During this semester of the course I feel that I have already gained a large amount of knowledge about the design industry and what it would be like to work for a professional design agency. I believe that this will be invaluable to me after the course when I am looking to go into employment within the design sector.

In previous forms of education I have often felt that I was, at times, going through the motions and completing work not for my personal benefit but just to meet certain objectives of an assignment. However this not been the case on this course as I feel that each task is being done for a specific reason and they will all help with my progress on the course and in the future.

As this course is of a higher level, in terms of the amount of detail and work required to be completed, I felt that this step up would be major challenge and it has been. Although I passed my first assignment I did make a number of mistakes and this is something I hope to have rectified with the A3 and A4 assignments. The largest step up I have felt is the level of research and detail that is required for the assignments. The amount of research required for the assignments is something that has really taken me by surprised and it is something that can often take up most of the time for the assignment.

As well as undertaking research, for the assignment, I am starting to appreciated that the more research I do about the information in the lectures, that Steve gives us, the better prepared I will be for the assignment work. Also this research can be used as evidence for the assignment if I record it in my sketchbook. The sketchbook has, over the course of the first semester, become essential and this is something that I would have never imagined at the start of the course. Everything from the notes from the lectures to inspirational work is in the sketchbooks and at times I would feel lost without.

Another use of the sketchbook has been collecting feedback on work and documenting it. This is something that has proved to extremely useful as the more opinions and viewpoint I can gain about my work ultimately the better it will be. Blogger has also been an essential tool not just for gaining feedback but it allows me to check on my own progression throughout the course and it is something I will be able to look back on in the future.

Short term
My short terms goals for the next semester are that I want to pass all the assignments and hopefully gain a merit in one of them. I also want to improve my web authoring skills and my design skills in general.

Mid-term
By the end of the course I want to have passed all the assignments and feel confident in the fact that I have given the course my full commitment. I want make the most of the opportunities that are given to me such as; going to design studies, working for real clients as this help me to become more employable as I will have that vital ‘experience’ of working for a client.

Long-term
With regards to my long term goals I want to gain employment for a web design agency creating website but also with some graphic design elements. This is because I feel that ultimately I would gain a large amount of skills in a much shorter time and I would also gain more experience in employment compared to further education.

The week before deadline and I am feeling that I have got 95% of the A3 assignment complete. I have completed the all of the written work and I have only got to check for spellings, grammar etc... The A4 assignment is also almost complete, with only the banners to finish, so any feedback on my banners above will really help.

I have found the development of ideas for the banners proven to be very useful and it has shown me all the little details that can be altered and how they can have a major impact on the entire look of the design.

This week has been 'a get on with it' week and it has helped me to finish my written work and helped me to be more relaxed for the hand-in next week. With the hand-in next week I have almost got my web plan finished so I will be posting them tonight.

My targets for next week are:

• Complete banners
• Complete screen designs
• Collect all images together and place them in the assignment template
  
• Add all references into assignment template and align them to the assignment work
• Add image restoration to Pagemaker template and add border
  
• Arrange all work into the folders in preparation for the work
• Print assignments off and sign them
• Hand the assignment in!!
  

Thanks for all the feedback that has been left regarding the banners and the screen designs. I have made changes to both and will be posting the new screen designs soon. Meanwhile here are the new banners.



Again any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

The A3 assignment has taken up most of my time this week and now I finally feel like I am nearly finished. I have completed most of the written work and this means that I have only got the web plan to create in PageMaker once I have decided on my final design.

After completing the content I feel like a large weight has been lifted off my shoulders and the finishing line for the assignment is now coming into view. The main task for me this week is to finalise my web plan and make sure that it will be achievable to create the website whilst keeping it under the 50k page size limit that I have stipulated in my project goals.

Although Monday was a very busy day for me and had a lot of work to do it came nowhere near to the amount of work we had to do on Tuesday. To generate a large number of ideas Steve had us create a number of designs in decreasing amounts of time, the shortest being 4 designs in just one minute!

I felt that this followed on very nicely from the task last week and I am really going to try to create the same intensity in the way I work during my self study, well maybe not quite so intense.

After dinner we had to create two banner ads that conformed to IAB standards, one skyscraper and one medium rectangle banner. Below are my banners so feel free to leave and comments that you wish.






I really enjoyed the banner creation task. I have found the challenge of trying to make an appealing and relevant design which contains all the correct information in under 20kb(kilobytes) really interesting. This taks also enabled me to Adobe Photoshop and I feel the more I use it the more confidence I have using is it.

My targets for next week are:

• To finish the budget statement
• To finish the assets list
• To finish my web plan and feedback form
• To complete any changes to banner
• To ensure that the spelling, grammar and punctuation is right in all my work
• To put all work into the PageMaker format ready for next weeks seminar group
  

Below are 5 screen designs I have created for the A3 web plan. I would really appreciate any feedback. Please tell me what you think and vote using the poll*.

Thanks

*voting lines close on 5th December and votes placed after that will not be counted but you may still be charged

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The image restoration task has occupied most of time this week and what started as fun and interesting task and now become a little frustrating. I am still interested in the task and I feel that the Photoshop experience is essential and something that help me a great deal.

After receiving feedback on the task I now know what I need to do to and hopefully I will have it finished during my self study time.

This week I have to pay a large amount of focus on the A3 assignment as I have been neglecting it unintentionally due to the more creative A4 task. This week I need to create my screen designs for the web plan and I will be posting them on my blog soon so any feedback would be appreciated.

Steve provided us with the task this week of designing and creating a business card in a very short space of time. The first time I did this on Monday I had a few mistakes which could have
been easily prevented as they were simple things such as typos.

The PARC (Proximity, Alignment, Repetition and Contrast) lecture that followed was very useful and it will be something that I will be investigating further into as I feel that they will be essential in my future designs.

On Tuesday we all had another go at the business card task and this time I took more time and a lot more detail in the information from the brief. This meant that I didn't make any typos and I felt that I made a much better job of the design.

I found it very interesting to see how much work could be done in 30 minutes and this is something I hope to be able to take through to my self study time and I hope this allow me work more efficiently.

My targets for next week are:

• To complete content for the A3 assignment
• Complete image restoration task
• Gather copyright permissions for the images I will use in the A3 assignment
• Add this information to assets list
• Complete budget statement
• Develop screen designs and start create them in PageMaker
  

With two assignments on the go at the same time it makes each of the two days at college at completely different experience. Monday is currently the more paper based analytical work for the web plan and the Tuesday is more creative with the image restoration task.

The image restoration task is something that I think everyone is enjoying and it is finally allowing everyone be more creative and actually use Adobe Photoshop. I also think that this task is helping me to understand the level of detail that is required in design more than any other task I have done.

This was also coupled with the lecture that Steve gave to use about the bitmap and vector image format and the fact there is over 5,000 pixels in a 72dpi(Dots per Inch) 1inch by 1inch square image. This has really helped me during the image restoration task as I have to zoom in really to close to match the colours of the pixels to restore the image.

I have some basic experience with Photoshop but I have never tried anything like image restoration before. This has really helped understanding colours more, especially when it comes down to creating the skin colour for the people in the image.

Typography was also one of the lectures this week and before this I never knew how much there was to learn about the typefaces we use everyday. After this lecture I am looking forward to the assignment on typography after the christmas break as this will enable me to research all the different aspects of typography.

During feedback groups Steve motioned the possibility of doing one of the assignments over the summer holidays as this would relieve some of the pressure for the 2nd year as we would have already completed one of the assignments.

I felt this was a good idea as good idea as it would allow time to finish any referral work from the 2nd year assignments and also we would have one less assignments to do in the 2nd year. It would be very interesting to hear everyone opinion about this, especially the 2nd years as I believe you did this last year.

My targets for next week is:

• Amend target audience profile, delivery requirements, technologies and competitive analysis for A3 assignment
• Complete first attempt at the image restoration task ready for feedback
• Collect images for the computer terms in the A3 assignment
• Start writing content website plan
  

A3 and A4 assignment has made the basis of this week's activities and this has called for yet more research. This week I have researching internet surfers of the over 50's variety due to this being the target audience for the web plan in the A3 assignment.

This time the web plan seems to be a lot more straightforward as there are many 'trivial' things from the first web plan that are not required. Although I do feel that this web plan will be more of a challenge as I will have think very carefully about the design as I will have to build the website for the next assignment.

The main area of this that concerns me is the size of the webpages and the included images and how I am going to ensure that I keep it within the projects I am going to set. This is something I am feeling more confident with due to the fact that the A4 assignment contains the image compression task.

Image compression formed the basis of Tuesday's morning lecture and Steve went into detail about all the different types of file formats and the compression formats that can be used. Although I already had a basic knowledge of this due to some previous experience with Photoshop I had previously never gone into this level of detail before.

Following on from this presentation I spend about an hour looking at the effects of different sets of image formats and their compression settings. This will help to illustrate what image format should be used for different types of images such as: logos, photos. I have also been testing the quality of an image against its file size in pursuit of the ultimate balance between the two.

We also had a presentation on colour schemes and I found this very useful as I never new that there where so many different types of colour themes and how they can be used to create a specific effect on a webpage.

Main targets for next week are:

• To accurate a record of my time on time sheets
• To complete task 2 of A4 assignment
• Place at least four blog comments before the comment deadline of midnight on Friday
• Complete target goals for A3 assignment
• Check and reply to any emails sent by Steve
• Find inspirational work to put in my sketchbook
  

The first week back to college after the half term brought two different types of stress. The stress of what grade I gained from the assignment and secondly the stress of performing the presentation that I had prepared over the reading week.

Upon entering the room I could see that everyone else was nervous and a bit on edge. To increase the nerves just that little bit more Steve waited until the stroke of 9’oclock to tell us how the presentations were given.

After waiting about an hour in refectory it finally my turn to perform my presentation and the walk to classroom had never seemed so long.

I felt that the presentation as a whole went quite well except that I know that it didn't last for five minutes. I think this was due to the nerves I was feeling as this was making we talk faster and I also skipped parts of the presentation.

I was quite pleased with the actual delivery of the presentation as this has been something that I have previously struggled with, mainly due to nerves. I am very eager to gain feedback from the presentation so that I can see what mistakes I made and the little mannerisms that I do without realising.

After doing the presentation I was glad that I had done it and it is something that I have really learnt a lot from, not just about the content of the presentation but also the preparation that is required to giving a professional presentation.

For my previous presentation I have simply made a quick slide show in PowerPoint and just repeated the bullet points. This time I actually took care into thinking about the design, structure and the timing of the presentation.

After the initial stress of the presentation had passed it was time for me to start worrying about my assignment grade.

After returning to the room after lunch I was expecting to see the grades posted up on the wall but this was not to be the case. After performing a few tasks based on how well we thought the assignment had gone and initial reaction to the last eight weeks on the course we were finally told our grades.

I was pleased to find out I had passed the assignment and this was a large sense of relief for me but I understand that I have still made mistakes that I need to learn from and no make in the future.

This was made even more prominent with the list Steve gave us of the common mistakes within the group and I feel that I have made at least 5 or 6 these mistakes and this is something I will definitely rectify for the next assignment.

Tuesday came and Steve posed to us the most difficult question we have faced so far.

Artist or Designer or Both?

This is the first question of the A4 assignment and something that I feel will, and already has, sparked a lot of debate within the group. This question is one that think will make for an interesting assignment question and it will be main focus over the next week.

Today I spend a large amount of the day researching The Designers Republic and I have that some of their work is very inspiring. I have also been research Ian Anderson, the founder of The Designers Republic, and after researching some of his ideologies and the way he approaches questionnaires and the answers that he gives are often very provocative and are designed to cause a reaction.

After today's seminar group I am feeling a lot more confident about the forthcoming assignments and I feel I have a better understanding of what it required.

My task for reading week is to create presentation on the colour RED. I have found the idea of a reading week very unusual and at times a little strange. Both Monday and Tuesday morning I woken and felt like I am going to college even though I know I am not.

I do however think that reading weeks are good idea because like I said I already feel that I am back into the routine that we have at college and this will help me when starting the new assignment.

During this week I have been looking at the technical area of the colour and the psychological and cultural affect of the colour on people. I was really surprised at the different viewpoints by different cultures to a colour and how this effect people's everyday life.

The first of the reading week started a little slow as I distracted and this therefore kept disrupting my research. After taking a break, and with the help of a set of headphones and an mp3 player, I was able to concentrate and get on my research.

After a long time of researching the task for the most part of the day I then started to think about the presentation and started to design the presentation in PageMaker.

I have also started thinking about the handout that I need to create and more importantly when I am going to hand it out. The more I thought about this the more pro and cons I kept thinking of for each time in the presentation and this is something I will have to resolve by Monday.

With regards to the actually presenting the presentation I am feeling very nervous as I have had very little practice giving presentations before. I think the main problem that I had when giving presentations is that, especially at my previous college, the date of the presentation would always be changed and this always made me more nervous and I always felt unprepared.

My targets for next week are:

• Finish visual aids for my presentation (presentation and hand-out)
• Print off both the new assignments ready for Monday
  
• Print off two production schedules and a time sheet for Monday
• Post at least four comments on the blogs before Thursday or Sunday (Steve please clarify)
• Buy domain and email it John
• Get hosting set-up and working with John help (Cheers John)
• Practice, Practice, Practice the presentation to help me be calm on Monday
  

With the assignment handed I feel like I can relax and prepare fro the next two assignments. I am looking forward to them as I feel that I will be less worried about how the assignment needs to put together due to the fact I have already handed one in.

As I said last week I am nervous about my result for the assignment but I would probably be more worried if I wasn't worried!, if you know what I mean.

During this half term I am going to read the assignments A3 and A4 and start to build up a list of questions just like Steve suggested as this will help to understand what is required for the assignment and hopefully ease any worries I have got.

I will probably regret saying this on Monday, but I am looking forward to the reading week task that Steve has set for each of us and looking forward to seeing what everyone else had to do for their tasks. This will be the first experience I have had of a reading week and what it entails so I look forward to the challenge.

My first assignment on this course has been handed in and now the worrying can be begin!! Will I pass or will I fail the answer lies in the hands of the Steve.

This week has been a lot more relaxed as thought it would be and before handing the assignment in I felt quite relaxed I just hope I wasn't too relaxed and have silly little mistakes that will affect me passing the assignment.

Although I feel nervous about what result I will get on the assignment and what mistakes I have made. Hopefully I will pass the assignment and then this will help me progress more confidently in the next assignments as I will have a greater understanding of how Steve mark the assignments.

The last seven, or so, weeks have gone very quickly and I almost feels weird to writing this blog entry so quickly into my first year of the course. The first assignment of this course has probably the most difficult assignment I have done and this is mainly due to the accuracy and the depth of information required.

As well as finishing the assignment I now feel more confident of how the whole submission process works and this has helped me be relaxed about the future assignments.

After my fears handing, and removing the pressure, of the assignment and returning to the afternoon lecture Steve hit us with the dreaded P word. Presentations. If I am honest I really don’t like giving presentations and it is something I really don’t enjoy but I feel that the more experience I gain giving presentations the better I will get.

I also feel that watching other people presenting is really useful because I can pick up on things that they do well and this shows me how I can improve my presentation skills. I realise that over the next two years and over the rest of my professional career I may/will have to give a lot of presentations about a range of different subjects and this is something that I will have get used to doing.

My targets for next week are:

• To relax and enjoy the holiday
• To read the assignments A3 and A4
• Prepare questions about the assignment
• Collect inspirational design work to put in sketchbook
  

Over the last two days I have started to see how my finished assignment will look and for the first time I really feel like I will be ready to hand it in on Tuesday. I have finished my draft copy of the assignment and with the help of seminar groups I know now what I need to change for the final draft.

For a large amount of this week I have been using Pagemaker again and I found it very useful until I began lining up my references for my assignment. I found this very frustrating as every time I changed one word of the assignment I had numerous references to re-align.

Using Pagemaker I have also finished my website plan this week and I will be putting the final version on here soon.

This week especially I feel I have really progressed with time management and the use of the time sheets. Although I have been using them from the start of the assignment I am now trying to plan more thoroughly and in smaller chunks. This is helping me have clearer and more precise goals to aim for in a specified time frame which can only be a good thing.

The main area of the assignment that I need to compete is the evaluation and this is going to be my main target for self study this week. I hope to have this finished for Monday so that I spend Monday re-checking all of my work and making any changes.

My targets for this week are:

1. Complete evaluation
2. Make required changes to assignment
3. Check spelling, grammar and punctuation
4. Ensure that I am ready to hand in assignment on Tuesday

This week has all be finishing off work and getting it ready to hand in next week. I have been using Adobe PageMaker a lot this week and I am starting to gain more confidence creating and aligning documents using guides, column guides etc...

All the time that I spend using PageMaker I feel will only help when creating my screen designs in it next week. I am looking forward to finishing my web plan and seeing the end result as this is the first real web plan design I have ever created.

The process of creating a plan of the website has made me think of how many different decisions that are made subconsciously and it is not until you start to think about them that you realise. Also this week I have been using PageMaker to create my site structure diagram and this really helped me when lining up text.

After using PageMaker I like many of the features and think that it is really useful but sometimes I yearn for certain features such as; a table maker! The simplicity of Microsoft Word feels so inviting as apposed to aligning each individual row of a table and then all the text within the table in Pagemaker.

On a lighter note I feel happy with my final design and will be posting the layout, that I will be using to create my final web plan next week, within the next few days after I have finished checking my written and removing all the "waffle".

The biggest thing I have learnt this week is that usually better you plan for something the better the end result is and this especially applies to PageMaker.

Follow the principle of planning ahead I will now be placing targets at the end of each weekly entry which I hope to achieve in the following week.

1. Check written work and place in assignment template
2. Complete budget statement and asset list
   
3. Crete web plans in Pagemaker
4. Create CD label for CD of assignment work
5. Complete index for sketchbook
6. Finish Assignment!!
   

I have completed my thumbnail designs and I created four differerent layouts of my final design. I have posted draft screens of the designs and would greatly appreciate any feedback you have as it will help when creating my final design. Thank You.

(click on image to see larger version)

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A big eye opener for me this week was the presentation from Dave, Jemma and Oliver from The Design Mechanics and also the work that was presented by the second years.

After a little bit of a late start Dave Pannell soon got into his stride and started talking to us about the work that is done at The Design Mechanics and how they are completely unique from any other design agency in the UK.

The information that was given in the presentation I found very useful especially about the time scale of projects. When Dave said that they would usually only spend between about an hour creating a logo for a company I was really shocked and I think that it is information like this that is difficult to absorb when Steve or John is telling me.

I also found it very useful to see the link between studying on the course and working for a professional design agency through Jemma and Oliver. It was good to hear them talking about there experiences and they have adapted to going from the course to working professionally.

A large part of the focus of this week was looking at accessibility and the accessibility standards. After researching the guidelines I found them very interesting but sometimes a little bit difficult to understand or interpret.

After reading the guidelines and receiving an e-lecture from Steve I applied guidelines 1.1, 2.2, 4.2, 12.3 and 14.1 to my online learning journal. I also made other changes such as the template, the header and the title of my blog to make it professional and assessable.

The next major focus on the course this week was learning to use Adobe® PageMaker® and I felt that was very useful. We preformed a small exercise to create an article style piece based on Nikki Iles.

During this exercise I felt that I learnt a lot about how to construct designs and how professional pieces of work are created. I also feel that it will be useful to learn Adobe® PageMaker® first and then move on to learn Adobe® InDesgin® as I will enable me to already have a good knowledge of DTP (Desktop Publishing) software and this should make the transition smoother.

First thing Monday morning Steve gave us a lecture on all the information we would need to complete the delivery requirements and he especially focused on web hosting. This helped me gain a better understanding of what all the technological terminology and what it means. It also helped me to understand what I to look for when picking a web host based on the individual needs of the website.

The lecture in the morning really helped me as I went over some of the stuff we had last week and it helped to refresh my memory. After the lecture I decided to crack on with the work and try and get a large portion of the delivery requirements done especially researching web hosts so that I could spend most of my time on Tuesday completing the rest of the delivery requirements.

Nice idea in principal but due to the restrictions placed on the college internet I was unable to do most of the research on web hosts. This turned out to be good news as I now had an extra day to research for my delivery requirements.

Tuesday morning came even quicker after the defeat of Newcastle United to Derby. As a Newcastle fan I should be used to disappointment but this was on a scale I wasn't prepared for. This gave Steve a golden opportunity for a Sunderland fan and the friendly banter gave him much delight. I will have my revenge eventually!!!

After completing the majority of the delivery requirements it was time for seminar groups which enabled me to ask plenty of questions about the assignment and discuss the assignment but it was mainly my objective to deflect Steve away from his sly comments about Newcastle's failing.

Improvements I would make this week are that I need to try and gather more inspirational work for my sketchbook as I know this will help me be more creative in the future.

My targets for next week are that I want to have completed the delivery requirements and to complete the competitive analysis part of the assignment. This will allow me to focus on my screen designs next week.

Just two days of college a week sounds great, it is great but the early mornings aren't!!!

This week I received the first assignment for the course and was finally able to see the level of work that would be required for each assignment. Having seen the assignment some of my fears have been eased after a week of wondering and waiting. After going through the assignment with Steve in the lecture on Monday and taking part in the seminar groups today I now have a clearer view of how things work and what is expected.

At the start of the week I was a little bit shocked with the amount of notation that was required to be taken and how quickly my sketchbook was filling up, will it last the year???? or the even the first assignment ????

Research was another area of the week that took me by surprise as previous research I have done had only taken me half and hour to an hour, depending on how interesting the lesson was. This isn't the case on this course as research is an essential aspect of the course and I now realize the importance of research and once again take notes.

Self study has also been highlighted as a major area of the course and the use of my sketchbook as a scrapbook so that I can collect and analysis design work that inspire. I believe that this is a great idea and it will help me to improve my design and also see what i may be able to achieve in the future.

The main area I would improve on is my time management as after filling out my weekly time sheet I feel that I underestimated the amount of time many of the tasks would take me to complete. By next I hope to have completed my target audience profile so that I move on the the next area of the assignment in keeping with my production schedule.

During my third year at high school I achieved a grade C in GSCE IT and this was the first time I had regular access to a PC. During my GSCE I spend most of my time using Microsoft Office and Microsoft Excel and this helped me gain a good knowledge of these applications which has helped me during my further studies.

As I had achieved my GSCE, in IT, during year 9 I decided that I should study Media Studies instead of ICT during years 10 and 11 as this would help discover more about design. I also felt that it would allow me develop skills that would help me in the future such as; how to annotate and analyse media on a basic level.

After leaving high school I attended Leeds College of Technology and there I enrolled on the BTEC National Diploma in IT Practitioner: Software Development course as I felt this would give me a good overview of software development and improve my general computing skills.

On this course I completed a variety of different modules from computer systems to website management and these gave me a good overall basis of the IT sector. During the course I discovered that I enjoyed planning, designing and creating website and I was very interested in taking this passion further when I finished the course. To help do this I applied for the HND Interactive Media at Wakefield College.

During my time on the HND Interactive Media course at Wakefield College I hope to be able to greatly develop my skills in all aspects of my designs. I also hope gain a better understanding and gain more experience using various pieces of software such as; Photoshop, Dreamweaver etc… I also hope to gain more work related experience so that I can gain a wider understanding of the industry and how to work with clients. During my time on the course I hope to build up a portfolio of work so that I can show prospective employers the quality and variety of my work.

Whilst on the course I will be aiming to meet a number of targets to ensure that I get the most out of the course and help me develop my skills. The main target that I will set myself is to at least pass all the assignments first time. Another target I will set myself is that I would like to improve my skills with the software that I will be using inside and outside of college hours as I feel the more comfortable I get with software the better my overall design process will be and the more confident I will be when creating my design.

After finishing the course I hope to do some freelance to help bolster my portfolio and this will also help display the variety of my work. After building up my portfolio I hope that in the future I hope to work as a designer for a design studio producing a high standard of work. I would primarily want to be a website designer but I would also like to be involved graphic design.