First year evaluation

This year has been a big learning curve for me, I feel that I’ve learnt such a lot in just a year. I feel from all of the assignments that I have done, I’ve been able to learn new skills and Implement then in to each assignment.

A1 Sketchblog
The good points to the Sketchblog assignment was that it gave me the chance to develop lots of new skills. Where we had to collect inspiration and develop Blog and sketch book skills. My favourite part of the assignment was collecting inspiration has it gave me the chance to look at different pieces of designs and was able to write my views about them. I feel this gave me a better idea of the things I do and don’t like about design pieces. I was able to use the inspiration for ideas on the other assignments and feel that I gained lots from this.

The Blog was there to write about what I had done the days I was at college and was able to write my targets for the week. This will enable me to look back at other Blog entries to see how far I have come on the course. I feel that the sketch book helped me to write notes down from presentations, which helped for looking back at them so that I was able to produce the work for the assignments.

A2 That’s the plan
This assignment was the first assignment on the HND Interactive Media course. I was nervous of what to expect as it was the first assignment. When I first looked at the assignment sheet it was structured a lot different from the previous ICT course that I was on. When we had gone through the assignment sheet I was worried about not being able to achieve a good standard of work as the tasks where a lot different to anything that I had ever done before.

In this assignment we had to design a web plan, where we had to choose a famous person to design a web site about. I didn’t know how much detail you needed to go into to make a well structured web site. This learnt me a lot about how a web site should be designed and that to get a well structured web site you shouldn’t just look at the designing aspect of it, you should also think about what the target audience would want to see on a web site. I also learnt about new software applications which allowed me to create my written and design work in Pagemaker and Indesign I thought I picked the software up quite quickly, but it also restricted me to do the work I wanted to do, as I still was unsure how to work all of the tools. But I thought that my written and design work was a good attempt for my first assignment, but I knew that when I had to do another assignment I would use my production and weekly time sheets better to structure my tasks.

A3 Back to basics
This was my second assignment and I knew that I would be able to improve on the things that I didn’t do too well on in the first assignment. I feel that because I had the chance to make the A2 assignment up to a better standard I would always have that to look back on so that I wouldn’t make the same mistakes again. We had to produce a web plan for silver surfers, I knew that in this web plan I had to get every thing correct as I knew that I would eventually be making the web site. This gave me more determination to make sure that I had a better structured web plan. I feel that because I had done lots of research into the target audience I was able to design a web site for them to easily navigate. When it came to designing ideas for the web site, I knew that I couldn’t design a web site that would be too difficult to make. So my web site wasn’t has well as a design as I would have liked it to be, but I was pleased with the design I came up with.

A4 Image rights
This assignment allowed us to get more creative by looking at image restoration and by doing this we had to learn the software Photoshop. At first I didn’t really like Photoshop as I thought the tools weren’t as easy to use as other software. We also had to write an essay about the difference between art and designers, I was happy with the essay I wrote as I made sure that I had planned out the points I wanted to make before I actually wrote the essay.

I felt like on the image restoration task I could have done a lot better then I had done, though I tried hard to restore the image, I felt I didn’t really know too much about the different tools in Photoshop I wasn’t able to create a good enough restored image. I knew that my goal would be to learn more about Photoshop and feel that I could have benefited more if I had done tutorials in this assignment, then leaving it until more in to the year.

A5 Builder
This assignment gave me the first chance to build a web site from the web plan that I had designed in A3. I feel that this assignment learnt me a lot about how to design a web site. I feel that I gained the most from this assignment as it learnt me new web design skills. I feel that my web site wasn’t the best designed but was pleased that I was able to achieve all of the project goals that I had set in the web plan. Even though I had to change my design idea a bit, I feel that I also gained more from this as I was able to look more into other aspects of it such as CSS as I have never used it before and feel from just the bit of CSS I had done in the assignment learnt me more about creating a web site using code.

A6 Revert to type
This assignment we had to produce a presentation on our chosen typographer which was Erik Spikermann, I feel that I put lots of effort in to researching my typographer and feel that the presentation was well structured. This was one of my less enjoyable tasks as Im not very good at presentations, but felt like I’ve gained a bit more confidence from doing the presentation.

Also in this assignment we did timed tasks, I was unsure at first if I was going to like doing the timed tasks, but I really enjoyed them as it gave me a better understanding of what it is like in a studio environment. I was pleased with the work I produced in the amount of time we had in the tasks. I feel that from doing this assignment my design work as improved which I was able to use these skills in the A7 assignment.

A7 Wailing whales
In this assignment I was able to put all of the design skills that I have learnt throughout the assignment into the end assignment of the year. I feel that I preformed really well in this assignment as I had made sure that I had planned every task so that I knew exactly what I needed to do for that week. I feel that I have gained a lot from structuring our seminar meetings so that we were able to get a clearer understanding of what it is going to be like next year when we have to plan most of our seminar meetings.

I really enjoyed the Cd art work task as it allowed me to improve my Photoshop skills. I feel that from doing tutorials I have gained lots more skills and I am pleased that I was able to improve at using the software. I feel that the design work I have done shows the effort that I have put in with doing the tutorials.

My aims for the course
Over all I feel that I have improved on my designing skills, making sure that my designs don’t change as much as they have done over some of the assignments. Doing more tutorials so that I am able to produce the designs, instead of having to change them because I am unable to produce them.

I would like to learn more about CSS as I haven’t done as much this year, but feel that I would benefit from this as it would give me a better understanding of coding.

I would also like to be able to learn more about building web sites and how I can improve on the skills that I already have, so that I can combine all of my design, web site and coding skills in to one.

Study day

Today has been a study day and its been a very productive day. I started off the day by thinking of what I could do for the Cd case even though I had lots of ideas and had picked my final design I still wasn't sure if I liked it or not. So instead of changing the whole design I decided that Id do some tutorials to see what effects I could add to the images. I have only done a few tutorials before so I thought it would be a great idea to help me get use to Photoshop as I'm not very good at using this software. So I looked through some of the tutorials and found some great ones that would fit in to my design for the Cd case. As I started the tutorial I thought that it would be hard to follow the tutorial step by step, but it actually explained it very well so it was easy to create the effect. I did a few practices of the tutorial to make sure that I got the effect exactly how I wanted it before I did the final one.

After this I started to put my Cd case together making sure that the whole Cd case looked as one. I also looked at different types of typography which would fit in with the design. I haven't yet chosen one that I like but there is quit a few that would look good on the design.
I also made a check list of what I need to get finished for this week, making sure that I hadn't missed any thing off the list. I also made a list of what I wanted to put on my evaluation so that when I came to write it Id know exactly how I wanted to evaluate my performance and my products that Id designed.

So this week I'm going to made sure that the Cd cover is completed, also looking at different tutorials to make the Cd case better, then I can fill in the rest of the pre-flight document in, make sure Ive wrote my evaluation and the logo is completed.