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.