Week 13 at Wakefield College - HND Interactive Media

Ahh… Good old PhotoShop is finally here in a creative sense. I’d really been looking forward to this because I had used Photoshop before albeit very unprofessionally and with no real meaning, but I thought that Photoshop would be the place where I can really express my ability.

The task was to restore an old battered photograph, by removing all of the blemishes, cracks and to add colour. I’d tried something similar before in my own time but not in the same way that we were taught to do so today, and to be fair the new skills I have learned have made the process a whole lot easier. I really enjoyed the task today and really saw the picture come alive when I started to add colour.

In this Thursdays feedback meeting Chris was absent so it was only me and Craig, and I think Chris has really missed out on an important meeting, which again for the second time lasted for over an hour.

Basically we discussed the importance of committing to the course and not allowing outside sources have an effect on your studies, which in my case seems to be very much an issue and from what I gathered from Craig with him as well.

We discussed how much we actually wanted to pursue a career in the industry and that this is reflected in things we do everyday. Lateness, days off and self study are all factors which clearly show your interest in the course and ultimately in your future in we design.

I know I want a career in the industry and hope that the rest of the class do as well and are not here just to waste their time and everybody else’s time. I defiantly know where I need to improve and what is holding me back from getting the higher grades that I know that I am capable of getting.

As Steve always says to us, he will only give us the basics and it is up to us to further our own knowledge. No one will spoon feed us for the rest of our lives, and changes need to be made.

Week 12 at Wakefield College - HND Interactive Media

As you may have gathered from my last blog entry I am now starting to take planning more seriously and am planning well in advance. However most of my plans for this week were thrown of course and I now have to re-consider my weekly planning sheet. The reason for this is because I had planned to do quite a lot of work on Wednesday, but when the lesson started at 9AM we were given a lecture on how to give meaningful presentations accurately. After the lecture we were then given a much unexpected task, which I think took most of the class by surprise. We were given a random colour and were split into groups of two; we then only had a few hours to re-search into the cultural and psychological meaning of the colour and were required to create a 3 minute presentation which we would all individually have to present to an audience.

Giving presentations is something that I don’t really have much experience in but have always enjoyed when I have been asked to do them. On my previous course, which was a 2 year course I only had to do two presentations. One in front of the whole class and one was presenting a website I had made to a perspective client. This might seem like perfect experience to talk about, but the client was one of my teachers and the presentation was very informal and laid back, nothing like I would imagine a real life scenario being like.

When we were told we had to do the presentation the same day, my first reaction was a bit of a shock. But I did however look forward to it. Public speaking has never been an asset of mine but I think I coped well with Wednesday’s presentation. With there only being two people in the room, it made me feel more uncomfortable than it would have, had it been the whole of the class. Perhaps this is because there are only two people and they are constantly staring at me. I also found it difficult to make even eye contact with both of the people, something that Steve managed to pick up on, and something I have to work on in the future.

As far as nerves were concerned I wasn’t very nervous at all, apart from the walk up to the room which was the worst. Once the presentation begun I soon settled in and felt comfortable with the surroundings and with what I was talking about.

I never realised that colours meant so much and how they can effect descisions we make every day. I am now beginning to look at everything that has a significant colour and questioning its purpose. [Is Steve’s office deliberately painted a soothing and relaxing green, or is that just a coincidence?] Green is seen as being relaxing mentally and physically by the way. [Is the Microsoft XP layout deliberately created in green and blue to make the users experience more relaxed?] Things like this I would never have even thought about contemplating before Wednesday’s presentations.

I enjoyed the presentation and am looking forward to the next one, and there will be more! :)

Week 11 at Wakefield College - HND Interactive Media

Yet another very productive week has flown past, and I am completely up to date with my assignments, and more importantly, I’m actually enjoying completing them. A great sense of achievement passes me every time I tick something off my ‘weekly time plan sheet’.

I think I’m beginning to see the purpose and importance of planning, something I had struggled with before. For this realisation I owe a lot to my feedback group and Steve, my tutor.

Throughout this week we have been looking at colour and file compression. Every time I learn something new in college I tend to naturally apply it to everyday web browsing. An example of this is that today I was looking at a random web site and out of interest looked at the file sizes of some of the images, which to my amazement had not been compressed at all, and the average image was about 700kb. This was not much of problem because the college has quite a fast internet connection, but had it been slower, then the users would have paid the price for the "Designers" lack of planning and consideration for all users. Another great sense of achievement as I now feel like I am a person “in the know” Which is kind of the point of me being on the course, for me to get to know these secrets that not everyone knows.

As for the ‘Back to Basics’ assignment, which I thought was “just another repeated web plan”, I’m starting to see that its not, and that it’s actually a way for me to improve and push myself harder. For that reason I have chosen to completely re-write it, rather than just copy and paste it from before. My goals are now very much different and I feel like I’m not making as many mistakes as I did the first time around.

Week 10 at Wakefield College - HND Interactive Media

Getting on with it is probably the best way of describing this week. We have two assignments, (3 including Sketblog) which means that we have a lot of work to do. I have completed the 'Designers Republic' part of the "Picture this" assignment, which still needs to be checked for errors and a few changes to be made, this is what I will be doing in my self study this week.

On Thursday, in our feedback group, one of the requirements was to have our weekly time sheets to show to Steve. I never had any, because I personally tend not to use them and take everything as it comes. Everyone else seemed to disagree with me on that and persuaded me that they are a good idea, and well worth doing, and because they are assessed and part of the merit criteria, I better get planning. :)

Another major thing that I have to improve on is to collect influential material from websites, magazines etc... Last weekend I set aside about an hour or so, specifically for this and now just need to stick them into my sketchbook and annotate them. One thing I realised whilst doing this was that it’s actually quite fun and not very hard at all, and seen as it is an assessed part of the course, I might as well do it more often. So from now on it’s a weekly thing for me, and something to write in my weekly planning sheets :)

During this week, I also noticed that a lot of the students were talking about setting up a class forum. Personally I love the idea. Steve seemed to be against it and thought it would diffuse the point of the blog, but I always thought that the forum would be an out of college place where we could all talk and get to know each other more, seen as we don’t really get a chance to talk much in college.

Week 9 at Wakefield College - HND Interactive Media

A very nice week back at college. On Wednesday we were given our results for the previous assignment (A2) and I was very anxious and nervous about what I would get. When Steve was giving us feedback to our assignments as a group he gave a list of the thing that were very common mistakes that many people had made, and I couldn't help but think that a lot of them were related to my work, and this made me even more anxious.

What I did get was one pass and one referral. This was not too bad, but I was intrigued to know where I had gone wrong on the referral one. Eventually when I did get my feedback form Steve, it turns out that the only mistake I made was that I forgot to include an 'Internet Connection' in the user requirements and a minor amendment to my target audience. This was very annoying because I really thought that the assignment was at a 'pass' standard and I checked it many times over, and even fellow students never managed to pick up on such an obvious mistake.

Another thing that Steve made clear this week is that most of the class are not using their Sketchbook in the way that they should be (i.e. including influential material). One of these people is me, I know that for sure, and from now I will set aside about an hour a week to specifically look for inspirational material and stick it in my sketch book. I would also advise everyone else to do this, because it’s not difficult but is very important, and according to Steve, the Sketch Blog is the easiest assignment to get a Distinction or a Merit in.

This week we were also given our new assignments, 'A3 Back to Basic' and 'A4 Picture This'. Looking at the assignment sheets I’m feeling very comfortable with both of the assignments. A3 is pretty much the same as the one that I have just passed, so I think I know what I am doing with that one, and A4 has a lot to do with Adobe Photoshop which I know I will enjoy for definite.