‘Web Accessibility Guidelines’. This week I have learnt a great deal about these elements for example, it was not to my knowledge that there are software applications and pc components that were created solely to give computer and internet access to the blind.

This weeks self study tasks are to carry on with the assignment using the time sheets, take on the student agreed form of punishment which is to write 2-5 pages in out sketch books about the ‘Web Accessibility Guidelines’. I will also gather more sources of information to place in my sketch book as I am only half way through (This may seem a lot to some people but I feel as though other class members have done a lot more sketchbook work than I have).

Past Statement!

2007-09-18T17:06:00.001+01:00

Endure is a statement I have used in the past and Steve can back that up. My reason for saying this is because, so far I have completed only the ‘Project Goals’. The other tasks started are still ongoing. These tasks involve the ‘Target Audience’, the ‘Delivery Requirements’ and the ‘Competitive Analysis’. The reason for this is that the target audience task needs to be thought about a little more as my main target audience is primarily set for any fiction story reader who is interested in the work of Charles Dickens. The secondary audience falls in to the student category of English GCSE and H/E. As stated by Steve, I need to be a little more specific when it comes to thinking about the target audience.

The delivery requirements are pretty much up to scratch in terms of client and designer needs for the project. The hardest part is to gain as much information about ‘HTML’, ‘XHTML’, and ‘Java Scripts’ in order for me to understand them. So far in this task I have managed to find out information about CGI Scripts/Proxy and the Web Accessibility Guidelines.

Conclusion:
This week’s self study will result in me having to really pull my finger out and research the named web scripts as much as possible in order to keep up to date with the assignment. This is required of me so that I am able to complete the following tasks:

- Target Audience
- Delivery Requirements
- Competitive Analysis

Other ongoing tasks to work on are:

- Placing images of inspiration in my note book
- Gain more images of inspiration
- Gain more evidence in my note book

For gaining inspiration I will be keeping my eyes open through the week, so that I don’t miss possible chances of gaining inspiration from other people’s graphical imagery or advertising.

In other news we have had another group meeting with Steve in our seminar groups in which we discussed our current progress in the assignment so far. This lasted 45 minutes and we covered all the above readings on the assignment. We also had a visit from the student finance office of Wakefield College in which a female candidate talked about information on applying for a student loan, how to go if you haven’t received your student loan and what you can do if you haven’t applied for a student loan.

In the Beginning

2007-09-11T16:15:00.002+01:00

Today at college I have researched a wide variety of information about a fictional story author known as Charles Dickens. The reason for doing this is that we have started our first assignment. This is about a listed ‘British’ candidate that has accomplished something in their life. So far I have visited a number of sites using the ‘Google’ search engine to find more sources of information that I can evaluate. I will then use this to find the correct information I am looking for.

The things I have learnt today can be quite useful in the future of planning. For the start of the assignment I completed a production sheet, which is a time management document to help me split down the assignment and manage the task in easy manageable sections. Also I have started to produce weekly time sheets that will show effective time keeping each week as we progress through the assignment.

We also had a seminar (feedback group), where we had a discussion about our opinions on our work so far and the sort of work we should be aiming for. In the seminar we discussed the project goals of this assignment and realised the main goals besides completing the assignment, are to make a file/webpage as small as possible. Having a huge file size will slow down the rate of download. The screen resolution was also a factor, as screen sizes vary. We also had a chance to view some sketch books from previous students of the 1st year to give us a better example of what we should be putting in to our sketchbooks. The length of time taken in the seminar was 30 minutes, which in my opinion wasn’t enough time. The amount of time I would prefer would be around 45 minutes to 1 hour as I would have liked to gain information about more topics related to the assignment.

The most effective part of the day was gaining some understanding of the sort of things we should be looking for in the assignment. This was also discussed in the seminar in groups, which made things a lot easier because we were able to share our own opinions.

Thing I could improve on:

- The speed of my sketching. A presentation flies by pretty quickly and it is hard to gather all the information you want to successfully understand what’s going on.
- My research skills. Currently I can search through a number of sites and gather the correct information, but it would be better for me if I could do it more speedily to give me more time to understand other tasks.
- My language skills. Every now and again a piece of unrespectable language seeps its way out. Due to this I have had a fellow student and the tutor tell me to watch my language.

Before the Starting Line

2007-09-05T22:38:00.001+01:00

My name is John Browne, a student of the HND Interactive Media course and to get to this current stage it has taken me 4 years of previous education. Over the last 4 years I have had to attend 3 previous courses at Wakefield College. The first course was the Foundation GNVQ in ICT which consisted of the basics in computing and information resources. For this course I obtained a Distinction level which was enough to jump to the advance course of this subject, but as I wanted to learn the topic gradually, I chose to attend the intermediate course. In my opinion it is better to slowly learn something rather then jumping to the highest point and finding it a struggle to get through. The second course that I chose to attend was the Intermediate GNVQ in ICT which was very similar to the first year, but was more in-depth on the subject. For this particular course I obtained a merit level. The third and most previous course was a GCE in ICT which was an advance level of ICT in which we researched and produced portfolios’ on the more professional aspects of ICT such as Multi-Media, Web Hosting, Networking and Project Management.

The directions in my life that I most want to go are on to full time employment in the design industry as either a ‘Web Designer’, ‘Graphic Editor’, or an ‘Advertising Clerk’. Also a tutor’s position that involves subjects I have or am currently studying sounds of some interest. This sort of career interests me as I believe I have a creative imagination which could be a core benefit to the business I am appointed to when the time comes. The tutor position inspires and attracts me as I feel that it could be a rewarding career by passing on my creative and design (soon to be learned) skills on to up coming generations of possible potential.

To get to the stage I want I am aiming for, I am going to have to endure more challenging and pro-longed work loads which will improve both my design and technicality. By doing this, I will become a good asset to any company/business of employment in any part of the design industry. My targets during the build up to this state of employment are to improve my literal and communications skills, improve on my creative and design skills. I would also like to understand the relevant software applications, become compatible with both Apple Macs and regular Personal Computer's (PC's). Other targets are to over come any obstacle, no matter how difficult, to gain more understanding about how the industry work and to be able to explain my opinions on any peice of graphical artwork. It would also be essential for me to be able to mark work correctly, and to learn how to be part of a team in a full on work environment.

An over all summary of this is that I intend to do my over all best in the course I am currently attending whilst taking in new skills and widening my range of creativity.