Jamie Wood - HND Interactive Media

2007-06-03T13:29:00.000-07:00

Story of the Year – Page Avenue

The album cover looks to be based on the albums name as well as been based on the names of the songs. The work is a bitmap image as it is photo realistic. The artwork is of a shadow falling on to a city. I really like the design as they have kept it simple and made sure there is not a lot of things happening to the design. The CD also uses a lot of text in a small space and it is still really easy to read. From this I need to make sure that I include this principle in my designs.

Bullet For My Valentine – The Poison.

This design as took a different approach as they have used both vector and bitmap in the same design. The colours that they have used are also suited to the target audience and the style of music that they play. The artwork is taken from the name of the album as it is a woman that as been poisoned on the floor. The album also users good contrast with the background and the name of the album. In the work I do in the future I need to make sure that my work users good contrast as meets the target audience.

Lost Prophets – Liberation Transmission

The majority of the design is in vector as this album users quite a large logo in the middle of the design, but on the back of the design it incorporates the band over the logo. I feel this works really well as they have a good presence in side of the logo. Some thing this design does really well is make sure that everything in the design as good presence and is really easy to see by using good contrast. Some thing else they use contrast in is the fonts as they have a script font for the albums name but everything else is in a san-serif font.

BBC Site

BBC is said to be one of the best-designed sites as it follows all of the principles to do with good web design. For example the size of the page changes depending on the screen that is been used. I think this is a good idea as the site becomes available for all users. One of the other things the BBC site does really well is contrast. The site users different shades of blue to make good contrast with the text and the background.

Amazon.co.uk

Amazon is one of the biggest e-commerce sites one the Internet. The site gets thousands of customers each day. Some of the ways I believe this site does this is by having more then one layout for the site as it will be viewed at different sizes and it different resolution. One of the other things Amazon does really well is the navigation as the site users different levels of navigation for each of the products as well as the brands. The site also users a search feature so that you can find what you are looking for easier.

Game.co.uk

Game is the biggest video game store in the UK. So there site needs to be easy to use and maintain the look of the store. One of the things this site does really well is maintain the corporate look like the actually store using the same colours as the store. One of the thing the site does really well is tell you about upcoming games and also users high quality pictures. One of the other things I like about this site is the navigation, the navigation is easy to use and all the information can be found within three clicks.

Hills Have Eyes DVD Cover

The artwork on the cover is aimed at the target audience, the cover gives you an insight into the film of survival horror. The cover as good contrast on the background but could become harder to see in others. On the back there is a lot of information to hold but they have managed to get it all right. The proximity of all the items works really well and the background users a lot of repartition. Some of the things I will need to make sure I am using in all my print work as well as websites.

Shadowrun Cover

This is the artwork to one of the games on the Xbox 360. The front cover gives you a really good insight into what the game is about, which is tactical combat. All of the text users good contrast and is easy to read. All of the text is in a san-serif font, this may be that the designer thinks this is easier to read then an other font. The back users contrast within the alignment by putting things both left and right aligned. This could be a good idea to use in certain circumstances if you want to get some sort of effect with the design.

Homer Poster

This poster is based on the famous painting named “the scream”. The image users bold colours in the background and all looks to be slightly slanted. There is good contrast on the actual person to the background. Homer also has good presence inside the painting as well. The background is a mixture of swirls and effects to create the feeling behind the scream. In some work you can make it work by extending on the characters feeling.

Mono Lisa Painting

The famous image of Mono Lisa that was painted by Leonardo Da Vinci shows good contrast in parts but also blends into the background for other parts of the image. I really like the photo realistic look the piece as got and how calm the background looks as well. Something that works really well though is the blending in at the bottom of the painting so there doesn’t look to be something missing. From this image I can possibly look at trying to blend less important stuff into the background where possible.

2007-05-14T05:14:00.000-07:00

First Year Almost Up

At the beginning of the year we started with a few little tasks to start to get all the class to bond together. I believe these tasks where set to break the ice between all of the new students as no one knew anyone. One of the tasks was to set hopes and fears of the next to years. I’ve found that I’ve managed to meet some of my hopes and also sunk into some of the fears.

One of the thinks I did sink into for quite a while was losing interest in this course. I think this was because I was adjusting to the new workload and I also wasn’t sure if this was the right course for me. As time went on my self-study began to suffer as well as not doing the work to my full potential. This really began to frustrate me as I seemed to have wasted a year of my life again, and also I didn’t appear to be doing what I thought on the course. I gather there wasn’t much I could do at this moment in time except find out if I actually wanted to do the course.

After a while on the course though I started to feel more at ease with the work and start to do work at home without taking it as much of a choir. From this my work started to look a lot better and I started to hit all the deadlines with plenty of time to spare. I started to also look at other methods in which to achieve the higher grades.

Something a learnt from the first assignment was to never underestimate the size of a task. The main problem with underestimating, was not actually knowing how long a task is going to take. Some thing else that was really alien to me in this assignment was time planning, this was something I had never done before. I couldn’t get my head around recording what I had done at the time of doing this. After a few times of doing this I started to plan a lot more efficiently then I had been doing in the past. I found from doing this I could plan a lot more efficiently.

I thought on the first assignment I was going to reach the higher grades easily, but when the assignments where graded I was far from getting these marks. I suppose this was not from reading the criteria properly. As the year progressed I started to struggle because of my attitude towards the course, this was because I was trying to find myself on the course. It’s been only the last couple of months I have actually put the extra effort towards the work and should hopefully achieve the higher grades.

One of the things that have been hard is getting new to all the new software. Some of the software as been relatively easy to learn as I have used programs like them before, but others have been a right up hill struggle. This is because you cannot really be an expert in all the programs, as it would take years of learning, as there is so much to learn in the programs. One of the programs that have been a big struggle was Photoshop, this was because I have never used a program like this one before and it seemed to be the largest one to learn.

One of the things I have done a lot this year is leave things in tell the last minute, over time this is something I have done less and less. I found by doing things when you plan to do them you leave yourself plenty of time to do the smaller tasks better. The most obvious example of this is the sketchbook assignment compared to the last assignment. In the sketchbook assignment I have really struggled over the last week to meet most of the criteria as I totally forgot about that assignment, but on the other hand with the last assignment I have left myself plenty of time to look through all my work and also check everything is there. I found this a lot easier as I have plenty of time to check thought the assignment as well as not feeling stressed. In the future I am going to take this into consideration, as I will also feel a lot better about myself knowing I have managed my time correctly.

One of the things that I as changed from the beginning of the year is wanting to do a top up year. I feel this is because all of the tutoring on the course is at its best as well as feeling like this is the last hurdle for me. I feel like I have come to the end of the learning curve and want to just get into a job and get on with it. I have also realised that being a freelance web designer is also not the best job as it’s a big risk and there is plenty of people doing this all ready. So I now believe that I just want to get into the industry and see where to go from there.

Over the next year I am hoping to improve on my people skills as well as been able to communicate with people a lot better as well, I feel that I haven’t really put all the effort in as I was doing at the start of the year. I should find this a lot easier then the begging of the year as there is less people to get to know.

Something else I need to do is start to learn CSS before I go back as this will be really helpful as I will know what John is talking about next year and I will give myself a better chance of understanding the code myself. The last thing I need to do before I go back is keep brushing up my skills as I don’t want to be rusty on all the things I have learnt this year when I start the new assignments.

At the end of next year I hope to have created a portfolio that represents me through all of my work, I also hope to understand CSS and HTML a lot better. I also hope to achieve the higher grades and put a lot more effort in then I have done this year. I also hope to get into a job within the business and start earning some money from something I enjoy doing.

To get on to the second year
Pass all units first time
Get at least two merits
Build a site using CSS
Build a portfolio

2007-05-03T08:21:00.000-07:00

CD Artwork

The main task for this week as been getting all of the CD artwork up to submission standard. From the style of music I was given I was thinking along the lines of Jets and Jet pieces. All of the artwork I came up with seemed to look really dark as I believed this suited the music the best. One of the problems I have run into this week was when I put the final tiff into Page Maker. The problem was the logo was losing quality. This really frustrated me as the rest of the artwork printed off fine.

Something I found that went really well is the designs towards the artwork. I think this went really well as the music was so distinctive and the album name was something to go on as well. In the future I need to plan in the same way I have done with this assignment as it as led me in the right direction with the designs. I found by doing spider diagrams, roughs and looking at the previous artwork for the CD I have been able to produce some spectacular pieces.

Something that I have been doing this week is filling my sketchbook with all the needed work. I found this a really time consuming piece of work as I have had to get all the work in for the whole year. I have also been showing all the planning through all of my work over the last few weeks and also all annotated.

Something I have done different in this assignment compared to the last ones is managing my time a lot better. I understand where I am and also what needs to be done to meet the deadlines in the assignment. I feel by doing this I should be able to reach the higher grades in this assignment.

Over the next week I need to work on the pre-flight document as well as checking through all the CD artwork and making sure all the right information is on the CD.

2007-04-26T08:40:00.001-07:00

Back into Action

This week started with a lecture on art designs and printing. This meant that we were meant to be on the last task of the assignment which is getting all the CD artwork done. I underestimated how large this part of the task is. I found there is still a lot of work to be done over the last few weeks of the assignment. Something else I realised this week is how much work I need to do to get my sketch books to the right standard for a pass. I gather the only thing I can do is get lots of work and start to annotate what I find inspiring about this work and why I find it inspiring.

Something else I missed out in the sketchbook was annotating my ideas. I seem to of just jumped from the roughs straight to the final design for most of the year. This was something I made a big change to for the final part of the year as I have started to leap further into my ideas. I found this a lot more useful as there is still many ideas within one little idea. Something I need to make sure I do this weekend is say how I have got from one stage to the other and why I have chosen that design.

Another task for this week as been tweaking my corporate identity so that is suits the needs of the company. One of the main changes I had to make is to the business cards as I created them thinking of totally the wrong thing. After a few tweaks I came up with a final idea. I think that the corporate identity now keeps a good consistent look throughout the whole of the documents.

The main task of the week as been getting all my referral work up to standard. This started at the beginning of the week with finding all of the images I needed for the site. After this I had to amend all the images so that they fit in the given place. One of the things I need to make sure I am doing in the future is to make sure that the images follow the text not the other way round.

One of the things I am going to start doing is exploring my ideas in other ways as I can see what things mean to me as well as other and then put the two together to see what I can come up with. I think this will work better as I will be handling the ideas from two sides and finding out where I can get them to meet.

Something else that cropped up this week is the professional Assignment for next year. We were informed about what was going to happen and that each member of the group will have different roles within the group. This is one of the assignments I will be looking forward too. One of the things I am not so sure about now though is if I will suit the role of the project manager.

2007-04-24T14:18:00.000-07:00

The Last Push

This weeks main task as to get all the website up and running. The one problem I had though was getting all the images to the right size without losing the key line round it. I resolved this by using Photoshop and getting the image down to the right size. I think that the site overall was a big improvement on the last site. One thing I found that went really well with this site is that I managed to keep a consistency through all the documents as well as making the website look the same as well. In the future when I am creating websites I want to stop using imbedded CSS and start using an external style sheet.

The other thing I had to do was to concentrate on getting all my images for the last site as I didn’t get enough the first time. This made my site look unfinished so I got referred. I have managed to get all the images but I haven’t got all the images to the right size. Over the next week I need to make sure that this is finished.

The biggest problem from this week was getting all my sketchbook work in to my sketchbook. This is because my printer as broke over the last week. I have found this really frustrating as I am going to spend most of my time printing off things for this assignment instead of doing more creative work towards the last assignment.

One of the things I am looking forward to this week is starting to create all the designs towards the CD. I think this is going to work really well as I will be able to see how much I have learnt over the last year and see what work I will produce.

2007-04-21T02:52:00.000-07:00

Corporate Identity

This week main task as been to get all the corporate identity items done and ready for the style guide. I think that I’ve managed to create all the items and make them all look consistent. Some of the problems that I had with this task were getting all the images of the documents to the right size without getting really big file sizes. This was rather frustrating as all the documents started with really big file sizes because of the size they were created at. It was also really hard to find the correct trade off between the quality of the image and the file size. This was resolved by finding the right amount of colours to use as well as the right file format for the Internet.

The other task I’ve been working on this week was getting the template to the website finished. I found that my first initial idea for the website didn’t work as I felt it didn’t look right. So I had to make some big changes to the website template. After a few hours of tweaking I finally came up with an idea that I feel works for this site. One of the things I wanted from the website, was it to keep the same consistency as the rest of the documents I feel like I have achieved this really well as it follows the same guidelines as the documents.

Something I have also started looking into this week is CSS, I am trying to understand the basics so that I can incorporate them into my website in the upcoming weeks. I feel by doing this I will make it easier for me to make changes to the website.
One of the things I have started to look over this week again is the first assignment we were given. I feel I’ve let this assignment drift away a bit and have to get hold of it again. So over the next few days I need to start getting all my work together so that I can have a go at getting this assignment to

2007-03-29T08:36:00.001-07:00

Ambient Styling

This week had its ups and downs as I received the grades for my last two assignments. One of the things I was really frustrated by this week was the fact that I didn’t realise before I handed in the last assignment that the website doesn’t look finished. I created an image saying that an image was coming soon. I suppose this was only my fault as I was trying to take the easy way out instead of finding the images. In the future I will make sure that I am using all the images I intend to use or create designs that will work with few or many images.

On the upside the other assignment I handed in was a lot better as I managed to get all the work together and not make any silly mistakes as I did in the last assignments before. I suppose this was mainly because all of the work was done in timed assignments instead of been lots of academic work. Some of the things I need to try and do in the next assignment are to push my grades up slightly as I’ve yet to reach the higher grades I should be achieving.

One of the tasks that have been set for me in the upcoming week is to find out how long I spend doing tasks in a week and make a record of this. John believes this will show me where I can do more coursework at home, and I think this will also show where I can do other things so I have a more structured week while at college. I believe this will be an important task for me but I could have really done with doing this earlier in the year.

One of the main tasks of this week was to get the logo finished. I was quite happy that I finally got the logo together as this was one of the main tasks of this assignment. I am really happy with the final design as I have spent a lot of time creating and tweaking the design. I believe from this I have developed my work a lot better than I have done in the previous assignments. I have also realised that you cant just jump from A to B there is the little stagers in between this showing how you came up with the design and what you changed to get their.

Another task for this week was to start work on the style guide. From the screen design I originally designed for the site, I have totally changed the layout. I found that there where too many colours incorporated into the design and the vertical navigation didn’t work on that design. So I decided to lose the blue bar and come up with a new idea for the header part of the page. I feel I have come a long way since the first site I created as this site appears to look a lot more professional and also is really simple to use. On of the things I made sure I didn’t use for this site was buttons. I feel hypertext works better as its easier to use and works better with the design.

2007-03-26T07:01:00.000-07:00

Ambient Logo

The main task of this week as been working on the possible logo designs for Ambient World. I started off this week by getting feedback on the rough designs I produced over the weekend. I was quite happy with the choices I got from the feedback as they left some really good ideas to look further into. From the feedback I received I started looking further into some of my designs, which gave me a chance to try and tweak a few things in the design or totally change the idea.

Something that I found a real task was starting to use Macromedia Freehand as this was the best software for creating vector images. At first the software really frustrated me as I was finding it really hard to produce the simplest of shapes. But the more I used the software the easier it became to use.

After a while I knew what I was doing with the software and started to create the first of my designs. Something that I found really challenging was getting the line of the letter “W” to follow the slant of the reverse on the Logo. I solved this by slanting the letter slightly to the left. The next task was to get the letters “A” and “W” To follow the same slant so they could be put side by side. Something I need to make sure I am doing in my vector designs is seeing which geometric shapes I can use to make up the design I am creating.

Next I started work on the second design for my logo which started off with the idea of the companies name with a planet orbiting around it. A got this idea as the music was a lot different to what I’m use to, so it was as if it was from another world. One of the things I found really challenging in this design was finding the right stroke width to use on the orbit. The problem was it stroke width was ever too thick or thin compared to the weight of the text. Eventually I found the right font for the design, which was Arial Black, and I used a stroke of 10pt. This part of the task was really frustrating as nothing seemed to work but I was really happy with the design that came out at the end.

2007-03-18T10:52:00.000-07:00

Assignment Time

This week was the start of a new assignment which covered all the work we have done this year. At first I didn’t think the assignment was that big but as the tasks started to unfold I found out that there was quite a bit of work to cover in a small amount of time. One of the things I have to do this time is make sure that I am keeping up to date with the time planning sheets or I will start to fall behind.

The new assignment is mainly a designing assignment as I have to create a logo for a company named “ambient world”. As well as having to create a corporate identity for the company. To go with this work I need to make an online guide to show employees when and how the can use the features of the identity within there work. I am lucking really forward to this assignment as it’s a more hands approach then some of the other assignments I have done so far.

Something that I have started to look at this week is company logos. I have found some really good logos and have also found some not so good logos. From looking through all the logos, there seems to some trends in the colours that the company users. For example most food outlets use the colours red and yellow and also make the text italic. Is there some meaning behind this, or is it coincidence?

Another change to this assignment is how the time planning is going to be done. We are now going to hand in the time planning sheets in each week instead of handing them all in at the end of the assignment. I believe this will show who has been doing what in there spare time instead of just filling them in at the end of the assignment.

One of the other things I had to do on Wednesday was pick an album from a list of 300 electric albums. From this I have to listen to the album and see what I interoperate the music as. From this I need to create the album cover, the inlay, and CD cover. This also seems an interesting task as I will have to create something on how I believe it should be created. I have a few ideas from the album name but I ma not that sure at the moment. The albums name is “Jet Chamber”.

One of the problems that I may have is will I have time to make something of the sketchbook assignment. I may have done too little work on this assignment and will have to do a lot of work to catch up with what I should have done. I believe that I have to spend a lot more time finding, gathering, and writing about inspirational work as well as offering more comments to other peers work.

One of the other things that are one my mind is how I have achieved on the last two assignments. I handed them both in but haven’t received the grades for them yet. I believe that I shall receive the grades in the upcoming weeks.

2007-03-11T12:20:00.000-07:00

Revert to Type - Evaluation

Mini Tasks

I was set the task of creating an article on one of Jonathon Gee gigs. In the task I only had an hour and half to plan, design and create this document. I thought this task went really well as I left my self a bit of time to check the work. Even though things were going well they seemed to be some little problems I ran into, which were not checking all the spelling correctly and then having to make changes to the work, spending too much time planning and not leaving my self the right amount of time to create the piece of work. In the future I need to make sure that I am recording how long I am spending doing each part of the tasks.

The next mini task I was set was to make the packaging around a paint tube. From this I had to find some fonts that match the theme of the paint tube, which was oriental. I found a font that I believe was the best for the task at hand. One of the things I did better in this task was leave a lot more time to check through the work and find any errors within the work. I believe that this was my favourite design of the assignment. Some of the things that went real well in this assignment where I didn’t plan for as long in this assignment so I had plenty of time to try out some of my ideas. I planned the time a lot better and I also choose the right fonts for this piece of work so it worked really well. From this assignment I a going to make sure that I spend the right amount of time to certain parts of the task to give my self plenty of time to try out a few ideas.

For this task I had to create an advertisement for Vodafone, which would be in a newspaper. The first thing I had to do in this task was find out how much room I had to design for. With the room that we were given we had to then plan which would be the best design for this idea. After putting some designs together it was time to start creating the best design. At first I tried a range of columns for the design but then I realised that the best thing to do was let the text go straight across the design. I was really happy about the feedback I received on this assignment. From this assignment I have also realised that the most complex of designs is not always the best design.

Presentation

Another part of this assignment was to create a presentation on a given typeface designer. I was given Eric Gill; the first part of this task was to research on the given guy. After doing all the research it was time to look through the research and pull out the useful information. After this it was time to start putting all the information together in the best typographic way. One of the things I made sure I did in this assignment was to use one of the fonts created by Eric Gill.

To go with the presentation we had to create a handout to go with the assignment. I also made sure with this that I used the same fonts and the same images so that the listener could also have something to refer to. Something that I should have done is giving the listener some sources to look at if they wanted to look further in to the subject. This is something I need to make sure I do in the future.

After this I had to give a practice run to my feedback group and tutor. This is something I wasn’t looking forward to, as previous presentations haven’t gone that well. I think the presentation went well once I got into the stride of it. The only problem was I really had a weak start to the presentation but I ended really strong. From the feedback I received I found out that the presentation didn’t use enough technical terms.

After this I made some changes to the presentation and handout ready for the actual presentation. After this it was time for the actual presentation. I made sure that I had revised all the technical terms so I couldn’t be court out by anyone as well as been able to use the terms properly. This time I had a really good start to the presentation and a really good end. I think this was the best presentation I have actually given in my life and would handle all the presentation sin the same way in the future. After the presentation I had to answer some questions on technical terms of typography. Luckily I revise all the terms so I answered all the questions correctly.

Timed assignment

Going into the timed assignment I didn’t know what to expect as nothing was let on. When I got there we was given the spec which told us we had to design a information sheet about typography and the newspaper features as well. We had about two and a half hours to do this in. My first thought was that I had plenty of time for this. How wrong was I, I could of done with a couple of more hours on this task to create it fully. I started the task by coming up with some designs and then choosing the best ones. From this I sketched the top three up to have a look at the properly and then choose the best design. I believe that the main part of this task was getting all the terms I can remember up and check all the meanings are correct as well. This was also the worst part of the assignment as I knew all the terms but they seemed to just disappear at this moment. After I did this I started creating the information sheet and also showing what I was talking about. Some of the things I learnt in this assignment was never under estimate the size of a assignment and also not everything is easy to design for.

2007-03-05T05:23:00.001-08:00

Presentation

This weeks main tasks were making sure that my presentation is ready for next week and also getting my website up and fully running. The problem with my presentation I only had one night to produce it as I left all my work at collage over the holiday. So I ended up finding a lot of errors in the work luckily I now have to make amendments to this. I really do need to spend more time checking spelling and grammar, as this seems to be my main downfall to all my work.

Another problem with the presentation was that I missed out on the main task, which was talking about the typefaces using the correct terminology. So I was really happy that I got feedback on the presentation that directed me in the right direction. From this I will be able to make sure my presentation is within the right time period and users all the correct terminology to meet the criteria for the assignment.

In the other assignment all things are going well as I’ve managed to make all the changers to the sit that needed to be changed from the feedback I received from the usability tests done before half term. (www.jamie-wood.co.uk) Check out this link to view the actual site.
Some of the changes I need to make to my work in the next few weeks needs to be make sure I am reading the assignment sheet more than once so I don’t start going off in the wrong direction. Make sure that I am checking my work more carefully for simple errors and even get someone else to check it for errors I miss.

2007-02-27T10:20:00.000-08:00

Time To Test

This week’s main task was the usability test on our site I was quite happy as well as quite scared about what people would think about my site. Would the feedback be relevant and would they be enough agreement to get some changes for the site. I think my main problem was that I didn’t produce enough questions to get all the feedback I needed for the task at hand.

As this was the first time I had seen some peers sites I was quite happy to look what the other sites where looking like and was there anything in there designs I could use at a later date. From looking at all the sites in the class I could see how different every ones designs where and I also got to look at every bodies creativity.

When I got all my feedback back at the end of the task it was time to look through all the feedback and find out which bits were relevant and which bits was not. After looking I found out that there where only a few changes that needed to be changed to my site. I needed to redo the homepage again and I also need to slightly make amendments to the layout of the content pages.
I found this task really useful and would enjoy doing the task again in the future. Some of the things I would change the next time I did a task like this would be to ask a lot more questions to get more feedback, design the questionnaire a lot better. Spend more time reading over the content on other peoples work.

2007-02-09T10:51:00.000-08:00

Teamwork

For the second year of this course we will be required to work as part of a team to meet clients, plan, design, and build a website. This is something I will look forward to as I work as part of a team in my part time job. My role in this job is to keep staff motivated, run an area of people and know what everyone is doing all the time. Some of the other roles I take part in are training staff members of all levels; I also have to take charge of product quality.

On the other hand I have worked in some teams that didn’t work that well at all. This seemed to be because there was no set task for each person and everyone was doing the same thing. Some of the work that was prepared was given to the presenter without him having time to read through and prepare. This was quite frustrating as the presentation could have gone a lot better if the time was planned a lot better then it was. Another way we could off improved this could have been to give each member of the group a role such as co-ordinator, team worker, time planner, and implementer.

After looking on the internet at www.belbin.com I have found out that I could fit into a series of roles within the group. From my work side of view I use some of the skills of a co-ordinator as I can delegate jobs, overview and manage the project, and Keep a close eye on goals. On the other hand I am a good team worker as I co-operate, listen and enjoy building the product.

So of the other skills I would look for in people who join my team are:

Someone who his quite creative in Photoshop
Someone who thrives on pressure and would not crack at the last minute
Someone to plan and design the project
A team that stays set to the task at hand
A team that encouragers teamwork
I believe if I got a team that showed these qualities there should be nothing that this team shouldn’t be able to achieve. This is something that I am looking forward to as in the actual business its all about teamwork.

2007-02-04T11:04:00.001-08:00

Times Running Out

This week had its few problems mixed with mini timed assignments. At the start of the week I got an error on my site when I uploaded the site to the internet. For some reason the host has made my site forbidden. I tried to resolve this problem by sending the host an e-mail but I am still waiting for a reply from the host.

On Wednesday the whole group went down to London to visit the Tate museum. When we got to the Tate museum we found out that all the museums across the country were on strike. This really annoyed me as I had gone all the way to London, to go to this one museum. Later in the day we found the National Gallery and looked at some of the artwork in there.
The next day was the start of the timed assignment for the fifth assignment the assignment seemed to be fun and enjoyable in tell I realised that I needed to leave my self time to check through my work to make sure the work matched the spec. I found this quite annoying, as I had no input on the design. It gradually got better as I started to get a lot more input into the designs and I was designing for a purpose as well as developing my designer skills. I really enjoyed doing these assignments and will look forward to doing them in the future.

2007-01-27T05:19:00.000-08:00

Hosting Problems

This week was mainly a week of get in use to the ins and outs of Dreamweaver. Before I actually got my hands dirty with Dreamweaver I had to sort out my hosting as I only bought the domain and didn’t realise I needed the hosting sorted as well. I have realised that I probably have not chosen the best hosting company as it’s really hard to find out where things are on there site. I was getting really frustrated I needed to host my domain on their site. I seemed to be endlessly looking for something that was there. Eventually after sending them a few e-mails I finally got the hosting sorted out. After this I had to route through there site finding out where all the settings where to the FTP so that I could upload my site through Dreamweaver.

After sorting out the hosting I managed to make a start on my designs and making them into the real thing. I really enjoyed this as I got all the sizes right to my sight and everything seems to be working ok. I only got one problem in the building stage which was one of the pages was not following the template even thought they where all built from the same template. I resolved this by just making the pages again.
Something else I did that was really useful was creating all the buttons and resizing all the images before I got to collage on the Wednesday. This made life really easy as everything was then just a drag and drop job. This is something I will make sure I do in the future as this made life a lot easier and saved me a lot of time. All in all its been a really good week and I cant wait for the upcoming week as there is a trip to London and this will hopefully give me a few ideas and I will hopefully find some inspirational work I really like.

2007-01-19T08:40:00.001-08:00

Finally Dreamweaver

This week was had its good moments and its bad moments. At the start of the week we were given our results. I was quite happy to of past two of the units in the assignments I had just done, but I was also really annoyed as I got referred on another unit for something as stupid as not checking my work properly to find stupid spelling mistakes. This made the assignment near enough unreadable. I suppose from this I have learned I have to check more than once through the assignment to make sure the assignment makes sense and is easy to read.

I also finally got stuck into Dreamweaver later that day and found out how much user friendly it is compared to FrontPage. I really enjoyed this little task as it gave me an insight in to how I am going to make sure that my sight is laid out in the correct way and everything is the right size. From this I have given my self the task of creating a homepage for my domain, which is www.jamie-wood.co.uk.

For the other assignment I was given the task of finding out about Eric Gills work and what fonts he as created for a five minute presentation later in the year which will be assessed. Also in this assignment there will be set tasks that have a short deadline on them that will be probably only a few hours long. This is to build me up to the final task of this assignment.

Something that I am really happy with was that I actually made a master time plan for the assignments to work side by side and if I keep up to date with the master time plan I will leave myself plenty of time to get all the work done and checked so I can bump up my grades from pass’ to merits or possibly distinctions.

2006-12-25T09:08:00.000-08:00

Pressure Over

This week as gone really well as I’ve managed to get all the work done as well as leaving my self quite a bit of time to check through the work. I am really happy with this as it as let me find a lot of errors with my work and change them so I don’t end up getting referred for something stupid.

My journey through the course is going really well as I’ve managed to learn a lot of new software and find I have learnt some new skills. I hope for the rest of the course I keep applying myself and hope to learn a lot of new skills as well. Some of the things I need to develop further into is research as I am not managing to get enough research to reach the higher grades and I don’t want to scrape my way through the course I want to archive quite a lot from this course.

Something else I am looking forward to over the next semester is learning more academic skills that will also make me manage my work a lot better and also reach the higher grades as well. So all in all I am really enjoying the course and hope to gain a lot from the course.

2006-12-15T13:38:00.001-08:00

One Week Remaining

The main task of this week as been getting all the work up to submission standard. I found this task quite stressful as I have been trying to juggle work and sixteen hours of self study. The week as gone quite well as I have got all my work up to date.

I’ve left my self one main task for the weekend which is to input all the references, in the last assignment I put the references in to early so I had to keep moving them about when I changed anything within the document.

From that assignment I’ve learnt not to put all the references in to early and leave it as one of the last things. I’ve got all the references left in another place just to input at the last moment.

I also got the biggest surprise this week when I misread some terms and conditions to a site and realised that half of the images I have used need to be changed as the site do not have copyright over the images. This as quite annoyed me as I have to now do some extra work that I had done last week which now needs doing again at the last moment.

Apart from this the work is going well and I have got most of the work done and it just needs reading through for any small errors.

The plan for the next week is to put all the references and get the images done for next Wednesday. I’m also going to have a meeting with John on Tuesday which will let me get someone else’s view on my work. On Wednesday I hope to get all the evaluations done and all the work ready for Thursday and hand it in.

2006-12-09T08:40:00.000-08:00

30 Second Design

Thursday started with a big surprise as Steve had us start our concept designs for the web banners. The designs started with a two minute time limit for each design. The limit suddenly go smaller and smaller. By the end of the task we were down to a thirty minute time limit which made the designs appear a lot more quickly from my head.

The designs appeared to be more random blobs than concept designs. After we had created the designs we were then given three minutes to create the full designs with sizes and fonts. This part of the design just didn’t happen as I was trying to think about sizes more than I needed to.

I thought the task was a good idea as it didn’t give us time to think about a design, we just had to put down our first ideas or just anything. I was rather happy with my designs because they all had certain parts that looked the same and some features than made them have a unique design as well.

Later on in the day I put my designs into action and created the concepts into really banners. The main problem with doing this is that the images were at least two times larger than the banner. After finally coming up with the designs I found out that I had fallen into a common trap and put the text too close the end of the banner which gave of the wrong impression.

The next time I do a task like this one in the future I need to make a few amendments to the designing stage by actually planning on colours and fonts to use before the task. Something else I need to take into consideration is to leave some space around the design so it gives off the write impression and is easier to read.

2006-12-01T12:01:00.000-08:00

Photoshop

This week’s main learning point was Photoshop. We were given the task of restoring an old photograph and applying colour. This was the first time I have used Photoshop so I was eager to learn how it works. I found the restoring part of the task really enjoyable and found out I wouldn’t mind to do more.

One of the worst parts about restoring the image was getting the pin line pattern down the side of the image where it had been damaged. In the last bit of the lesson a realised that the best thing to do was to use the patch tool. This actually gave shape to the leg unlike when I did it the first few times. I felt quite relieved when the leg actually looked like a leg rather than a cardboard cut out.

One of the things I found hard to do in the task was to get the right shades of colour to blend in with the rest of the image. A useful feature was the burn tool as it darkened the lighter areas of the image. Another useful tool is the patch tool which takes part of the image and places it somewhere else and blends it in with the surrounding area of the picture.

When I came to add colour to the image I found it really hard to find the colour that was needed. This began to really annoy me as I don’t really like using the trial and error method of finding things out. When I actually found the colours I wanted though it was a big relief as the picture started to take shape.

The next time I do a task like this I need to make sure that I choose different parts of the image to fill in defects instead of choosing the same part and it looking making look like really obvious what was done. Another thing to do would be to take more time restoring the picture instead of jumping into colour as there may need to be more changes in the picture. All in all though I found this task really helpful and found a new skill within my self.

2006-11-25T01:47:00.000-08:00

First Presentation

To my surprise Steve had produced a presentation on presentations. It went through all the good and bad things that happen when presenting. I was quite happy to get the presentation, as it was all part of the parcel with this business. From this presentation I thought when am I going to be doing a presentation? What Steve will be looking for? How many times will I have to do?

After the presentation Steve started giving a topic to the groups. Out came the topics red, green, blue and then my group brown! What does brown represent well I could think off a few things but they had noting to do with what we were looking for.

Chris and me started looking on the Internet and couldn’t find much. This was quite annoying me as I had to find out enough information to fill three minutes of presenting. On the brake everyone was OK not feeling nervous or anything perfectly ok. When we got back we finally found out some facts about brown some surprising and some not.

I quite enjoyed working with Chris as we hadn’t really worked together at all in tell now. From this I started to put a presentation together using all the ins and outs of PowerPoint. I managed to put a few pagers together on the cultural and the meaning of Brown. I was starting to think yeah I can do this there should be no problems now.

For the last half and hour of the morning I put together a fact sheet about what I had found out for the other students so they would have a reference for the future. This also gave them a further reading section so they could look more into the colour brown if needed.

From lunch I came back 15 minutes early to get the work printed out. All of the nerves where starting to build as I hadn’t even managed to complete a presentation at high standard before. Then came 1 o clock Steve kicked us all out of the room so that we could all practice our presentations.

Who would have thought in the hole of the collage there are no quiet places to practice the presentations? After a while I found a quite room with no one in. Then I started to think about what I was going to say in the presentation but then one of the other groups found the same room. So after a while the room began to get full.

With half an hour to go I gave it my first go of the presentation and I found my self aimlessly saying “erm” and totally mixing up my words. I thought how am I going to do this, if I can’t even string a sentence together.

After a while we all were in the refectory waiting to go up and do our presentations, it was more like X Factor now. No one knew who was judging us on our presentations though. This is when the nerves started to kick in. The longer I waited the more nervous and annoyed I got.

When the first person came back everyone started asking what it was like who is judging us. Then I went up it seemed one of the longest walks with the nerves building up step by step.

I got to the room and then did the presentation managing not to say “erm” or mix any words up. I even gave eye contact all the way through the presentation. I finished a lot earlier then I would have liked though and got made to stand for the rest of the remaining time.

If I was in the same situation again and got dealt the joker. I would try to research further into the subject and find I better way of triggering the information then holding the slides in front of me. I will also stand to the side of the board instead of standing in front of it and blocking the slides.

The main thing to change for the presentation would be to practice a lot more then a couple of times. On a whole a thought that the presentation could have been a lot better, this quite annoyed me, as I could of gave a lot more than I did if the nerves wasn’t that bad.

2006-11-17T13:05:00.001-08:00

Illness

This week as mainly been struck by illness, I only managed to make it in to collage for the morning on Thursday. This quite upset me as I missed out on a lot of work that would have been really helpful. I suppose there is no way round this as illness happens and there isn’t much you can do about it.

On Thursday morning the lecture was very important as it talked about compression. The two types of compression were lossless and lossy. From this I started to examine one of the for pictures and find out how much you can lower the quality of a picture and what is the best format to have the picture has. I was very pleased to gain knowledge into compression has it would be used I the future in a job and the next bit of the assignment. From this I will research further into lossy and lossless to gain a bigger insight into both of them.

Hopefully this sort of week will never happen again as it has disturbed my whole week and I have got a lot of catching up to do over the next few weeks that will lead to a bit of stress that I do not need.

2006-11-10T13:36:00.001-08:00

Better or Not

This week started with problems at home distracting me from getting in the full 16 hours. This quite annoyed me as I have to find the time this week to get some extra work in. I suppose you can’t stop illness happening within the family though.

The first lecture was about P.A.R.C (proximity, alignment, repartition, contrast). The task was to design a business card but with only using the colours black and white, and only text. So after putting together a few designs I came up with the final plan and then created it using PageMaker. After printing the work it was put on the wall for the other peers to criticise. This made me think about P.A.R.C in my next designs so it looks like it was designed that way for a purpose.

Also this week I got feedback about my last assignment where Steve highlighted some of the problems and offered ways of improving my work. I was left at the end of the meeting with the choice of bettering my grades or staying at the same level. This made me think quite a lot as what do I actually want from this course. I was quite happy about how the meeting went as it opened my mind in to ways of getting those higher grades so I’m always improving myself instead of just passing by.

On Thursday it was back to the second assignment trying to get into the head of one of the designers in the designers republic. I was trying to think what each of the pieces mean to me and why the designer chose to do it that way. I found this task quite a challenge because I couldn’t get into the find of a designer.

In the group meeting Julian showed us a great week to plan for the owl assignment that would make the rest of the time planning easier. I hope to implement a similar idea into the rest of the assignments. I got quite a bit of feedback in the meeting as well which helped me quite a lot. I was quiet happy to get the feedback as it showed ways of improving my self.

2006-11-03T08:17:00.000-08:00

Laptop Worry Finally Over

This week the worry was finally over about waiting for the laptop. After discussing about how it is disrupting my work load at home with Steve the laptop finally turned up at home. I suppose this couldn’t have been resolved but to stop this happening in the future I should look in getting my goods from somewhere else.

One of the thinks I was quite amazed with this week was the fact that one of the peers in the group got a comment left on his Blog (http://www.jdyercollegeblog.blogspot.com/) from one of his entries earlier in the course. The entry was quite strongly criticized and not very constructive. The comment he got back wasn’t that bad and could lead to a future client. This showed us that anyone can look at your Blog so be careful about what you write and how you write it. In the future I will make sure that the entry does not hurt anyone’s feelings.

When I arrived on Wednesday I was quite happy to get my result thinking I had done quite well but when Steve went through a lecture about what he found wrong in some of the last assignments. I don’t think I’ve ever felt as nervous in my life. I was hoping that id past the assignment at least. I was so relieved to find out that id passed the assignment and cant wait to find out ways of improving on the next assignment.

Something that I and the group thought looked better this week was just inverting the colours of one of the designs we were looking at seeing how much better it looked. It’s quite amazing how something so simple can make a vast improvement on a design. Now when building things I should consider different colour schemes instead of just one.

The worst part of the week was finding out that the workload had doubled and I would have to take this into consideration when time planning. I suppose this shows you could have more than one client at once. So I gather this is a step towards that. So in the future I hope that I will be able to juggle more than one project at once.

2006-10-31T07:40:00.000-08:00

Money Problem Over

This week I finally found out about my student loan. This is a big relief as I have been short on money since the start of the course. I suppose though if I applied earlier for the loan I would not of had the problem. In the future I shall not procrastinate, as things just don’t get done.

The biggest problem of the week was that I didn’t turn up to Johns meeting as I had to work. I couldn’t find anyone to cover the shift. This still shouldn’t have happened as I was told plenty of time before the date. I suppose again this is just leaving things in tell the last moment. I will never be able to get that hour back either!

Either though the money problem is over I am still having a problem with the laptop arriving. It’s now been six weeks and there is still no sign of the laptop. I suppose this happens every now and again. This is quite upsetting me, as I need this to get the sixteen hours at home as well as at college.
I suppose the main problem of the week is procrastinating. This is one of the habits I need to get out of if I want to achieve the better grades.

2006-10-28T06:21:00.000-07:00

End of First Assignment

Well this week as ended on a high, as it is the end of the first assignment. I’ve managed my time well and managed to get everything done on time and managed to check all the work through. I’m very happy, as I believe I have done all the work and gained a merit on the first assignment. I hope to take this attitude into every one of the assignments so I achieve just as well for the two years.

I suppose their was one problem this week though as I realised that sending all of my work to a CD to early is a bad idea as there was still problems with the work that needed addressing before creating the CD. This quite frustrated me, as I had to use up more of my resources instead of just checking the work. From this I have learned to send all the files to a CD at the last moment.
Well I have found the assignment very enjoyable and have learned quite a bit on the course. The most enjoyable bit of the course so far was learning to use new software. PageMaker was very easy to use and I could create some outstanding looking work, but there were also problems with PageMaker as well. These problems ranged from bullets all the way through to tables. I found these problems very frustrating and time consuming but I suppose the best work takes time.

2006-10-15T12:02:00.000-07:00

Printing Problems

This week as been mainly adjusting my work. I have found out that the worst thing about the assignment is checking all of the work and finding out all the little errors that don’t seem to appear on the page in tell you have printed. I was quite annoyed that I had to keep printing the same document over and over again. I must have now spent about two pounds just adjusting small little things on the page.

I suppose this was a good and bad process as is stopped me failing the units and my work was of better quality. The bad aspect of the printing was that I have to keep putting on printing credit. I suppose if I did this again I would still have to print the document more than once as the document will always have some errors the first time.

I have also realised that slightly adjusting your work creates the biggest problems with your references on the document as the reference doesn’t match up with the right part of the document. This quite frustrated me as I had to keep adjusting the references to meet up with the right part of the documents. The better idea would have been to put the references in as the last thing to add to the document. The next time I create a long document I am going to make sure that the references go in last.

One of the better parts of the week was finding out how to create a better blog. I was quite happy to find out ways to improve my blog and ways to improve the blog as well. This was a great idea as I now know what changes I need to make to my blog. I suppose before I got told this I could of investigated blog a lot better than I did. The next time I am learning something new I need to investigate further into the subject than I am doing at the moment.

2006-10-09T03:09:00.000-07:00

Changes - Changes

This weeks gone quite well as I have got most of my work to a reasonable standard. One of the things I have enjoyed doing this week is getting my website designs finished. This also includes getting all the sizes some where near.
From this my group members Scott and Ben criticized my work. I was quite happy about this as I got to see what my work looked like to other people and what they thought would be good changes. From this I took the feedback from the group and created the changes to the site. When I create my designs next time I will get more feedback from my group along the way so less errors happen at once.

Some of the problems with creating the finished designs were getting all the guidelines onto the page and making the page easy to use. I got quite annoyed trying to get all of the objects to the page to fit in the right space on the site.

I also converted all of my assignment over in to PageMaker and found this very stressful as I had to change the fonts and size of all of the text. I also couldn’t just drop images straight in to PageMaker I had to use PhotoShop to change the file format of the image. To resolve this next time it would be easier to save all the images as the right file format.

My main problem of the week was transferring my table from Word into PageMaker. This was the most annoying and stressful thing I have had to do so far as I couldn’t even just copy and paste the table straight in. The first idea was to take a screen shot and paste the screenshot in and crop it down to size. The problem with this was that the pictures were very poor quality. So instead of this I had to create all the tables by using the line tool in PageMaker. This took quite a bit of time but the tables looked more professional and were a lot easier to read then the other tables.

I was quite happy with the tables, as I had to create them my self instead of just copying and pasting them into the document. If I were to do this again I would leave plenty of time for creating tables and inputting pictures.

2006-10-02T11:29:00.000-07:00

Design - Redesign

This week started with me learning a new programme, which was PageMaker 6.5. I felt that the programme was easy to use and worked well on the designing part. I created my first work of art this week, but only in back and white though. I think that the piece looked professional and suits the purpose it was designed for.

I also started to create my site on Guy Fawkes and realised that finding colours to blend in with each other isn't as easy as I as thought. Thanks to the book I bought to help me with the course 'Colour Index'. This made it a lot easier to find colours that work with each other. I decided to use pastel colours of red, orange, and yellow. I also found that converting mm. into px. isn't as easy as id wished. Thanks to the internet though I managed to find that it was 1mm - 2.83px. A use ful site was www.xmlmill.com/pdf/rnotes/rnotes160.pdf. This made me feel relieved, as I needed my designs for my site in mm as well as px.

One of the setbacks of the week was creating my designs and finding out that I created the designs to the wrong size. This quite annoyed me, as I’ve had to create them again. From this I have realised that I need to spend more time researching into subjects then just rushing in after the first piece of information. From now on I am going to check out more sources then I am.

2006-09-25T02:59:00.000-07:00

Bad Timekeeping

This week as gone quite well, I’ve progressed quite rapidly through the work load and made a big dent into the first bit of the assignment. This gave me the sense of achievement and made me want to progress further with the work.

One of the laybacks of the week was been late back to the lesson which lost me a bit of time with the tutor. This quite annoyed me that I had to find a computer somewhere else. Something that was good about this was I got time to reflect back on what I’ve done and not to do it again. To stop this happening again I’m going to get back to collage.

Overall the weeks going well and I’m enjoying the course and would recommend to someone else, check out the courses site on www.hnd-interactive-media.co.uk. Looking forward to the week ahead got a few ideas about what the site should look like and looking forward to seeing what they look like on paper.

2006-09-16T08:04:00.000-07:00

Week 2 First Assignment

The main problem of the week was right at the beginning when we got given are first two assignments, the worry was relived when I realised that they wasn't as bad as I thought. Another problem of the week was finding out which Great Briton to do because all the well known people will have been chosen multiple times by other people so decided it would be a good idea to do Guy Fawkes.

Something I really likes about this week is Steve giving us some help with how the assignment should be set out this was a great help as this was are first assignment. Another thing I’ve enjoyed doing is having a look at other people sites and noticing the good aspects and the bad aspects on the Great Briton I’ve chosen.
The most worrying bits of the size where the title been at one site of the page and the content been on the other. The most annoying thing i saw though was on this site called www.twilightbridge.com/hobbies/festival/guyfawkes/history.htm this must of been one of the worst designed sites ever. The background flashed, it used flashing images, it had a picture off a home next to the hyper link home. Apart from this I’ve had a great week.

2006-09-16T07:55:00.000-07:00

Where I’ve Come From

I got into computers at a young age, I first started using computers in Earlsheaton high school. I used the computers to make simple spreadsheets and word processing. We also made simple designs of rooms. In year 10 I started doing a GNVQ in ICT. On the course I used applications such as MS Word, MS Access, MS PowerPoint, MS Publisher, MS Excel, and MS FrontPage. From this course I achieved three passes.

After this I went to St John Fishers Six Form to do a double AVCE in ICT but I didn’t find the course for interesting as it seemed to be the same as the GNVQ that I had just done so I decided to have the rest of the year out of education. After this I enrolled on the BTEC for IT practitioners in information technology at Wakefield College. On the course I gained an all around background of IT. I used applications such as Word, Access, Excel, FrontPage, Notepad, C++, PowerPoint. I also did a bit on the hardware side of computers such as putting a computer together, networking two computers together and also networking a room of computers together. On this course I achieved a MMP.

Where I’m At Now

From the BTEC course I realised that I liked building websites and would like to get more experience in that area of IT, so I decided to enrol on the HND Interactive Media course. From the course I hope to be able to build a series of functional websites using new software such as Dream Weaver, Flash and Photoshop. These will allow me do integrate my own graphics into a website and also use some animation on the site as well. I would also like to find out how the industry works and is this the industry for me.

Where I Want To Go

If I get the grades I need from the course I plan to do a top up year at university to get the full degree at the best grade possible for me. From this I hope to go into a commercial business to actually find out how the business works and work as part of a team making products for clients.
After I get a bit of experience in web site deign I hope to become a freelance website designer working for my self and then getting my own team of people and working for my own clients.