Greg Carrick – HND Interactive Media

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.

This reading week has been quite enjoyable and I don’t know if I should be ashamed to say this but I have grown to like the music by 302 Acid. It’s defiantly not my taste in music but I could stand it and have listened to it many times over the week. But I have to say I’ll never listen to it through my own free will, even though it is quite relaxing.

I collected loads of logos from large companies and what was surprising, is the fact that I found it hard to think of the names of some large companies. But once I started getting some I found loads and ended up having to stop myself from getting more and filling an entire sketchbook up with them. I have noticed that may larger companies have quite simple logos and this makes it easier for us to remember them. A few examples of the logos are below:

I found it hard to create the mind maps for what the music suggested to me and ended up sitting and listening to the music for a while to try and put it into words. After a while I finally realised what I thought about it and made several mind maps.

The hardest part of Monday was to write the review about the album. Firstly I was not sure how to write a review on an album and after it took so long to create the mind maps, I knew it was going to be even harder to do this. So I set out and did some research into album reviews, just to get the idea how there written. After I had a better idea about that, came the hard part, writing it. It took me quite awhile to write the review but I eventually got it done.

When I read what we had to do for Tuesday’s reading week task, I panicked slightly as I had never done a ‘mood board’ before and didn’t think I would be able to make one never mind more. Well after a while I enjoyed finding things to put on them and then creating them and I ended up making three of them.

Below are the three mood boards I created for the music:

When I was collecting logos for record companies, I was surprised at how many different companies (especially those specialising in ambient music) there are. I never realised how large the ambient music genre is.

Even Calls (0005) is the first album from the Washington D.C. group 302 Acid. Currently signed to the Ambient music label Em:t Records, the band consist of Doug Kallmeyer (samples, bass), Justin Mader (samples, projections) and Andrew Reichel (electronics).

The album uses a vast verity of different sounds including clicks, beeps and squeaks to give the necessary effects to each track. This is on top of the bass, drums and the song melody, which makes 302 Acid’s work sound like it is been played by people, opposed to other music from the ambient genre.

With Even Calls, 302 Acid have show they are able to explore the boundaries of music and create an album that is capable of drawing you in and keeping your complete concentration throughout. The album feels as though it takes you through a journey with the tracks flowing together seamlessly, it’s as though the album is just one continuous track and in my opinion that’s exactly how it should be played, from start to finish with no interruptions.

Even Calls is a must have album to those who love to relax, with a bit of music in the background since it’s an easy album to listen to repetitively, just hit the repeat all button and get lost in the music. The bonus about the album is that it’s flexible enough to be used as background music, but needs to be played very quietly otherwise you’ll get draw into it!

A6 – Revert to Type has been a really enjoyable assignment and I feel that I have performed to a reasonable standard. I don’t feel that I performed very well during the start of the assignment but have made a steady improvement over the course of the timed tasks. I have improved more on my time planning during the timed tasks and this has helped me to complete the tasks with time to spare and made me realise at what pace I work at.

I am now stricter with myself in the time planning during the timed tasks and once I have reached my set time, for the task I’m working on, I will move onto the next task so I don’t jeopardise finishing on time. This of course is if I am able to do so and if I’m not, I’ll rework my time planning so I am not running out of time near the end. This is not usually the case as I have now got into a habit of checking the time regularly, which makes me work faster when I realise how much time I have left.

The main thing that is letting me down is my ability to pressurise myself into working at a fast pace and just drawing plenty of different ideas down, instead of sitting and thinking about them, which wastes time. This is something I really need to work on as I have seen the advantages it has, during the banner designs in A4 – Image Rights and I feel it will help in the next assignment.

I believe I have not pushed myself enough to get the presentation completed early on, which has not left me with sufficient time to practice it. This meant that I did not feel confident when presenting it, since I did not fully remember my script. I feel very annoyed with myself for doing that as it’s something I’ve always said never to do, especially after I did it somewhat on the first assignment (A2 – That’s the Plan).

I found the presentation quite hard to create both in the design side and the information it contained. With the design side of the presentation I just wanted to have a simple design as a presentation is there to get the information across and I did not want to have the presentation too distracting. But I’ve said that and for some reason I think my presentation was too plain and needed some common feature throughout it, to make it more attractive.

I found the presentations content hard to write because I did not know what to talk about and could not find much information about the typographers work. I had this problem because I did not plan what the presentation would contain before I started it, so I ended up thinking of what to include as I was going along. This is also something I am annoyed at myself about because it was not a sensible thing to do and I really felt the repercussion that occurred from it.

I enjoyed the timed tasks and feel I improved on them every time I did one. I was not pleased with my design for the Hokai paint tube as I feel I did not choose the right design to use, out of the ones I came up with. This would not have happened if I had got feedback on the design before I had desktop published it and I now know how helpful it is getting feedback and how much the design improves after some feedback.

I feel more satisfied with my design for the Vodafone advertisement and saw a gradual improvement in the design before the final one. This is because of the adequate feedback I received on the designs and the improvement in my time planning that lead me to, having enough time to apply the changes and improve the design. For this design I thought more about the font I used and though it’s not an exotic font, I feel it’s suitable for an advertisement and is a better choice than my usual basic fonts.

I was also pleased with the final outcome of the Jonathan Gee article and like the Vodafone advertisement I saw a gradual improvement in the design after requiring feedback. I think I chose a suitable font for the type of document and am pleased that this design turned out the way it did as there were some issues with alignment and size that cast a doubt on whether the design would work. Now I look back at it I wish I had used more newspaper devices in it, to give it some personality as I only really used the drop cap.

I did not perform very well on the Grid timed task and was not overly pleased with the final design for the header and footer. I feel I choose the best number of columns for the article using three, but choosing and measuring this out used a lot of the time I’d set aside for the designs. This meant I did not spend as long on the header and footer and ended up settling with a basic design.

The final Story timed task did not go too well either but there were some aspects of it that I quite like. I used a few newspaper devices but did not estimate the text size correctly. I went for an 11pt size but when I printed it out it look quite large and I did not have enough time left to change the size and add more newspaper devices to get the text to align properly.

I ended up dropping the Hokai paint tube design because I feel this was the most poorly designed out of the timed tasks.

If I were to do the assignment again I would make sure I practiced the presentation more because I was not full confident about what to say for each slide. I had thought about it and wrote a script but I had not fully memorized it. I would have also made sure I revised the lectures and did more research into the topics; this would have helped a lot more in the timed tasks as I would have known more devices to add to the design.

Word Count: 1,049

This term has flown by and I can’t believe that A5 and A6 are due in next week. Even though there is not as much to be submitted as on previous assignments, I still feel there is a lot for me to do to get it up to submission standard. I’m not sure why I feel this as I only need to write the evaluations and add link decoration to make the links more noticeable.

I’ve done plenty of testing on the website and could probably full up a sketchbook with all the screen shots I’ve taken and after using browser shots and getting 54 screen shots of the website in browsers I’ve never heard of, in versions as old as Firefox 1.0.8. But still more testing is needed as I’ve not managed to find one of the browsers from my goals and as I’ve tested the website in all the other browsers; I need this one to achieve the goal. So if anyone knows where I can get hold of AOL 6, I would be very grateful.

The feedback I received from John was very helpful and has made the website a lot more accessible. I’ve implemented most of his ideas and just need to add one more thing then the website should be done.

I really enjoyed the timed task today, but I have to say I’m not looking forward to the timed task/s next Tuesday as I can see it been very difficult. For this weeks timed task I was unprepared for the need to put exact measurements on the designs.

I’ve finally got the presentation done and now I just need to practice it a few times before the real one.

This week has been yet again an enjoyable one and even though last week was a half-term it didn’t really feel like it, as I have been working through out it. The main thing I worked on was the website as after feedback from Steve I need to do quite a lot of work on it. I’m quite regretting spending some much time on the website and neglecting the presentation because I still have quite a lot of work to do on the presentation.

Monday morning was actually really enjoyable and went very fast. I’m quite pleased with the feedback I got because I’m now able to improve the website some more and make it more accessible. The main changes I am going to make from the feedback are:

• Add images to all the terms as I did not have ones for all the terms in Data Communications & Networking
• Make the links more noticeable as they blend into the header too well
• Have a link straight to email so you can contact the website without having to use the form
• Add a link on the thank you page that takes you to the home page
• Add a footer to the bottom of the page as it just seems to end suddenly

There were a few mistakes found that I’d not noticed, which were two of the images on the home page had missing links that was down to my own mistake because I changed the image and didn’t add a new link. Another mistake that was brought up was that you could not put a space between your names on the feedback form, which was down to me using the wrong word in the JavaScript. The final problem was that some pages moved when the scroll bar appeared and I didn’t have that problem on my computer at home!

Well as I got some good feedback from the usability questionnaire, I’d appreciate it if you could take another look at the website and give me some more feedback. Here is the website and just to show you here is the original website.

The timed task on Tuesday was really enjoyable and this time I actually got feedback and on several occasions. I really wish I had got feedback on the last timed task as it was very helpful and improved the design so much. I was quite pleased with the design and what was more pleasing was getting it finished quite early. I hope I’ll be able to do that in the other timed tasks.

Monday was another get on with it week and as I only needed to add the CGI script to the website I was concentrating on the usability questionnaire. I got the questionnaire done in the morning as I’d done some mind maps and thought of some questions in self study. I had planned to get the CGI script on the website in the afternoon but due to unseen circumstances I ended up starting the process of redesigning the website header and layout. This came in the form of feedback from Steve and all though I quite liked the previous design I have to agree with Steve there are some parts of the website layout that need changing.

These are mainly due to the measurement I chose on the screen design and have created long line lengths and a lot of white space between the terms. I need to redesign the header to make it more appealing and make it look like there has been some effort put into it as at the moment it’s plain and boring.

This has increased the work load a bit so I can get it completed for testing after the holidays, but I enjoyed creating the previous one and it will make the website more accessible. But I have to say Steve made a point that it’s good to just play with the design in Photoshop a bit to try and improve it, when he redesigned the header and came up with several different designs in a few minuets.

The timed task on Tuesday was enjoyable and I improved on my time planning from the last timed task. But there was still one thing I didn’t do, which was getting feedback on the designs from Steve early on. My excuse for this was that there were a few people waiting for feedback and I didn’t think I would have time to wait. This could have turned out quite bad, if I’d made a mistake in the design and had to amend it later on.

In the afternoon I got quite a lot of work done on the hand out and I’m quite happy with how it’s going. I still have some work to do on it and the presentation, which will be the main thing I concentrate on over the holidays. But I’m going to make sure I get the website and usability questionnaire completed.

This week has brought round some unusual events, most of which have turned out for the best. Monday started in probably the best way with my website template finally validating, with the much needed help of James. Thanks James. With the template out of the way I started to fly along and create the actually website. But after a short while I came across a few problems with the layout and the table sizes, which took a while to sort out.

So I went on my way again and though I’d have it finished in no time, but then another problem arose. I’d created the header as an image and planned to use hot spots for the links. I then came to realise that when you put a hot spot on an image, it creates a blue boarder round the image, which I’m guessing is to show you it’s a link. This then ruined the layout of the tables and after asking Steve’s advice, I now need to redo the header and not use an image because Steve’s advice was “Don’t use hot spots there for ammeters”.

On Monday I found out that I was needed for transport to take people to The Design Mechanics as Shaun was ill. I was unsure whether I was up to the task of showing and talking about my work when I was there and I was only going because of those who needed a lift. Don’t get me wrong I thought it was going to be a good experience, but I’m still not confident enough in myself to be talking about my work.

On Tuesday morning I found out I wasn’t needed after all because there was some confusion with who was going and only four people (including me) turned up. This left me with the option of opting out, but I plucked up some courage and jumped in Steve’s car with the others.

After a long car journey that consisted of only left turns, we realised that Steve’s Sat Nav (Satellite Navigation) had forgotten how to say “turn right” and we ended up in the wrong place. Stopping to redirect the Sat Nav, we finally started to hear those “turn rights” and knew we were heading in the right direction.

When we arrived we were invited into Dave’s office and heard a bit about how the company works and their background. It’s quite surprising how fast the company has grown, with over 800 clients after a year and a half of business. This shows how Dave’s way of having a set price list works, since people know what they’re going to pay right from the start with no hidden costs.

We were then asked to introduce our self’s, explain where we came from, why we’re on the course and what we wanted to do. As daunted as I felt when Dave asked us to do that, it actually wasn’t that bad and produced quite an informative conversation.

After that we had some time for questions before we went to talk to the designers. I wish I was more prepared at this point because even though I don’t usually ask many questions, I didn’t want to miss out on the brief opportunity. Especially since I’d spent some time last night thinking of some questions, which I ended up leaving in the car!

We were then invited to sit with a designer, to see what they do and ask them some questions. We ended up with one designer each and I was very impressed with the work she (I really can’t remember her name!) had produced. She had only been there 5 months and the standard of work was very high and gave a professional feeling.

She was currently working on a project that had been rejected twice and the client said they hated the designs (or that’s what she said to me), it was finally accepted with changes on the third attempt. She showed me the previous designs and the feedback from the client and I have to say the client was one of those that didn’t have a clue what they wanted and only had the third chance because she was having the full works (website, logo and business cards). It just shows you that you can’t always please all clients and you have to work on the basis of the client is always right.

I am really pleased that I went to The Design Mechanics and feel more informed; now I know how a design studio works. Dave has got a lot of plans for the company and I hope they all work out for him because he has done an excellent job so far.

The trip didn’t finish there because one the way home we actually saw the Humpers Camel design that Jemma had created. This was such a coincided as we had been talking about the design and she mentioned that the client had sent her some pictures of it on their van.

The lecture on typography anatomy was very interesting and gave me even more names to use. I’m going to identify these on the fonts of Frederic Goudy and use them in my presentation. The real task is remembering them all though.

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.

It seems so long ago since we broke up for Christmas and I’m glad to be back at College. Monday morning started off quite low with a discussion on A3 and A4 which gave me and I think everyone a bit more apprehension towards receiving our grades.

I’m glad we’re finally getting the website built as I’ve been looking forwards to this over the holidays and I know it’s what everyone else has been waiting for as well. Even though I had a slight idea about using Dreamweaver, I still learnt quite a lot from the introduction to the program Steve gave us.

I actually enjoyed the time we had in the afternoon to play about with the program, that helped secure some worries I had about using the program and now I can’t wait to start the actual website. It should be really enjoyable creating the website, even with the amount of testing we have to do! I think I should have made more use of the time we had to get used to the program and I should have made more notes in my sketchbook to record the time. But leased I know to record everything in the sketchbook now, so I won’t have an excuse anymore.

I think this way of receiving the results seemed to work out a lot better and I think it would be best to do that in the future. I’m really pleased I passed both assignments and I didn’t think that I would have.

Tuesday morning helped clear a few things up about the new assignments and the things required for them. I am looking forwards to the typography tasks, but I’m not sure I’ll be saying that when we get one.

I’m not really looking forward to the presentation but it’s something I have to do and get used to doing. After some research today I realised that it’s going to be hard to find plenty of information for the presentation and I’m going to have to put aside plenty of time to research.

I spent some time today using In Design and I learnt a lot about using the program and even recorded it in my sketchbook! I browsed through the tutorials on the program and I was surprised at how helpful they were and I’d recommend it to you if you’re not feeling confident using the program.

The feedback from Steve was good and bad. It was good because he said I am capable of getting a merit, but bad because I realise how many little stupid mistakes I’d made and not even realised. Like I didn’t use capital letters for a scripting name, which has really annoyed me because I did it right on A2 and it’s something I don’t usually do. I also shortened the name for the Hardware [Internal and External], to just Hardware and I didn’t even realise I’d done it!