It’s now the second week back and everyone seems to be back in the right mood for working. This week has been an enjoyable week and I’m looking forward to pushing on with my work in self-study.
The second tutorial on Dreamweaver and CSS was really informative and I learnt a lot about CSS, which was something I’d not used before. The part of the lecture on feedback forms helped clear up some doubts I had about the form and I’m going to do some trial feedback forms to make sure I know what to do when I make the one for the website.
After the lecture I started to compress the website images, to an appropriate size and crop them down as on some there seemed to be a lot of empty space round the edge. I then started to create the website and I can’t believe how much I enjoyed it. That afternoon seemed to fly by and I didn’t want to go home when Steve said we could go! The website is coming along well and I’m pleased at how the measurements from the screen design work.
The lecture on Typography was interesting and gave me some official names to put to things; I just hope I can remember them all. There are so many things to be aware of in typography and it must take a long time to become an expert on the subject.
We had the first timed task today, well a practice one anyway and it’s a good job it was only a practice because my performance during the task was terrible, even though I did meet the deadline. This practice task has shown me that I need to take them more seriously, as there was not that sense of pressure, like in the timed tasks for the banner designs. I now know I need to work better on my time planning and get my rough ideas drawn quicker, so I have more time later on. I also need to show Steve my designs earlier on, so I have more time to alter them.
After I go into the swing of the task I really enjoyed it, but there was one part I found hard and that was when I came to choose the typefaces. I’ve never been good at choosing typefaces and seem to stick with basic ones. So this is going to be something I’m going to work on and try and get a broader knowledge of typefaces.
I’m glad with my new seminar group and feel Steve made a good choice putting the groups together. In the seminar group it was highlighted to us that we where neglecting A1 and we have quite a lot to do to get it up to a better state.
I find it hard to choose typefaces too- I always seem to go for the ‘safe’ choices. This is something I need to change, and we need to take advantage of the fact we don’t need to use web-safe fonts in this assignment.
I think you speak for the class when you say that you didn’t do well during the timed task, although many of us got designs that we were pleased with, we really underestimated the length of time it would take to put the design together and print things off ready to hand in.
Like you say, we all need to take the timed tasks a bit more seriously in the future, the task on Tuesday could be the only ‘dry run’ we get and so therefore we need to take that into account and give ourselves a kick up the backside.
Hi Greg, like Sue said, you speak for all of us you didnt do well in the timed task, some people didnt even hand it in on time, i was one of them. it just goes to show that we havent taken these tasks seriously and we must do to pass them.
Remember when choosing a font, don’t always go for the safe options; but then on the other side of the coin try not to go too crazy, it really can hinder the overall look of your piece.
I think try experiementing with fonts that are like the websafe fonts but not those.. to get some degree of difference in. Especially before making risky moves with big crazy fonts on things.
I too have neglected A1 abit, I really need to pull my finger out and get my inspirational art work in, I’ve already got a lot not stuck in.. it’s just getting it all shown!
Hi Greg
I fully understand what you are saying about misjudging the time, even with the time planning I still didn’t get it correct. I think the main problem was not giving enough time to print out and make changes; I made a few changes on mine after print out and only just made it.
What I find the best thing to do when designing in the sketchbook is to do rough sketches with a key, to certain things like y=yellow. This saves me a lot of time when I am doing the designs as I do not have to write out the full information.
I think fonts are the most perfect thing for this type of test, but also to make sure that typography is correct. As you said we have learned a lot more things now so we should be more careful when using pacific fonts.
I also was lacking on A1 work I have been doing it this week setting my self little goals to make sure that I get at least pieces of inspirational work a week.
Thanks Martyn
Steve has assigned seminar groups according to the last grades. I think this is a great idea and I think it will work out much better for us all.
It will enable the people who may need more help receive it.
I don’t think many of us were using our font set at college to the full. I feel as we go through this typography unit we will become more farmilurised with the type faces available to us.
I have started a few pages in my sketchbook with examples of different fonts and put a few words of annotations about them. This could maybe help you get to know some fonts you didn’t know?
Thanks Gary that’s a great idea, think I’ll have to take you up on that!