First Year Summary

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