Greg Carrick – HND Interactive Media

I’m quite pleased with the work I’ve done this week, although I would have preferred to have done more and have had more work to show at this stage of the assignment. This is mainly because I’ve only just started to design the CD package on the computer and thinking at how much time there is left, I should really have a few developed ideas and just be touching them up and choosing the most appropriate.

On Monday morning I was getting quite worried as I’d still not had an appropriate design for the CD package. After the lecture on Monday I got straight on with designing the CD package and started to look at the music with a more of a genre based theme. I came up with a couple of ideas and then had a look to see if I could find an appropriate image. After spending most of the day trying to find the image I was after, I had to change my idea slightly and admit defeat.

I spent Monday night creating the Digipak® Outer and was happy with the results. I continued on with the Digipak® Outer on Tuesday and am starting to realise that I need to get some more practise in using Photoshop. I had to use quite a few tutorials and ended up trying several different things to get the effect I wanted.

I found the seminar groups really enjoyable and got some good feedback on the CD package. I also get some feedback on the logo and applied it straight after the group. I now feel that the logo is finally complete and I can fully concentrate on the CD package now.

I am going to put plenty of self study in this week and hope that the CD package won’t be far of completion for next week. I can then do the finishing touches to everything and check it all over, so it’s fully completed for the next seminar group. I’m also going to start thinking about the evaluation this week and then make a start to it next week.

This week has had its ups and downs; to start with I finally had a logo design approved by Steve. This has taken quite a big burden off my shoulders and brought back a bit of confidence within myself. As I was starting to think I would never get a logo design and just have to stick with a text only font. It’s also getting closer to the deadline and as most people have already completed the logo, I’m starting to feel behind.

The approved design is below and any feedback would be very helpful. At the moment I’m just trying to find an appropriate font, so it would be appreciated if you could let me know which one suits to logo most.

The down part of this week was referring A5; I don’t have too much to do to the website, but am quite disappointed as I put quite a lot of work into it. It’s also going to put some more pressure on me this week, as I’ve got quite a lot to do this week, with the logo and CD package.

The final first year lecture really makes a point at how close the end of the first year is. I can’t believe how fast the year has gone and how much we’ve learnt in that time. The lecture was very useful and now I’m feeling confident to get the CD package template done.

I really need to make a start on designing the CD cover on the computer, they were my plans until I found out I need to do some work on my A5 website. I’m going to get the website done and out of the way as soon as I can. I did get some work done on it after college on Monday, but I wish I’d done a bit more so I can concentrate on the CD package and try to make some progress on that.

This week has been another get on with it week and I’m actually quite pleased with some of the ideas I’ve had for the CD cover. And I’m suppressed because it took me quite a while to get into doing anything. I ended up sitting with a blank mind for ages, before I decided to take a look back at the mind maps and mood boards I did for the music.

This then reminded me of the thoughts and feelings I felt while listening to the music. I then had quite a few ideas in my mind for the album cover. The artist’s music makes me think of an urban environment and images of light trails done with slow shutter speeds (not sure exactly what it’s called or how it’s done!). The music is quite dark so it makes me think of a city at night, with a few sky scrapers in the view and the light trails from the cars lights on the road.

In the seminar group it was pointed out that it’s best to design the full CD cover instead of what I’ve done and just concentrated on the front cover. It’s better to do it this way so I’m not just designing the front cover and then trying to create something for the spine and back cover. I’ve also not been thinking about the inside sleeve or the CD design, and these need more thought about because of the information that is needed to go on them.

I’ve still not got a design for the Emit logo and have come to the conclusion I’m defiantly not a logo person. So I’ve been concentrating on a text only logo and have been doing a lot of playing around with fonts. I found plenty of fonts that could work and I’m going to spend some more time seeing which are more appropriate and narrowing them down. I’m also going to start to look for an E that could be used for the logo and can go above the word Emit.

The rest of this week is going to be quite busy as I need to do some work on the logo, full CD package and also do some research on the pre-flight document. I’m still not fully sure what’s include in the pre-flight document, so I’m quite interested to see what is included in one.

This week has been quite enjoyable and I am really enjoying the new unit. I’m looking forward to using FreeHand, as I’ve not got to the stage of developing the logo using the software. I found the lecture on FreeHand very useful and am going to have a play around with it to get used to it.

The presentation from Mark Feather was very enjoyable and again gave a great insight into working in the industry. It’s great to see how much more confident he’s got with writing code, since he said he was scared about it before.

This week has been mainly concentrating on sketching some more logos. At the moment I’ve not got a logo to stick with and improve, I should hopefully have one before next week as I’m going to be doing a lot towards it this week. I was quite pleased with some of the designs I came up with for the logo, but they would not have worked very well at small sizes.

It’s good to be back at college after two weeks of only watching TV and sleeping. I’m really enjoying the new assignment so far, even though when I first read the assignment sheet I had some doubts about whether or not I’d like it.

Reviewing the assignment with the class helped clear some issues I had with it and I’m glad Steve made us concentrate on the learning outcomes, because now we are going to work more from them, rather than the tasks that Steve’s sets.

The lecture on logos was very informative and finding out the history behind some logos was also interesting and now I’m starting to think if there’s any history behind some others I have in mind.

I really enjoyed the presentation from Jonny Haynes from Technophobia and wish he had brought more work in to show us because I very much enjoyed listening to him talk through his work. I could probably have sat there for ages listening to him talk about his work and what it’s like working for a design company. I was impressed by his work and how much knowledge he had about so many different languages.

After the presentation I started to sketch out some logo designs and am quite pleased with how many I did in the space of time. I mainly concentrated on text based logos but as I was just getting ideas on paper and doing them as they can to me, there are a few with both text and graphics in there. Below are the sketches I have done already, I’d be grateful for some feedback and if you could say if any have some potential:

I found the task to redesign the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament logo quite difficult and when it came to sketching some ideas I just had no idea were to start. I was very disappointed with myself for not preparing the presentation enough and should have made sure what to say before we did it.

The rest of Tuesday I carried on with the Emit logo design sketches, but started to find it hard to think of different designs, so now I think I’m going to move onto graphic and text logos.