Back in September I was approaching the start of this course with real excitement but the scariness of it really started increasing as the start got closer and closer.
Previous to this after I had just left another ICT course I didn’t know which direction to go, I had seen this Interactive Media course and it appealed to me, but I thought maybe a job was the best option or possibly university. I felt like this for quite a while and then I had my interview with Steve. This made my mind up, he spoke about previous students, their work, and what the course is all about and I went home sat down and thought...I want to do this, it appealed to me with what I could learn. But as I didn’t know anything really about website or print design I felt scared that other people starting the course would be whiz kids, and to add further fright to that, that I wouldn’t know anybody but I was confident that I had the ability to make friends. I remember walking down the corridor and my heart was beating at what may be through that door, then I walked in and saw all these new faces, it was some experience.
The Ice breaking tasks helped us all no doubt, it helped us learn names and just spend a little time together and create some kind of understanding of each other. I remember all the Hopes and Fears for the next 2 years work, working in groups and coming up with all these ideas and then stepping up and typing them out. Looking back at those hopes and fears now it makes me think about how far we have all come, if we were to do that task again now, it would be so much different. Also the preparation work that Steve put in really helped me, he got me well prepared for what was to come, by explaining to us how hard it will be, how professional we have to be and all the little details like time keeping, and arriving early rather than on time got me into a routine that helped me kick of the first year of the course.
But also along with this was Time Planning. Something that I had never used before and I don’t think many of us had, it was a difficult to start the time planning, I wasn’t used to looking to the end of an assignment and planning all that time I had right to the end, tasks by tasks. It was really difficult to grasp and I don’t still believe that I haven’t grasped it as good as I could have still. Also we were told that each assignment would require 16hours self study each week. This was a massive amount of time to me, previously if I did 5 hours or less self study this would have been too much, so realising that 16hours was required was difficult to hear. I found it hard to accomplish due to work but more importantly due to me and myself motivation. I then began to get routines of two free days for self study, and planning this time so that I would need to do it, and couldn’t just lie in my time plans. But I must admit that as soon as the self study improved it soon decreased. And this is something that I am considerably unhappy with and defiantly want to, and need to improve next year.
The first assignment A2 – That’s the Plan, I found really good, it showed me the work that goes into creating a website, and that you don’t just design off the cuff on screen, it takes time to develop designs, and also before developing designs you have to think about the client and the target audience. Target audience I came to realise is a huge topic in website building. In order to build a good website you must appeal to the target audience, and the detail that you can go into is unreal it was a real eye opener and successfully set us up for what was to come in following assignments.
A3 – Back to Basic, this assignment took a lot of research into webhosting and domain name purchasing, as the following assignment to this we had to create the website we had planned in this assignment. A website pre-production had to again be completed before this website build, but as opposed to the A2 plan, this was different. I had to be careful and not set my goals to high as if I couldn’t reach these goals it would have resulted in a fail. I really enjoyed this assignment and it will defiantly help in the future when I need to create websites and plans as now I can actually do it. We also had to research into copyright with a lot of detail this assignment and gain various images for the website build, being careful not to breach any copyright regulations.
A4 – Picture this, this was my favourite assignment of the year. I loved using Photoshop and gaining a few skills in the program, and I got real satisfaction out of the work that I completed. Most of all the image restoration, it may have been simple to some people but personally I thought that such a task would be extremely difficult and I couldn’t do it, but I did and it was surprisingly simple to a certain extent. This was a really enjoyable assignment and is by far my favourite of the year; I liked the freedom of the creative side of the assignment and producing work to be proud of.
A5 – Builder, my first ever website! I had already created the pre-plans for this website build in A3 – Back to Basic. But although the ground work had already been done, this wasn’t by any stretch of the imagination easy. I had to learn basic skills with the software in order to build the website, and I found difficulties in the sizes. The sizes I had planned were all out when I created them in the software, which was down to a lack in experience but these errors were soon fixed. I was lucky enough not to encounter any problems when viewing my website in different browsers like a few people which was a great relief to me, as it saved a lot of time for altering odd parts of the website due to the User Testing. The user testing was really interesting and surprising at the cost that can be charged for website user testing and how thorough they can actually be. But they are an integral part of a website I can now see.
A6 – Revert to Type, task bombing...as it was nicknamed happened during this assignment which I found brilliant. It gave us a pressure circumstance of a work environment and showed us how fast we could work. They gave the assignment a really edge and will be what I remember most from this assignment. This assignment was also an eye opener to the world of type. I used to think a font was simply a font that was something you used on your machine. I never realised the history, controversy and the scale of the typeface world. This eye opening realisation is something I have come to enjoy that happens on this course, I am always learning something along the line which keeps me entertained and interested. We also completed presentation in this assignment, which was a scary thought to me as a previous test run I did terribly and it really shuck me up, but as soon as I got started with the presentation I felt quite comfortable which will hopefully give me a certain air of confidence when it comes to more presentations.
A7 – Fax of life, the last assignment of the year and to say not the least. When receiving this assignment I wasn’t looking forwards to the mass of work they had to be created. It incorporated all of the previous assignments into one, and the work load showed. But it was a really good assignment. It took a fair bit of research to complete as the corporate identity was new to me and I had no idea what went into such a task. And also the process of preparing for print was interesting. I was really hoping to build my website Style Guide for this assignment using CSS but unfortunately I didn’t think I had the time to experiment this assignment so this is defiantly something I want to learn in the future. This was one of my favourite assignments as the CD Artwork allowed us to be creative, which was brilliant. Until it came to it and all I got was a creative block. I found it difficult to find ideas and designs and wasted.
Looking back at all the assignments I feel that it shows the level being raised a notch each time and in some cases a few notches each time, which is something to think about next year when we have already been warned that the bar will be substantially raised. But it’s something that I am looking forwards to but not just yet, the break is something I also look forwards too.
Goals for next year:
- Achieve two Merit’s
- Increase Self Study time
- Build a website using CSS
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Thursday, May 03, 2007
Power Lines Stand Tall
Another week over so fast, but although it has gone so fast I am pleased yet a little disappointed at the progress I have made.
As usual I stuck with CD art work on the Wednesday which is where the disappointment comes into play. I struggled again all afternoon trying to get started and have something click in my head for a design I was happy with, a little after dinner it hit me, I came up with a design and I liked it, I was very happy but unfortunately a little detail caught me out, I initially thought the image was at 300dpi but after showing Steve it turned out it was actually 300dpi at a certain size, a certain size which was unusable to me as it was too small for the way I wanted to use the image, so I was back on the hunt again for an idea, well I actually stuck with the idea I found but I was hunting for an image to replace the one I had lost. Luckily I did manage to find one and alter it until I was happy with it 2 minutes before home time…phew! Disappointing however I do wish I had created a design much sooner, and the Wednesday was spent creating a booklet but I failed to reach that stage, and in doing so delivered disappointment, but I am hoping now I have a design, the booklet will smoothly follow.
On the other side of the assignment, the Corporate Identity is coming along very nicely, I have finished all of the designs (I believe) and managed to make quite a lot of progress on the website today. I have created all but one of my pages, they are not the finished product but it is progress, with tweaking required. However this progress sent me home happy, and with the opinion that the assignment is coming together now, I can see the finish line but a sprint finish is needed, time passes really quickly and before I know it will be time to hand in. so as I mentioned last week a final push is needed.
While writing this I over heard talk of what the “admin week” that is approaching hold for us, personally I have no idea what so ever what this may be, I had previously thought it would be something not too difficult to finish the year off but apparently this isn’t the case, so its time to play the waiting game/guessing game is it not!?
One last thing before I leave. Below is my CD Design and also my Style Guide website can be found at: www.jlmilsom.co.uk/style_guide click the Style Guide in directory as I havent managed to sort it out yet
As usual I stuck with CD art work on the Wednesday which is where the disappointment comes into play. I struggled again all afternoon trying to get started and have something click in my head for a design I was happy with, a little after dinner it hit me, I came up with a design and I liked it, I was very happy but unfortunately a little detail caught me out, I initially thought the image was at 300dpi but after showing Steve it turned out it was actually 300dpi at a certain size, a certain size which was unusable to me as it was too small for the way I wanted to use the image, so I was back on the hunt again for an idea, well I actually stuck with the idea I found but I was hunting for an image to replace the one I had lost. Luckily I did manage to find one and alter it until I was happy with it 2 minutes before home time…phew! Disappointing however I do wish I had created a design much sooner, and the Wednesday was spent creating a booklet but I failed to reach that stage, and in doing so delivered disappointment, but I am hoping now I have a design, the booklet will smoothly follow.
On the other side of the assignment, the Corporate Identity is coming along very nicely, I have finished all of the designs (I believe) and managed to make quite a lot of progress on the website today. I have created all but one of my pages, they are not the finished product but it is progress, with tweaking required. However this progress sent me home happy, and with the opinion that the assignment is coming together now, I can see the finish line but a sprint finish is needed, time passes really quickly and before I know it will be time to hand in. so as I mentioned last week a final push is needed.
While writing this I over heard talk of what the “admin week” that is approaching hold for us, personally I have no idea what so ever what this may be, I had previously thought it would be something not too difficult to finish the year off but apparently this isn’t the case, so its time to play the waiting game/guessing game is it not!?
One last thing before I leave. Below is my CD Design and also my Style Guide website can be found at: www.jlmilsom.co.uk/style_guide click the Style Guide in directory as I havent managed to sort it out yet
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Complicated Discs
During the last week of our holidays I was full off nerves, nerves because I felt that I was way behind the rest of you all. All week I was pushing myself to work as fast as I could and get as much done, which isn’t the best way to work if you are trying to design something with quality. Reading people’s blogs and seeing that people had business cards finished websites up and almost running letter heads complete, I was petrified!
But as soon as Wednesday kicked off and I started doing a little work, from speaking to people and hearing the stages they were at I realised that I wasn’t so far behind after all, giving me renewed confidence. I got cracking with work and the day really did fly past, I concentrated on getting started with my CD designs, which I previously had thought to be a tough task to come up with an idea suitable, but I was surprised at how hard it was for me, I gained numerous inspiration from images and actual CD covers. But putting this onto paper or on screen and creating something of my own was a struggle. I got caught up in the idea of having CD artwork relating to the music, or the album name. Or even the track names, which resulted into creating music for none of these! And before I knew it the day was over, so unfortunately there are still initial ideas to be created. But I possibly aim to have ideas for when we return, and it would even be good to have a shortlist of neats, and be one or two steps away from completion, of a front cover.
As far as the Corporate Identities go I have made progress, I have digitalised some ideas and created a template in which to display these as a Style Guide, and I predict that it shouldn’t be too long till I have finished that task, but as I we all know, you can never judge what will happen next so we shall see how long it actually takes.
Overall I am pleased with the progress I have made this week, and it’s also good to be back, and hitting the ground running for the final push of the year. The finish line is close and there is certainly no time for slacking now, so its time to get my head down and make sure that I reach the finish. Jamie
Business Cards, and an Image I was playing with:
But as soon as Wednesday kicked off and I started doing a little work, from speaking to people and hearing the stages they were at I realised that I wasn’t so far behind after all, giving me renewed confidence. I got cracking with work and the day really did fly past, I concentrated on getting started with my CD designs, which I previously had thought to be a tough task to come up with an idea suitable, but I was surprised at how hard it was for me, I gained numerous inspiration from images and actual CD covers. But putting this onto paper or on screen and creating something of my own was a struggle. I got caught up in the idea of having CD artwork relating to the music, or the album name. Or even the track names, which resulted into creating music for none of these! And before I knew it the day was over, so unfortunately there are still initial ideas to be created. But I possibly aim to have ideas for when we return, and it would even be good to have a shortlist of neats, and be one or two steps away from completion, of a front cover.
As far as the Corporate Identities go I have made progress, I have digitalised some ideas and created a template in which to display these as a Style Guide, and I predict that it shouldn’t be too long till I have finished that task, but as I we all know, you can never judge what will happen next so we shall see how long it actually takes.
Overall I am pleased with the progress I have made this week, and it’s also good to be back, and hitting the ground running for the final push of the year. The finish line is close and there is certainly no time for slacking now, so its time to get my head down and make sure that I reach the finish. Jamie
Business Cards, and an Image I was playing with:
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
All Talk..No Trousers. Is that what they say?
Well it's the last week of our holidays now and unfortunately I regret to say that this is the first chance I have had to work. I started the holidays with a mind set off working through them. Rather than having a heavy week of work, I wanted to spread the work load through out the three weeks. But unfortunately I have had to work the majority of the holidays so far, day and night. And the little time I had between I felt obliged to spend a little time with my girlfriend as she was on her holidays too, and hadn't seen a snip of me.
Luckily however apart from the odd time this week where I have a shift, I have requested a week off, to study, and my girlfriends holidays are over and she has now gone back to University which leaves me with a week free to get some work done. By any means it's not what I wanted to happen, having to cram work into one week, but it's how it has to be, so all I can do is get on with it and do my best. I feel terrible now this week is here however as it's a pressure week as a result of not having completed any work.
My main concern is going back to college, and everyone has completed a shed load of work, with not much else to complete for the assignment, and I'm left with a mass of work. Looking through blogs it looks like this is a reality, as many people have worked successfully through the holidays, which ad's a little more pressure onto me. But I'm determined to help my self and use this time, so I shall see how I do, and hopefully I wont be too far behind people when I return to college next week. Jamie
Luckily however apart from the odd time this week where I have a shift, I have requested a week off, to study, and my girlfriends holidays are over and she has now gone back to University which leaves me with a week free to get some work done. By any means it's not what I wanted to happen, having to cram work into one week, but it's how it has to be, so all I can do is get on with it and do my best. I feel terrible now this week is here however as it's a pressure week as a result of not having completed any work.
My main concern is going back to college, and everyone has completed a shed load of work, with not much else to complete for the assignment, and I'm left with a mass of work. Looking through blogs it looks like this is a reality, as many people have worked successfully through the holidays, which ad's a little more pressure onto me. But I'm determined to help my self and use this time, so I shall see how I do, and hopefully I wont be too far behind people when I return to college next week. Jamie
Thursday, March 29, 2007
The Time Plan Massacre
Time plans done…time plans immediately changed, Wednesday morning and the request of a complete digital screen design, for our Style Guides completely knocked my time planning out of the water, I wasn’t planning for a finish design plan until today, in my feedback session I was planning on showing rough/neat ideas but after an all mighty push I completed it a day earlier and met the deadline set for it. When this request was first given I instantly knew that I would have a lot of work to do for the day/night to have it complete, and I wasn’t looking forwards to it, but in actual fact it helped me so much. As it rocketed me forward into the first steps of creating the style guide, and also left me with a free day, to complete what I needed to catch up on, or what I wanted to get ahead of plans on. Although it did take a lot of effort to get it finished for 9 this morning I was fine in accepting a little pressure, to give me a boost and get stuck into something and get it done.
Because of this it left me with today to finalise, or so I though…to almost finalise my logo, as I up until today hadn’t created and digital versions of logos due to work problems halting my college work, but today I caught up and created some ideas, and after time spent playing around with ideas I feel I am now on the step to finalising an idea. I maybe need a little more thought to colour however, but I can tie this in with my website build as I feel I need to play with colour a little more with that, so plenty to get crack on with over the holidays.
Speaking of the work for the holidays, I have a fair bit to get complete, such as A5 – Builder amendments, possibly A6 – Revert to Type? And also work for this assignment and my Sketch books wouldn’t be damaged by a little time spent with it. All in all there’s plenty to do, but I am determined to work, I haven’t quite decided on a work timetable yet, but I do plan to work, not just in the last week of the holidays but to spend time working through out the whole three weeks. The more work I can get done, then the easier finish to the assignment I could have, and this is something I would enjoy.
Finally I hope you all have a great holiday, and I’m sure ill speak to some of you during it, don’t forget to work! Jamie
Because of this it left me with today to finalise, or so I though…to almost finalise my logo, as I up until today hadn’t created and digital versions of logos due to work problems halting my college work, but today I caught up and created some ideas, and after time spent playing around with ideas I feel I am now on the step to finalising an idea. I maybe need a little more thought to colour however, but I can tie this in with my website build as I feel I need to play with colour a little more with that, so plenty to get crack on with over the holidays.
Speaking of the work for the holidays, I have a fair bit to get complete, such as A5 – Builder amendments, possibly A6 – Revert to Type? And also work for this assignment and my Sketch books wouldn’t be damaged by a little time spent with it. All in all there’s plenty to do, but I am determined to work, I haven’t quite decided on a work timetable yet, but I do plan to work, not just in the last week of the holidays but to spend time working through out the whole three weeks. The more work I can get done, then the easier finish to the assignment I could have, and this is something I would enjoy.
Finally I hope you all have a great holiday, and I’m sure ill speak to some of you during it, don’t forget to work! Jamie
Friday, March 23, 2007
The Marker has been set
After a long discussion about time planning, and time planning methods and such as a group we then set our first “Group Goal” by the next lesson on Wednesday we have to have completed a shortlist of logos, to be exact four ideas. So this week I have been running towards this goal.
I would like to apologise to my Feedback group for being AWOL on Thursday and missing our meeting, but I hope it went well, unfortunately it couldn’t be helped.
After not managing turning in on Thursday I set in my mind that I at least had to get some work done at home, but it took me quite a while to feel up to it, but that evening I did grab my sketch book and begin to start my design process, of illuminating designs to reach the goal set. I have also to make up for my absence on Thursday, spent today doing work. Which I wouldn’t normally do on a Friday but I have had the day off work, and use it as a college gain.
I now believe I have some kind of shortlist that hopefully four of the logo designs within there will be what I will be showing on Wednesday. But it’s one step at a time and there is much more work today before I decide on what to pick. I plan that after this it will be a little researching, at various fonts and colours I could possibly use, so I will get on with that as soon as I can.
I also plan to have a little time using Freehand, to possibly have my designs DTPED but if not just to get a feel for the software as I have not used it before, whether it be at college one day or if I manage to get my hands on a copy, but it will surly benefit me if I can do this. I’m finding this logo creating business quite difficult at times, there is so much to think about; I’m starting to see my thumbnail sketches, as more towards the useless pile than the possible pile. But I guess I can’t dwell on what i have done, and I guess this is where the designing for commercial use comes in, rather than designing for personal pride at the moment.
Anyway I must crack on I have loads of work to do. Jamie
I would like to apologise to my Feedback group for being AWOL on Thursday and missing our meeting, but I hope it went well, unfortunately it couldn’t be helped.
After not managing turning in on Thursday I set in my mind that I at least had to get some work done at home, but it took me quite a while to feel up to it, but that evening I did grab my sketch book and begin to start my design process, of illuminating designs to reach the goal set. I have also to make up for my absence on Thursday, spent today doing work. Which I wouldn’t normally do on a Friday but I have had the day off work, and use it as a college gain.
I now believe I have some kind of shortlist that hopefully four of the logo designs within there will be what I will be showing on Wednesday. But it’s one step at a time and there is much more work today before I decide on what to pick. I plan that after this it will be a little researching, at various fonts and colours I could possibly use, so I will get on with that as soon as I can.
I also plan to have a little time using Freehand, to possibly have my designs DTPED but if not just to get a feel for the software as I have not used it before, whether it be at college one day or if I manage to get my hands on a copy, but it will surly benefit me if I can do this. I’m finding this logo creating business quite difficult at times, there is so much to think about; I’m starting to see my thumbnail sketches, as more towards the useless pile than the possible pile. But I guess I can’t dwell on what i have done, and I guess this is where the designing for commercial use comes in, rather than designing for personal pride at the moment.
Anyway I must crack on I have loads of work to do. Jamie
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Logos...Simple and Distinctive
Again another assignment started with my eyes shut. Logos are everywhere we all know this, whether there on TV, Signs, Internet, Shirts, Clothes, every company has a logo. And we could all if asked, list numerous logos that we see everyday, and logos that we know, I am like this. But after our lecture Wednesday morning do we actually look at logos? I know that all of the logo’s that were in the presentation, but I’ve never noticed little details about them, little hints as to why they are created in that way and the meaning of them. How many times do we look at a logo and get them?
Now my eyes have been opened to companies and logos, and how much thought process and effort goes into them, I appreciate them so much. I never thought there would be certain criteria that you would have to meet, well could meet in order to create a “good” logo. Such as contrast, presence, shape and weight. I honestly thought a logo was created by attaining some kind of image/shape and combining that with the company name or initials, and making it look good, but now I can see that colours are used to broadcast certain attributes, sizes are used to give the impression on presence and impact, shapes are used so that you can instantly recognise a logo from its outline/silhouette. It’s not a coincidence that the large companies and businesses names and image stick with you, its there intention to make you sub consciously think of them, by creating these “good” logos.
This struck me on Thursday when we actually started our designs, and during research I found myself looking at logos I’ve seen many times before much closely. I don’t think that I can look at a logo loosely again, it wouldn’t pass me by, I can imagine I would get stuck with it for the rest of the day wondering how they came up with the idea, and why did they do it.
But all that aside, logos are extremely difficult to create as I found. I spent ages looking into my sketch book, pen in hand…but after a few doodles and sketches I was fresh out of ideas, I found myself thinking about the similar ideas, I needed to broaden my mind and try different things, which to begin with I thought this would be an easy task, come on…all it is, is doodling in your sketch book, using a name and a few shapes. How wrong could I have been! and as for CO-ID (Corporate Identification) well that's just mind boggling, I'll get to that next post
Also we had another visit this week from an Ex-student, which as always is a great pleasure and a good experiance to hear from these people, who have been and done what we are currently doing, and they are now firmly in a job. And the contrast between each of the visitors jobs, is so differant, it shows us how wide the market is, and although in the same industry, how many differant types of areas, and jobs you could end up doing. Anyway thank;s to Marc for his visit, and I personally have heard his storys before, and his experiances so it wasnt such a suprise to me, but I hope you all enjoyed his visit and enjoyed hearing from him.
Anyway I must crack on; I have ideas to sketch and my mind to fill with inspiration. Jamie
Now my eyes have been opened to companies and logos, and how much thought process and effort goes into them, I appreciate them so much. I never thought there would be certain criteria that you would have to meet, well could meet in order to create a “good” logo. Such as contrast, presence, shape and weight. I honestly thought a logo was created by attaining some kind of image/shape and combining that with the company name or initials, and making it look good, but now I can see that colours are used to broadcast certain attributes, sizes are used to give the impression on presence and impact, shapes are used so that you can instantly recognise a logo from its outline/silhouette. It’s not a coincidence that the large companies and businesses names and image stick with you, its there intention to make you sub consciously think of them, by creating these “good” logos.
This struck me on Thursday when we actually started our designs, and during research I found myself looking at logos I’ve seen many times before much closely. I don’t think that I can look at a logo loosely again, it wouldn’t pass me by, I can imagine I would get stuck with it for the rest of the day wondering how they came up with the idea, and why did they do it.
But all that aside, logos are extremely difficult to create as I found. I spent ages looking into my sketch book, pen in hand…but after a few doodles and sketches I was fresh out of ideas, I found myself thinking about the similar ideas, I needed to broaden my mind and try different things, which to begin with I thought this would be an easy task, come on…all it is, is doodling in your sketch book, using a name and a few shapes. How wrong could I have been! and as for CO-ID (Corporate Identification) well that's just mind boggling, I'll get to that next post
Also we had another visit this week from an Ex-student, which as always is a great pleasure and a good experiance to hear from these people, who have been and done what we are currently doing, and they are now firmly in a job. And the contrast between each of the visitors jobs, is so differant, it shows us how wide the market is, and although in the same industry, how many differant types of areas, and jobs you could end up doing. Anyway thank;s to Marc for his visit, and I personally have heard his storys before, and his experiances so it wasnt such a suprise to me, but I hope you all enjoyed his visit and enjoyed hearing from him.
Anyway I must crack on; I have ideas to sketch and my mind to fill with inspiration. Jamie
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