Half Term Blog

I’ve had a really relaxing week off in which I have managed to complete most of the work that I had planned to do during this time, mainly concentrating on finishing my presentation. The presentation was complete in PowerPoint but need to be changed into another page layout application. I don’t have PageMaker at home and I’m still fiddling about with In Design but I don’t really see why it shouldn’t be complete for Thursdays practice session.

After receiving the helpful feedback on my website I have made a few changes to it and they are now published on the web so please have a look at let me know what you think. There are still a few problems with the site that I find very difficult to correct, and this is mainly the difference of the site in Firefox and Internet Explorer. This problem is not down to me and therefore I really can’t do much about it, it’s just the way that both browsers interpret the HTML code.

I’ve definitely learnt a lot just by making this one site and will admit that I had made a lot of mistakes, but mistakes are fine as long as you learn from them and don’t make them again. Expect better sites from me in the future.

http://www.mirhad.co.uk/back_to_basic/index.html

User testing each others web sites is what we were doing on Wednesday and it was yet another eye opening day for me. My website was shown to the rest of the group and what I thought was a “done” website was judged and criticised all day long. Well it wasn’t actually as bad as it may sound; in fact most people seemed to actually like the website I created. But it was more a case of how they though the site functioned and if there were any major problems within it. Luckily for me problems were limited and the few that people did pick up now just seem like obvious things that I should have included. An example of this is that most people thought that the header should be a link back to the homepage, which is the case with most modern websites. Duhh! A silly mistake which I will now be correcting.

Another thing which was more of a serious case is that more than half of the people thought the text on the website was too small. In all honesty the text was small but still readable but apparently this is not good enough and had to be made better. It will be enlarged but overall I think that the larger text somewhat ruins the aesthetics of my website. Once I have done this I will upload the site and you can all have a look what I mean.

As with the past few Thursdays this Thursday was no different at the tasks just kept coming, and as with all of the other tasks I really enjoyed this one. For the first task we were asked to produce all of the column guides and sizes for a newsletter type of page, and the second task was to then fill these guides with the content provided. After a lot of thumbnail sketches and a lot of trial and error with regards to leading and type size, I finally came up with a design that I was happy with, and here is a example of it. It’s in PDF format, because I’m showing off a new skill of mine ;) I now know how to create PDF’s which I didn’t know before. Please check out my newsletter design and as always comments and constructive feedback are always welcome, and the site will also be updated soon for you all to check out.

Here is the link for the Newsletter Design:
Newsletter Design

Team Roles

Next year as part of the course we will be required to work in a group to plan, design and build a website, and I must say it is something that I am really looking forward to. I know from previous experience that I work well in a group.

After looking at the Belbin website I think that I have a few of the qualities from most of the different categories and cannot put my finger on any one completely. I think at the moment I would mostly see myself as an “Implementer” and a “Teamworker”. The main reason for this being that I think I can produce high quality work and to a deadline, I’m fairly disciplined and I listen well to what I am told. I am co-operative and can turn ideas into a reality.

If I could choose my own team members I think that as the co-ordinator and the person I charge I would choose someone more mature than myself, without being disrespectful to anyone I think Dean or Scott and possibly Craig Burgess would be good team leaders. From what I have seen so far I think they are not afraid to say what they think and are very confident. These are very good skills to have and are exactly what is needed to be in charge of other people.

Also if I could choose the group myself I would select someone to solely be a time planner and time keeper. The main reason for this is because I am not very good at this and I much rather prefer to just get on with my work as it comes along and if someone could be there to say “Right, leave that now get on with this, otherwise it won’t get done” Much like Steve says to most of us in everyday college life, then the assignment would run much smoother.

All in all I think that I would be a very useful member of a group to have and that I would defiantly not be afraid of work that would be thrown at me.

A week with a difference, the normal get on with it days were thrown out of the window, and both of the two days that I attend college were already planned for us. As it was already planned in advance I did not have any issues with my time management. Most of the normal work will now have to be done at home.

Wednesday was great. The entire group went down to London for a ‘day out’. Although we had initially planned to visit the Tate museum which happened to be closed, for all of the museums across the country were on strike, which was a major disappointment. So we had to find other places of interest, and London is world famous for places of interest. All in all the whole day was great and I don’t regret a single moment of it.

Somewhere, between visiting Newcastle, Scotland and seeing sheep that were actually cows (long story) I actually found time to admire some of the great architecture and attractions of London.

Thursday was also a very enjoyable day. The work that was planned for us was a timed assignment, where we were given simple instructions and told to go and do it, and hand it in by a certain deadline. It was a great experience and a very life like one. Working to tight deadlines is what the industry is about and something that every one of us will have to get used to, if we want to be successful that is.

I really enjoyed this week, defiantly one of the most enjoyable of the course so far. Now, the idea is to get back into my normal routine and try to get some more work done on the presentation and on the website, which are not yet complete.

Ohh yeah, and I got my characheture done in London... here it is... cool huh? :)