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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