End of the year

I suppose everyone else in the group is relieved that the end of the year is here and a further 2 assignments have finally been handed in and I wish that I was in that position unfortunately I have a lot of the hard work still do over Christmas, and I hope I never have to get an extension again.

I knew at the start of the week that my main task was to concentrate on getting as much done on A4 as I possibly could and I was relieved on Wednesday that I’d managed to get most of it done barring a few minors details, it was the first time in a number of weeks that I’ve really concentrated on work and settled into it.

I’m probably the only person in the group that is really looking forward to getting back in after Christmas and getting on with the next assignment and putting the end of this year to the back of my mind and getting on with everything.

Apologies (again)

First of all I must again apologise for my absence on Wednesday and to my tutorial group for missing the meeting I hope that the feedback you got was helpful.

Over the past few weeks I have really struggled to concentrate on my work and even getting out of bed some days has been tough so to try and then sit down to put a few hours of hard work is something I have found almost impossible. Unfortunately I just can’t seem to get my mind straight and turn off feelings that have dogged me the past few weeks and are still dogging me.

Having made a big effort on Thursday to get in to college I was really disappointed that I couldn’t get my mind on work as I thought once I was there I would be able to.

The comforting thing I have is that at least with being in the past few Thursdays I haven’t got too far behind with A4 and with a bit of luck that should be ready for next week.

I don’t know if its appropriate to say in a blog but what has troubled me for the past few weeks is that my Granddad died, and having never had to deal with this before its something that has really affected me badly. If you comment, please don’t apologise, I know you mean well but it really doesn’t help me in anyway, sorry.

Getting back to normal (ish)

I was delighted on Wednesday to get a full day to work, after missing so much it was good to get a chance to try and catch up as best I could. I spent most of the day trying to look at my goals, delivery requirements and typing up my competitive analysis; having had far too much to start with I got it down to about 1500 words, about the required amount.

These types of days are really useful and find them incredibly helpful when we get the chance to have them.

Thursday was the start of looking at the banners, it was a pressure morning with only being given a few minutes to start with and then only a few seconds to come up with and draw an idea. It was hard work and something in the future will be helpful when trying to come up with ideas and get them down quick.

The afternoon was then an opportunity to get them down in Photoshop and carry on working on the restoration. I was quite pleased with my ideas and I was also quite pleased with my first attempt at the restoration. I found the tutorial meeting really helpful as we were given some really useful hints and tips for the restoration, as Steve saw something’s on mine that I possibly wouldn’t have noticed otherwise, I think I will start it again and print out when I feel it’s at a decent stage and try to see any areas which need going over.

The banners were also quite poor in regards to which text I had chosen although there isn’t a great choice of “jazzy” styles also putting the type close to the edge is something I believe that a few people had done.

I think in future remembering these tips is something that will certainly improve my banners as well as getting feedback and other good ideas from people.

Catch up!!!

A somewhat peculiar week this week, Having had some bad news last week and subsequently missing the presentations on Wednesday then all of Thursday I was again somewhat relieved to find I wasn’t that far behind.

Having missed the last week and found it difficult to get any self study work done I was really worrying about Wednesday, I was considering asking to work from home and try to crack on with as much work as I could but I found that just being in college with everyone else in more or less the same position of having to do the content I thought I might as well stay and do what I could.

Wednesday was a difficult day trying to concentrate, its not easy listening to a lecture when all you want to do is go home to bed though having the talk with Steve in the afternoon was a weight off my mind. In future I know now I will definitely try and crack on and get as much work as I can early on and not leave quite large parts until almost the last minute.

Thursday was an enjoyable day as we got a full day of working on Photoshop and restoring the photograph. This was something that I think most people were looking forward to and it was something I really enjoyed and cheered me up no end. I know in future this will be something that I should be able to get on with and hopefully not have so many problems.

I’m a little worried about my self study time again this week as I’m hoping I can concentrate enough to do a full 16 hours and document it. I wonder what other people think of documenting it if they haven’t done it before.

This has certainly been the hardest blog that I’ve written, having struggled to do any work at all over the past week I was wondering exactly what I could possibly write about.

Apologies.

First of all I would like to apologise to Steve and all my peers for what has been 2 really bad weeks, being ill most of last week made self study really hard and also getting into college hard. I apologise for missing the presentations on Wednesday afternoon and I apologise to Scott and hope he found doing the A4 sheet for everyone not too much trouble on his own.

After Steve gave the presentation lecture it wasn’t really a surprise to then be given a few hours to create and give one. I have to say that at first I was a bit nervous about it but after 5 -10 minutes of thinking about it I grew in confidence thinking well I cant pass the course without doing them and thought that the more the practise we get the better.

I hope everybody’s went ok and strangely I’m quite looking forward to doing mine and I suppose in a way getting it out of the way. The worst feeling is the nervous tension knowing that I have it still to do when I get back in.

I also apologise to everyone and especially my tutorial group for missing Thursday, I know how useful the sessions are or at least I find them really useful for feedback and a benchmark for my work. All I can do now is use my self study time for this week to the full and catch up on everything.

Once again I apologise for my absence, I don’t feel that it could have been avoided.

Feedback, Help or Hinderence?

After missing Wednesday through illness I was relieved to find out that I hadn’t missed out on too much. Things could have been a lot worse had I missed even more. In future though I really will try and drag myself out of bed to get into college.

Thursday was a day of hard draft and a new lecture. I’m starting to find note taking easier in lectures, whereas before I was trying to get everything down I’m now trying to get the main points from what Steve says and the highlighted parts of the lecture. John gave insight into his note taking that he only highlights the important words, I can understand how this may work for certain people, I would find just trying to learn about something from a word really hard, especially if I didn’t know what it was from before, I also find reading full notes makes a lot more sense than just words.

Julian and I were discussing how feedback can sometimes be less helpful and how sometimes it’s not always valuable and sometimes some is better than other.

The late morning and afternoon were taken up with the next part of the Picture This assignment. Julian and I found the first real task of this rather time consuming and monotonous; I wonder who else found it like this? I’m not saying that it was pointless as I do believe it will be invaluable information in the future.

Now that were in full swing of 2 assignments I don’t feel as I’m under as much pressure as I thought I would be, I really feel that I’m managing to use my time well and use my self study time to get the best out of the work I need to. I feel that I’m finding some good “inspirational” pieces to stick in my sketchbook. I find that studying at home to be more productive now that I have managed to put aside all distractions, such as the TV and computer games.

At last I managed to get webpage sorted and managed to put a coming soon page on, after about 2 hours of constantly trying on Dreamweaver. I finally managed to get it up on there.

Insert C.A.R.P blog title here

As the title would suggest we didn’t go fishing, or if we did it was fishing for knowledge about a crucial part of design. Yes this does sound really “smarmy” but having got my design for the business card to stay up on the wall until almost the end I was quite pleased with my first attempt although some way off professional standard a “not too bad” from Steve was to say the least pleasing.

C.A.R.P Standing for contrast, alignment, repetition and proximity, these are going to have to be the baseline for print and web design that we are going to do. Something that is pleasing is that so far I have managed to remember them; the test will be when it comes to designing will I be able to and after that be able to use them at a good standard.

The afternoon was a chance to carry on with vital work on getting goals, target audience research and work done, Having tried to write one of my parts of the target audience for the computer savvy user I got some good feedback from John. He suggested that I use more “key” words instead of the fluffy words such as “good” and “wide”. I’m defiantly going to remember this in future and even use a thesaurus for extra help.

John also suggested trying to come up with a list of questions that I could try and answer whilst writing for a target audience this should help with coming up with problems that need to be sorted for them.

Thursday morning started with a quick quiz on the past weeks lecture about bitmaps and vectors, I was felt quite relieved as I had managed to read up on the notes of this lecture the night before, something that I admit I haven’t done very often and something that in future I’m going to address. I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in this and I wonder how many others agree that reading up and making it stick is something that needs some serious looking at.

We then had a lecture on colour, which filled up some of the afternoon after our tutorial as it gave me a chance to find a colour gamut which I hope will help in the future. I also had a look for other bitmap images from the Designers Republic that didn’t appear on there website and having looked through all 17 pages of images on Google. This was a real frustration and it was still a challenge to find them, one of my items over the weekend is to try and find more. If anyone has any ideas where to find them it would be much appreciated.

Thursday morning was also a time when a lot of people got into the discussion about art and design and what the difference if any there is. Most of us agree and especially after reading Scotts blog entry that there is a definite difference and this is something which I hope will be a basis for the essay for the first part of the A4 assignment, I just hope I’ve covered it well and got some good points across.

Cometh the hour, cometh the Photoshop

2 Assignments in 1 week!?! Oh well it was bound to happen at some point and the work was going to start racking up. The comforting thing about it is that having done a very similar assignment last half semester I feel comfortable that I will be able to get this done within the time and hopefully with very few problems.

The second assignment is something that I believe many have been looking forward to and when Steve even said that it was "a lot nicer" than the other that also perked people up, finally getting the chance to have a go on Photoshop is something that quite a few people including myself have been looking forward to.

Something that has got to start to be done is more work going into my sketchbook in terms of adverts and websites that I find good or bad or that just happen to catch my eye for some reason. I’m quite disappointed that I haven’t got around to doing this before as I already have three or four adverts that I could stick in and annotate.

Something that certainly perked up Thursday afternoon was when Julian received a comment on his blog from the creator of a website that he strongly criticised, this shocked us all in the tutorial group and showed how good blogger is and how powerful a tool it can be to highlight how you feel about other designers work.

I was disappointed that I didn't pass the first two units in the first assignment, I passed the first but fell short on the second and this really was because of small errors that could possibly have been avoided though in future I will certainly be going over things more than the three times I did.

Discussions on Thursday were nearly all about the Designers Republic and how good/ peculiar that some of there work is, I can really see how they are world renowned for the work, Julian even wanted to attempt his own "Designers Republic" style after looking at many pieces of there work on the wall and there website. I hope that this would be something that I could aspire to but unfortunately I don’t feel that this would be possible, I’m certainly a long way off that standard!

A nice, relaxing week

Well, after a nice relaxing week of football manager, it’s back too it next week with two assignments. I have to say not looking forward to getting two assignments even though they are going to be done on different days, but I am looking forward to getting back to work. I don’t feel as apprehensive as I thought I might though the thought of what I got for the first assignment is something that has played on my mind slightly.

With the start of next week fast approaching the thoughts of what will be instore for the next assignments and beyond is something I am looking forward to, especially getting to grips with new software such as Photoshop, although Pagemaker can be quite fun I do find it restricting whereas Photoshop has more depth and more of a fun side too it.

Over the holidays was a chance to have a look for a new sketchbook as my first was filled, and i discovered how hard it is to find them with more than 50 or 80 pages and if it is possible then I have no idea where to look, I went all over but with no luck, I wonder if anybody else has had such an annoying task?

We can at last breathe a sigh of relief

Well here it is, the time has come and deadline day is upon us, surprisingly I don’t feel as worried as I expected, I expected to be running around making sure that everything is complete and ready to go but I feel more in control and happy about the work though in truth it could be better, then again it’s the first assignment and I expect to improve that’s the whole point of coming here to learn.

Wednesday was yet again a work day, having the last few hours to double and triple check the work is a bonus, though no doubt there is a mistake that I have failed to spot, I suppose this will bug me after I get it back as I hope that I have checked everything enough but only time will tell.

Jamie had problems with his CD label as it didn’t match his folder label; I suggested that instead of wasting a CD and a label that he changed his folder design by putting the CD label design into Photoshop and making a new folder label.

Having finally completed everything I sense of relief is starting to spread more than the nerves of making sure that everything was complete in time for the tutorial, never a truer word was spoken when it was said that time only matters when it’s running out, I’ve been fortunate this time as time has been on my side for this assignment though I could have spent my self study time looking more into books and research.

Submission standard, now that's the plan.

Possibly the scariest week of the lot, submission standard work was what was expected and through lack of experience I came up well short of this, it was disappointing as I was certainly able as I have everything that was needed to achieve this including CDs and my submission folder.

The best part of the week was the blog tutorial with John, going over the different parts was really helpful and pointed out the good and bad points of the templates and showed me how I can alter to make it better, this is something that I’m going to look forward to changing as I think learning a little bit more of HTML will only help me in the long term.

The start of the week was a worry as I felt I was falling quite a lot behind most people seemed to have all there assignments in the template and well on the way to finishing then I found that I was more or less with everyone else, though I was happy to get everything in the template I wish I’d paid more attention and I certainly will know what is expected on the next assignment.

Now we are coming to the end of this assignment, I feel because I have tried to get as much knowledge of what is required for the assignments I should be ready for the next one, this is something that I feel happier about than when we started but I’m unsure how different the others are going to be. Also I’m going to look at more research into books, this is going to be my main target as I felt I relied on the internet a little too much for this assignment, in future the library will be one of the first port of calls.

Feedback is something that I always try and get from my peers and Julian obliged with my work in the template as others always seem to find something that’s missing or incorrect, I find this really useful and although there were problems and I was a little disappointed I knew beforehand that I would have to print the whole thing out again.

Bring on next week when submission standard better be where it’s at or else.

Do it for me Pagemaker.

A different week this week, no lectures or Study skills lesson. I found being able to sit down and get on with designing my templates useful as it was the first time that we’ve had a full day to concentrate on full on work.

The highlight of my week was getting numerous amounts of feedback from various members of the group about my template designs I feel I took a lot of this information in even though I don’t take criticism all that well, the terrible colours used on my first idea, the structure and setup of the various features all made me think more about how to get the most out of my design which I still don’t believe is good.

I really feel I could have done so much more on my designs and tried to get more ideas from different websites. I know in future that looking at different designs will be much more beneficial.

The not so much low point but hardest point was trying to insert my work into the template, this really is an awkward part of the assignment, much more than just copy and paste. There’s not much more in the future that can be done to make this task any more entertaining, perhaps trying to get little bits inserted at a time won’t get me as stressed.

Not looking forward to next week too much though I do feel I’m in a position to make sure I’m ready for whatever may be thrown up, I’m sure that I will have everything for the tutorial ready and won’t be rushing round to get it all ready.

Insert clever blog title here

Nearly the end of another week of hard work but I can really see it already paying off, the research into how different websites are set out helped me in drawing my thumbnails and designs for my template. I also researched into feedback forms and the different questions that I could include on my own; I think doing a school website has been a good choice as the sorts of designs were based school kids in mind.

The highlight of this week was certainly working with Pagemaker again. Not the most glamorous of software but making professional looking print work is something that I enjoyed doing before. Having worked with Pagemaker before I felt that some of the features came back to me and I’m looking forward to designing my template next week.

Certainly the trickiest part of this week was coming up with designs that include colours and sizes, though I suppose its all experience that will help in future work of this nature not that I will be looking forward to it. I know that in future I’m going to put more effort in my drawings as I feel that I can improve on my presentation of my drawings.

Even though I worry about the tutorial and whether the work I have got is enough or good enough I look forward to talking about the work in there and getting the feedback from the group, I was pleased that we were sat together this week as I had to talk to the people in my group more than I have at any other point on the course.

Third Week

This week was quite a good week in terms of finding out how far on with the assignment we are. I was worried that I may have been falling behind but after the meeting on Thursday I was pleasantly surprised. I’m up to date and on course to get it in on time.

The delivery requirements was the main area of the assignment that was troubling me, I was totally unsure about what was required in terms of presentation and what was needed but after the tutorial I was ok and knew what was needed. I feel that I did well with the research into the web hosting and domain names, I found quite a lot of information on this though I could probably find more into what is needed to get a website up and running learning all the Initialisms. This research was good as it will help in the future when I have to get a domain name and a web host for my own website and I will then know where to look and where I can find the best deal for me.

This week was good as I also worked with Photoshop again and tried to get to know all the functions again. All in all this week has been a productive week and I am looking forward to getting on with the more art and design side with the templates for the pages and feedback form.

Apparently I’m also on course to set a new record for filling up my sketchbook the quickest, I’m not too sure whether to be pleased with that, I’m just happy that I’m making enough notes to be able to do the work on the http://www.hnd-interactive-media.co.uk/ course.

Second Week

The second week was the real start to the course. I found the lecture on Tuesday really good about the things that go into making a good (effective) website, this included information that needs to go in and that doesn't the first assignment showed just how much work is going to be done at HE level and how much extra self study is going to have to be done. The researching for all the different tasks is something that is going to take the most time after going through a list of everything that needs to be done, with all the tasks of the assignment broken down. In our groups we had the first of the tutorial meetings with Steve this enabled us to ask questions about the assignment or course, there were several questions that I needed to ask and found it easier in the smaller group to find out the answer.

Rob_Ackroyd

Formative Statement


Where you have come from?

I have come from doing the AVCE in ITC at Wakefield College. I got an interest in doing the Interactive Media course from doing this and from the year that I spent at Wakefield doing the BTEC in Media. Having previously used some of the software that we will be using on the HND in Interactive Media, I gained a decent knowledge of using Photoshop and Fireworks; this is also what gave me an interest in the Interactive Media course. Whilst also doing the AVCE we created a website for a client, although the site was very basic with very little design I found this entertaining and felt that this is an area that I would like a career in.

Where you are now?

I have just started on the Interactive media course which I believe is the best way forward for me as I would like to get into a career in design. I hope that this will give me the knowledge to go forward and study further to get a full degree or so that I have the knowledge to go and get a job in the in the design business. I chose this media course after looking at other university courses, I feel that I will get better help and better knowledge from working in a smaller environment and will learn quicker and produce high quality work.

Where are you going?

I am hoping that I will be able to get a job in web design, as my previous experience of this was very good. Although there are other areas of design that I would like to have a look at before I dedicate myself fully to looking at one career path, I’m going to look at the different assignments and the units of the course and then make decisions about what I would like to do or what I definitely wont want to do. As I feel that there may be one or two areas that I could look into without limiting myself.