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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