Forgeting the obvious.

After a very long but extremely interesting feedback session this week, I and I believe my two team members were given a very alarming wake up call regarding our progress and development on the course, I therefore feel that it is my duty to try and help all the other guys out who are in the exact same position as we are.

Try this out, without looking at your assignment sheet can you honestly remember what the learning outcome of 4.1, 4.2, 4.3 and 4.4 are? Genuinely give this a go and if you can’t recall them, ask yourself why not? At the end of the day these 4 relatively simple learning outcomes are what we are being assessed on, so if they have not been met then you obviously won’t get the grades you want, even if you sketchbook and blog are the best and neatest even.

More likely than not the answer is that you can’t, so how then do you expect to achieve anything higher than a pass or even a pass. Have a read through them and remember them thoroughly, I know that’s what I will be doing for the current assignments and for every other assignment that I get in the future. Once you know what you are being assessed on then it’s a very simple process of just ticking them off one by one as you go along. Common sense really, but I doubt any of us in the group have taken this approach.

Something else that was brought up was “The Second Year”, this is the kind of stuff that Steve will no longer see as something good if were doing it, but will see it as a necessity if we want to even pass. We have all been so far told not to be too down about getting pass grades and that were meeting the level expected. But in fact, that’s very far from the truth, all a pass grade means is that you have achieved the basic level and I don’t think that employers want basic level people. If 20 people apply for a job and most have merits and distinctions then why would they even consider the people who have “just pass grades”. So to put it simply, higher grades are not out of reach for anyone in the group, its just a case of reading what were being assessed on and then making sure that they are all achieved, not too much to ask is it?

Just a quick update on my progress with the current assignment(s), the new assignment is proving to be very enjoyable indeed, it’s a very creative assignment which suits me very well as opposed to the very academic type of assignments which I personally am not too keen on.

My sketchbook is also being transformed with the arrival of this assignment; pages are now rapidly being filled with sketches, thumbnails, ideas and inspirational work. My new sketchbook is looking very impressive; if only I had done this from the beginning I don’t think I would be too worried about the SketchBlog assignment.

Most of the course so far, well practically all of it has been web based, and seen as it’s a web design course that makes sense. This week however, we were given out our new assignments and for a change it was print based rather than web. I was rather pleased to hear this as I would like to learn a lot more of the multimedia industry rather than just web design, and it’s always useful to know a bit about everything.

Once I had received the assignment sheets and started to read through them, the news just kept getting better and better. We were required to create a CD cover, a logo for a company and a website. This kind of stuff I do in my spare time anyway, so I now have the chance to actually create something good for a purpose, rather than just for my own interest.

The CD cover design is a place where I can definitely try to impress on. I have always loved Photoshop and feel this will be a chance for me to show what I am capable of. The logo is also a place where we can be creative to some extent, there are however a few more guidelines that we have to stick to with the logo. One of the requirements for the logo is that it has to be in vector format, this is simply so that no matter what size it is it will not loose any quality. The problem with this is that vector images can not be created in Photoshop, which is a shame for me as I feel fairly comfortable with using Photoshop. Basically, this then means that I have to learn a completely new software package either Macromedia Freehand or Adobe Illustrator, and seen as I have never even opened either of these programs this may be a slight problem. I’m not worried however; it’s always useful to know a lot of the design software and I’m defiantly looking forward to Macromedia Freehand.

I know I keep saying this but time planning on the last assignment somewhat went downhill. I did create weekly time plans for every single week that the assignment lasted but the difficult thing that I find is finding the motivation to actually complete some of the tasks outside of college. I like to think I’m fairly productive in college and get on with what is asked of me, but I know that if I stuck to what I plan to do at home then my productivity would shoot through the roof and I would no doubt start to enter the higher grades. This is something that I am very concerned about and am looking to concentrate on during this assignment, which is incidentally, the final major project for the first year.

A6 Revert to Type Evaluation.

Typography, something that is far too often underestimated by students and designers alike, yet the type in a piece of design work is probably one of the most important features. Designer’s everyday, make decisions on different aspects of type and a bad piece of typography can completely ruin an otherwise perfect design project. Typography is something that I personally have not had much experience with in the past, mainly because I had never studied a subject where the design of type would be considered as an important part of the syllabus. Now that I am studying Interactive Media, typography seems to have taken a key role in everyday design tasks, so it only makes sense that a whole unit is dedicated to the subject.

After looking more into typography, it seems to be a vast subject that I never really knew much about. There are literally thousands of websites and books based on typography and there are even degree courses at universities purely devoted to type, which is something I was not aware of. Typography is not the easiest subject to master but defiantly an enjoyable one. A person who can use typography well can probably design something just by using letters better than someone else using images, colour, animation and everything else. It’s a very powerful tool is type, if used correctly, which is why some people are paid so much to design typographic elements and fonts.

A particular part of the unit is that I was required to conduct a 5 minute presentation on a notable font designer, this don’t designer was Herman Zapf. The presentation has thought me a great deal about type in general and not just about Herman Zapf, who the presentation was centred on. I was required to analyse some of Zapf’s work and pick out distinctiveness of the particular font. The general impression I got from the re-search I did was that most of Zapf’s fonts were script based, although his favourite font was Optima, a sans serif font. I showed examples of these fonts to the audience and described some of the font’s characteristics.

I was very pleased with the actual presentation, and it was something that I was actually looking forward to. The week prior, we had a practice presentation in our feedback groups and what I thought was a perfect presentation was soon criticised and many points of improvement were pointed out to me. I then had a week to make amendments to the presentation and deliver it to my audience. As I said, the presentation was something that I was really looking forward to and I think it generally went well. I talked about everything that I had planned and included many technical terminologies, which is the main thing that the presentation was being assessed on. I found the practice session very useful and had it not been for it, I probably may not have passed that particular part of the unit.

With in the unit we were required to complete timed tasks which were deigned to replicate a real-life work situation, and I loved every minute of them. Working under pressure is something that I personally thrive on and the tasks were pressure at its best, especially the last five minutes when the whole class was trying to print their work and rushing about to get their work in on time. I really enjoyed them and was surprised at the standard of work that I could produce within such a short and limited space of time.

To complete these timed tasks we had one final one which should incorporate everything we have learned so far in the unit and test out typographic knowledge. The only difference being that it was under exam conditions, so no internet, no sketchbooks, and the most difficult was the fact we were unable to talk and get feedback from peers or tutors. The actual task was to produce a series of A4 newsletters which explain all of the typographic terminology that we had previously been taught. We had only about 2 ½ hours to this, which include all of our planning, thumbnail sketches and actually producing a final product. At the end of the task I was slightly worried that I may not have done enough explanations and examples, but generally throughout the whole class most people seemed to about the same as me, which was very reassuring to know.

Even though the task was under exam conditions, again I really enjoyed them and again was positively surprised at how much is achievable in such a small space of time. I knew most of what I was required to know which made the timed tasks and the presentation run very smoothly indeed. Had I not know the typographic terminologies and their meanings I would have really struggled. It’s very useful to know the importance of type as it generally is the deciding factor to pretty much every piece of design work out there

Week Begining 26th February 2007

Wednesday was a real eye opening day for me and no doubt for the rest of the group as well. We had a visit from one of the ex-students on the course. The guy had really done well for him self and came in to give us a little talk about what he does and how his working life is. The main thing that I learnt from the day was just hoe far I still have to go in terms of my knowledge of web design.

He talked a lot about what his company does and has done in the past and to be honest a lot of what he said just went in one ear and straight out of the other, and a lot of the time it was like he was speaking a different language. No doubt a lot of what he talked about will become clearer in the second year when we actually start to learn some of it.

Since his visit I’ve see just how important it is to know ‘CSS’ is you want to be employed in the industry and since then I’ve had a look at a few website and tried out a few tutorials, but still don’t fully understand, but I don’t fear it and always know that if I do need some help with anything then I always have people to turn to. [Tutors and Peers]

Thursday we had our practice presentations and I wasn’t really nervous at all, maybe because subconsciously I knew that it was only a practice one and I would get another chance if it went wrong. As a group I think Julian, Scott and I did really well, but our presentations are still not perfect. The main thing we will be assessed upon is our knowledge of the terminology used in typography, and that is something that my presentation lacked. According to Steve that was the most common mistake with everyone’s presentations, but overall I think we will all be fine, and don’t see why anyone should be worried.

I still have a handout to create and next week we have a task under “Exam Conditions” which I need to revise for, and that is what I will be doing over the weekend.