A1 - CD Covers

Beck – Odelay

I have been asked to review two of my favoite album covers and describe why I like them; my first choice is the cover of Beck’s album “Odelay”. I have chosen this CD cover as one of my favourites for a couple of reasons.

Typography

The typeface looks like one of the font that come with Adobe, it has a remarkable resemblance to Rosewood Std. However the only differences that I can tell between the two are that the font font from the album cover is much sharper than rosewood, Also, the font on the cover has 2 colours red for the bulk and a yellow outline, rosewood std is only capable of having one colour.

Imagery

The main reason I chose this was for the choice of the image they used, a rare breed of dog called a Komondor. It originates from Hungary and most are trained to be in dog shows and contests, hence the dog jumping over the hurdle.

The dog can be seen in this image jumping over a hurdle, and first impression make the onlooker think that it looks like a bathroom mat.

Music

It also resembles the music itself, I’ve listened to the album and heard a lot of the artists other albums and they are all unique, so really the fact is that the album cover is also unique.

Remixed Album cover

The Odelay album was given a remix, and the album cover was given a redesign, it’s the same image but it has pencil scrawls all over it, it looks as if its been doodled on.

Word Count - 266

Jeff Wayne’s - War of the worlds

One of my other favourite album covers would have to be the artwork form Jeff Wayne’s war of the worlds. It’s been one of my favourite albums for a long time now the story is fantastic and so is the artwork.

Artwork

Michael Trim originally painted the image in 1976; it shows a Martian fighting machine firing its “Heat Ray” at the battleship “Thunderchild”.

The amount of detail that has gone into this is flawless, I’ve seen some of the other images that the artists had painted and he seems to use a similar style for each of his pieces, the colours varies between light and dark but it also uses them to give off a sinister aurora, this is what I believe makes the image eye-catching.

I like this artwork because in a way it stays true to the originally story, the designs of the machines that were described in the book by H.G. Wells.
The other artwork that was included with the CD was painted by a different artist its but they designs don’t differ from one another the detail is exactly the same.

Typography

The actual typeface that was used was a unique style that has a 70’s look and feel to it but it also has that Sci Fi like feel to it. It also goes well with the artwork.
The only thing I don’t like is the fact that the text of logo is not consistent, it seems to drift across too far onto the main part of the picture.

Word Count - 262

Evaluation of the first year

This time last year I was in 2 minds about going to study games design at Leeds Met. I’m happy to say that when Steve came into my Programming class it totally changed my mind. And I’m glad it happened.

A1 - Sketch Blog

This was the yearlong assignment, it consisted of sketching ideas down, writing notes from retrieving inspiration from a variety of places, sticking them in and annotating.

Throughout this year I have gone through nearly 3 sketchbooks, which I’m told is the average amount so I am pleased with that.

The sketchbook has been a very useful tool for me this year I don’t know that I would have done without it. I would say that I have obtained a good collection of inspirational images, I wanted to get a modest amount of both good and bad artwork, this would allow me to say why I like an idea, and if I didn’t like it, why.

A2 - That’s the Plan

The first proper assignment, this was basically the creation of a web plan. The class were given a choice of who do make it about, I chose Charlie Chaplin. It was strange adjusting to the way work was to be presented in the course, it totally different to the way we were previously taught.

I had never created a web plan before so I never knew how much information had to be clarified before actually making a website, it like 90% planning and 10% actually making it.
My favourite part of the assignment was getting to terms with using Adobe PageMaker, I was only familiar with using Microsoft Publisher, this was a big step up for me.

A3 - Back to BASIC

Another Web plan, but this one had a purpose, because it would be the plan I would use to create a website with in the A5 assignment.

Instead of choosing what we wanted to make the site up about, Steve gave us all a specific group of people that the website should be designed for, it was to be made to help “Silver Surfers” Learn about computer terms.

The class was split into 4 groups, and we were each given a category that would be included on the site, we were asked to find 10 items for the following:

*Networks
*Software
*Coding Language
*Hardware

The items that were collected in each category were to have a 40 word explanation and an image for each.

The images had to be compressed and cropped to a specific size so that they can be put on the website.

A4 - Image Rights

This was known as the Photoshop assignment that everyone liked, including me, it gave us a chance to finally be creative, but I had never used Photoshop before. So this was a big thing for me.

The first 2 tasks were essays on being a designer or an artist. The final two were Photoshop task; the first was an image restoration task. This was extremely difficult and I had to redo it twice.

The second task was creating two web banners, which were jazz themed. One had to be in a skyscraper and the other was to be a square. The development of them was rigorously timed but enjoyable at the same time.

A5 – Builder

This was the carry on of A3, it consisted of taking all of A3 and building the site, this was my first ever website and it defiantly wont be my last.

It was created with tables and cells, and a little bit of basic CSS, setting up the FTP settings was easy, and so was getting the tables and cells right, my problem was that when I began making pages out of the template, I started noticing things weren’t right so I had to keep going back and changing them and in some cases it messed up everything.

Along the way I had to re-do some of the images as they had become too blurry or distorted, this was a time wasting task but it had to be done.

The worst part of this assignment was getting the CGI script to work, I had picked one out in the previous assignment called “FormMail” and it gave me so much trouble, I literally wasted an entire week trying to get it to work with the feedback form.

I asked for help for Steve and from the other classmates and none of them could figure it out. In the end I just used the built in tone that was on my web hosting.

Another problems was validation, I built the site using XHTML 1.0 Strict, which I’m told is very difficult to validate, and it is, in the last week this was my main problem, I really did try everything to no success.

I asked Steve if it was possible to switch to XHTML 1.0 Transitional, as this is much easier to validate, luckily he said yes.

A6 - Revert to Type

This assignment went side by site with A5; it consisted to 2 tasks, A presentation and a series of Timed tasks.

The presention was based on a famous typographer, everyone’s was different and mine was based on Zuzana Licko. The actual presentation had to included server types of information, including her background, her work, and some examples of typographic structure.

I chose a couple of her fonts and compare the typographical structure between them, I described how the decenders curved on certain fonts, and so on.

I’m not a lover of presentations, so I was vary nervous, but form the first presentation that we did during the first seminar week, so I knew what was expected and how I could use my body language to my advantage.

The actual presentation went very well, the presentation finished bang on five minutes, I did show some slight signs of nerves but I passed so I was pleased.

The Timed tasks came up randomly during Mondays, they had varied times, some were one hour, and others were 30 minutes.

In total we did 4 tasks, the major task was to create a news paper article, using the layout skills we had learned, this was an essential piece, for the other we had to pick 2 out of the 3 that we wanted to be included for out final mark, I chose the Jonathan Gee, The Vodafone and the Hokai was left out.

I didn’t choose this because I felt that it didn’t include much design, and I felt that the other two tasks did.

A7 - Wailing Whales

The most recent task, nicknamed “the Mini Major” as it is our last task of the year. It began during the second reading week; I was given a CD to listen to and was asked to create mind maps and mood boards for of what I was hearing.

The mind maps were basically consisted of words for emotions, sounds and what places I could imagine. The mood boards were basically the same except instead of word there were images of what I could imagine was going on in the music.

The real tasks started when we got back, I was asked to create a Digipak CD cover, which included the outer image, the inner image and the CD Body.

The resource I used to get the image I wanted was SXC, the images had to be 300dpi so they were good quality.

A lot of manipulation was involved in this and I found the doing this was quite complex, so I looked into tutorials on the web, I found these very useful.

The CD Body was easy, it was just a CD Shape, I was only allowed to used up to 5 pantone colours and list them below it, I only used two.

The Logo was the best part of the Assignment; I did a lot of different sketches for this, at least 10 pages in my sketchbook. We were taught how to use FreeHand, which was the toll used to create vector images, it was fairly straightforward and enjoyable.

The Outer cover was difficult, there had to be a modest amount of manipulation on it, but how can you measure modesty?

I was good Photoshop practice and was the first time I had use a vector image program.

Time Planning

Time planning was my biggest downfall of the year, I found it very difficult trying to plan ahead for what tasks I would be doing. I had a few problems with it at the beginning of the year, but as the year has gone by I believe I have gotten better.

One of the hardest tasks for me were the timed tasks in A6 planning the time it should take for a task to complete is very difficult and I found it hard to stand by it.

Summery

My Favourite assignment for this year was probably A5, its unfortunate that there was only one web design assignment this year, but I enjoyed it.

It was a great new experience for me and has opened my eyes to new things.

My ideas has changed dramatically since my personally statement on my first day here. I have decided not to go and do the third year, I just want to get straight into a job at the end of it.

This is not because I don’t want to learn more, it is because I believe I will learn more actually been in the industry rather than reading about it.

Checklist for next year

• Use the summer to learn CSS and other coding languages
• Practice using the software for bother personal tasks and for the summer tasks
• Perfect the art of timekeeping

1 Week to Go

I've been rather busy this week, I've had to pretty much redo the outer CD design, because after I had resized it, I decided to alter the design, I had been told that there was something missing from the design, it didn’t look lifelike, it looked “Plastic”.

So I stuck with the initial space theme but instead of having a broken earth, I place a side view of the earth in the bottom corner, and used linear effect to give it more of a realistic feeling above that I placed a kind of cloudy nebula with a bright star that shines onto the earth.

For the back I have a star field with a moon in the top left hand corner, the text for the CD Tracks is placed on the left. I have used the small barcode and the emit logo place at the bottom.

I have also had to find a different font to use for the logo because I couldn’t find a bolder version I the font I initially used. I search high and low for a font that suited the theme, the font I used is called “Gravitate”, and I downloaded this font from DaFont.

For the past couple of days I had been making the actual CD cover, I had a basic design, a gray background with white text, the logo at the bottom, the Artist and Album Name at the top and I wanted to had the copyright text going round the edge of the CD.

I did a lot of trial and error with this, I finally found out that I had to use the text paths tool, I found this out using the built in help, which really I should have look there in the first place.

My plans for the rest of the week complete my evaluation, I have begun it today but I still have quite a bit to do, I hope to have it done by Friday so I have the full weekend to print out and check everything ready for Mondays seminar group.

Preflight Check

This week has been rather stressful, mainly because this is the last week where we could have a face to face with Steve about major tweaks to our work, so the past 2 days have been about getting as much as the CD covers done as I can.

Monday because with Steve offering to go over last week’s Lecture on “Artwork for Print”, this was mainly for the people who had missed it but it was also good to have it fresh in our memory.

This lasted for the first part of the morning, during this lecture I had an epiphany, the back of my CD cover had been bugging me all week, I knew it needed changing but I didn’t know what to do with it, the idea was to have a silhouette of the earth with a sort of Nebula above it emitting light. I made a quick sketch of it so I could develop it after the lecture.

For the rest of the morning I set a target of getting a rough version of the CD back artwork done, I was searching SXC for a good hour and had found a few images; the one I decided to use was initially an image of the earth with a sunburst next to it.

I cropped the image down to size that fitted the CD cover, after that I decided to do a nebula effect but I realised that the front cover had one too and I wanted each side to have something different, so instead I created a star effect using noise,

The rest of the afternoon consisted of research into the pre-flight plan, I searched high and low for some example, and I placed some of these examples in my sketchbook for future reference.

Today, instead of a lecture, Steve asked us if there was anything we wanted to know about the Second year tasks, he first told us the names of the units and what they consisted of doing, he also went over some of the activities that will be included in the summer assignment, most questions that were asked were aim at how some of the units would be marked.

The seminar groups were also different today, we (Gamma Group) were teamed up with Beta Group, we were asked to place our work upon the wall, I then realised that he wanted us to speak about it and give feedback to others.

Unfortunately my work had been measured wrong and there are a lot of things to be tweaked, so I’m keeping with the idea of a space theme but I’ve decided to start for scratch. I’m going to read up on more tutorials and try to do some “Spacey” effects for the CD cover.

I will be posting my new designs on here and on DasForum later on this week. I hope you will all give feedback.

Tasks for the rest of the week:

• Photoshop tutorials
• Complete CD Cover
• Edit logo Design
• Begin Evaluation

Un Earthly

This week has all been about developing the CD Cover, the past week I had been developing my ideas in my sketchbook, and I had finally come up with the design, unfortunately, I had to format my laptop on Monday night due to irreparable system files, (Not My Fault) which took my almost a day to sort out.

I began today by challenging the front cover of the CD That I had designed on Sunday, I have stayed with the Space idea, but instead of creating an earth-like planet from scratch, I decided to go on a free stock image site (SXC) and find an image of the earth, the one I chose was basically the earth with a reflection, problem was I didn’t want a reflection on the CD Cover.

I had anticipated that it would take a long time to get the image just right, but funnily enough it was just a 5 minute job with the magic wand tool. The initial idea I had in my head was to had a dead, crumbling earth with a massive chunk broke out of it, this was fairly simple to do, I used the Lasso tool to select the chunk I wanted and just dragged it way.

Next I had to create a space like background, to do this I clone the background layer and made the background black, then I selected the new layer and used the “Add Noise” tool and set it to had a nice amount. I then change the opacity levels so it would blend in nicely with the black background.

The last task I did today was to try to create a starry nebula, this is still an ongoing task but it was basically mad by adding clouds to a new layer, using the transparency tool and using the Dodge tool to make it thicker and the Burn tool to make it thinner.

I have had to develop more on my A1 sketch blog assignment, I feel that I just don’t have enough inspiration, I need roughly a third more to have the minimum that is needed but I need to obtain more, it will be useful for the second year.

I also had to complete my A6 referral work, so yesterday afternoon Steve went over the work and helped me edit some errors that I had missed, the rest I did last night and it is now handed in completely.

Unfortunately I now have to complete referral work for the A5 – Builder assignment, there is quite a bit to do, I would say about a day’s work, so my plan is to get this out of the way by Thursday and ask Steve for some feedback and then for the rest of the week I will crack on with both A7 and A1.

My tasks for the rest of the week:

• A5 Referral work
• A7 CD designs
• A1 Inspiration

Covering it

First of all I would like to say that I did not upload my images last week because the text kept disappearing off the page when the document was converted to an image, just thought I would let you all know.


This week has been a get on with it week, and I must say it’s been a very productive week too.


On Monday I mainly got on with my logo designs, I developed 2 sheets one was full of picture and text logos, the other was full of just image logos, these can be seen below:

I feel that these we not my best designs, I was just mainly playing about with the shapes, trying to get a unique look.


The text and Picture logos were in my opinion the best of the bunch, there were 2 certain designs that I liked, top middle and bottom middle, here are the 2 main designs that I chose yesterday:

I also received my referral feedback for the timed tasks, I need to redesign the Main task and tweak the others.


Today I started to get on with my CD Cover designs, my initial design was a scene in space, with a planet and a nebula, my sketches were horrific but when I decided to put it on the computer I looked up some tutorials and in the morning developed a space scene, I’m not happy with it but I’m going to attempt it again.

During today’s seminar groups Steve told me the reality that the logos were not suitable for this assignment, he has told me to use the original E symbol and use different fonts for the Emit text, these are my first ideas, and feedback is appreciated.


Tasks for the rest of the week:

* Complete timed task referral
* More logo designs
* At least 2 cover designs
* Preflight plan Work
* Buy new sketchbook

EmiTing Designs

Monday began as always with a lecture, this lecture was based upon using Macromedia FreeHand, the presentation went through some of the basic editing tools, it also explained how to do effects like merging shapes and also which file format to save it for when it is imported into InDesign.

For the second half of the morning a former student named Mark Feather came in to tell us about his background, life in the industry and to show us his portfolio.

He works for Empire Direct, his job is to create banners and offers and update the website when needed. He also showed us his portfolio and some of the work he had done while he was on the course.

The beginning of the afternoon started off with the other half of the FreeHand Lecture. This part of the lecture basically covered everything about colour, inserting it into shapes and text, creating Swatches, Gamut Warning and the Pantone Library.

After this, John Munday came around the class going over our goals that we set ourselves at the beginning of the course and seeing if we were still going in the right direction, he then checked some of my logo ideas and gave me some feedback.

The rest of the day mainly consisted of sketching logos, trying to choose a certain few that I would create on Illustrator for final designs.

Today began with half of the class been given a lecture and the other half, including me, carried on with my final sketches, I originally planned to create 10 logo ideas, before break I only managed to get about 6 done, so after break I decided to make a start in illustrator. I managed to get one logo completed before lunch, Steve asked me to alter a few things so after lunch I did.

In seminar groups Steve looked at my logo designs and decided that he wanted me to create another one using a font that I had put in my sketchbook, so for the rest of the day I have been creating different versions of my final logo, below is an image of what I have created so far:

Tasks for the rest of the week:

• Finalise logo designs ready for feedback
• Put Logo on forum for feedback
• Sketchbook work
• Collect more photos
• Practice Illustrator

Sketchin' Logo's

3 Weeks have passed, the Easter break was good it gave me a change to relax and de-stress, so I felt good when I came back yesterday morning.

Monday morning started off with an introduction to the new assignment, “Wailing Whales”, my version of this assignment is split into 4 tasks, which are to

• · Re-design the ‘emit’ logo
• · Re-design the CD Cover for my artist
• · Create a pre-flight package of the project
• · Project evaluation

This may not sound like a lot to do over the next 6 weeks but as I have began to notice, there is a lot of sketch work involved.

After this Steve went on to another lecture concerning logos, we were shown a variety of different types of logos ranging from just text, juts an image and a combination of both. The logos were from major companies like Ford and Microsoft’s Xbox 360.

After this lecture I began to create a production schedule, this consisted of the tasks I will do for the next few weeks, although I have put aside 1 week do some more work for the A1 Sketch blog task just so i can get up to speed with some inspirational artwork.

After that Steve began the second lecture on logos, it involved the main points of a good logo which are:

• · Shape – The shape of the logo
• · Contrast – make sure it looks good in gray scale
• · Weight – the logo doesn’t require thin lines
• · Presence – Making use all the white space

A former student named Johnny Haynes came in to speak of his job and the websites he has created, it was a god experience it seems that the work place isn’t anything like I thought it would be like. I expected Johnny to be in a suit, but he came in college in jeans and was very laid back.

The rest of the afternoon consisted of sketching logos for Emit; I had filled a page before I left.

Today began with a lecture form Steve, which was basically about the CND logo, also known as the ‘Peace’ symbol, the lecture was basically about the re-vamp of the logo, all the groups were asked to do the same, so ours, ‘Gamma’, decided to go our separate ways for 15 minutes and do some sketching, we ended up using one of Andrews Designs which was an eye with a globe as the pupil, after we presented it we were told that it is similar to the CBS logo, which it was.

In the afternoon ‘Gamma’ had a seminar group with Steve, we went over some of our logo sketches and once again went over the basics of A7.

The rest of the afternoon consisted of sketching more logos and collecting different fonts and experimenting with them.

My goals for the rest of the week are as follows:

• · Continue sketching in sketchbook
• . Gather more fonts
• · Collect one or two photos
• · A1 Sketchblog work

Strange Air?

These past couple of days have been, well, different I suppose. On Monday morning I was given the tasks that I had to do for the day, they consisted of making Mind Maps for the CD I was given, collect logos of famous companies, listen to the CD twice and give a positive review on it, these tasks were very straight forward.

The music I obtained was a from the artist ‘Woob’, I could have never imagined what the music was going to be like, when I began listening to it I though to myself, how am I going to make a good review out of this, it was the strangest music I had ever heard.

The class was online all day and one of the questions that rose up was, who was going to have the ‘Animal music’, and unfortunately it was me. The first track was full of birds squawking, and the final track had Penguin noises in it.

As I researched more into the Artist I found out that the actual front cover of the CD had Penguins on it as you can see.

I stumbled upon some reviews that people had given abut the CD; I found it odd that it had a 5 star rating, and the selling price on Amazon was $74.

Mind Maps

The mind maps were basically a collection of emotions, sounds and places that I had interpreted form the music, and put into words, I did this for each track.

Review

I had to create a review of Woob's CD, this was not as difficult as I first thought, and all I did was explain how the music made me feel and where it took me.

Logos

I compiled a list of logos, all of which were from major corporate enterprises, I also annotated them, explained what I liked about them, what typefaces they used, ect...

Mood Boards

Today had similar tasks to yesterday, I was asked to create 2 mood boards, which I created in design, I placed images that I found online and put them into the documents, I created 3 Boards this was just to show apportion of what the music said to me.

In each Mood Board I have included images of the words I included in my mind maps, it’s a visual version of them, and I have placed one image of one of them below.

The logos I have collected were mainly taken form a directory site which I found here.

I can honestly say that I am kind of getting into the music, some of it is bad but as it goes on it begins to become interesting.

Woob - Em:T 1194 Review

Woobs music is an ambient take on the peace and tranquillity in the world. The Em:T 1194 album has 6 tracks:

1. On Earth - 32'13"
2. Odonna - 13'15"
3. Amoeba - 01'45"
4. Wuub - 09'29"
5. Strange Air - 10'32"
6. Emperor - 04'28"

On earth takes first takes us on a journey to Africa, people talking in the streets, like a busy market place, you can sense that it is a very mellow atmosphere. we can then here a woman, from the middle east singing, this is a change in the atmosphere, and it seems very serious.

We are then taken into orbit around the earth, its quiet and peaceful, it then brings us down into a jungle, you can here the birds singing, it leads us into a sort of village and the woman is singing again. This track helps us to block out all the war and suffering in the world and leaves us with peace.

Odonna, is begins with beating drums and long high tone cords, towards the 9 minute mark the chords become deeper giving a sense off loss, something missing or gone, very deep and meaningful music.

Amoeba begins with a sort of printing machine going off, it then leads into a harmonica and guitar melody, gives the image of romance, on a river, then leads to the sound of frogs and heavy foot steps. This is a very good track, it gives a good atmosphere.

Wuub starts off with a line from a film "Alex, you know there's only one way we're going to end all this...", this was taken from a classic horror move called ‘Night of Dark Shadows’, there is a female vocalist, again middle eastern, through out the track, it gives off an very eerie atmosphere.

Strange Air first gives the impression of tranquility, the there are sounds of some sort of aircraft I would presume, there are samples of films throughout this track, a horror film, similar to the samples in Wuub. It then goes into a deep chord session, it gives the feeling of fear and paranoia.

The final track is name Emperor, it’s named this because of the Emperor penguin calls that go on throughout this track, it begins with a very deep base line and then gradually gets smoother and becomes more tranquil and the sounds of the penguins begin to fade into nothingness.

Overall, Em:T 1194 isn’t an album, it’s a journey that takes you’re around the world and back, and all in the space of 70 minutes.

A6 Evaluation

The A6 assignment was split into two tasks, a presentation on a typographer, and several timed typography tasks.

Presentation

I was chosen to create a presentation on a typographer named Zuzana Licko, The first part of my research brought me to the Émigré website, from this site I learned quite a lot about her, it mainly spoke of her typographies that were published in the Émigré Magazine, and told that she and her husband were the co-founders of the company.

I then stumbled upon an interview that Zuzana did in 2004, it included the most popular font, parts of her relationship with Rudy Vanderlans and parts of her past, I took notes of what I thought were key points, and what I could use in my presentation.

Once I had all the information I needed on Zuzana’s Background and her work, I developed a template for the presentation, all I included was a line on each page that the title went on and an image of Zuzana on the front page.

After the first practice presentation I realise that I had a lot of work to do on it, I dint include the Type Anatomy at that moment, I was still getting more information about the fonts, so I decided to do a font comparison of ‘Base Monospace’ and ‘Base Nine Twelve’, and another comparison of ‘Matrix II’ and ‘Matrix II Display’.

And I also decided to a page that just explained the anatomy of 3 typefaces. The content of the presentation was now complete.

Now had to find and image to put onto my presentation, one of the fellow class mates who were doing the same typographer as me unfortunately was ill so I had no idea of what image he had used, so really I could pick any at all.

I searched high and low for an image, I eventually found an image of her on a font site, originally the image had Rudy and Zuzana, I had to crop it down, but while I was at it I decided to attempt removing the background, I read the help files in Photoshop CS2 and found that the magic wand tool could do this. The process did take a while but eventually I got it done.

The handout was pretty straight forward to make, place the same image I use on the presentation into the page, make sentences out of the facts I had used on my presentation and add some useful links. I also place Zuzana’s two most famous fonts on the bottom of the page.

Once all the content was placed into the presentation, I felt liberated, but I still sensed that it wasn’t finished, I couldn’t understand it, I had everything placed with it, then it came to me, I needed to ad could to it, I looked too bland, I needed brightening up, I decided to change it to a cream colour, although, I had to carefully colour in the picture of Zuzana as well.

I was nervous on the day of my presentation, mind you, it would be strange if I wasn’t worried, I knew exactly what I was going to say, and how I was going to present it, but I was still nervous, even up to going to the door of Steve’s room I was nervous.

But I so over came this, as soon I started the panic just went away, and what’s even better is the presentation lasted exactly five minutes. The only thing I regret was not answering all the questions right, but I’m not worried about it, I can always get better.

Timed tasks

The second half of this unit consisted of Developing and creating a variety of Typographic pieces within a set time. These tasks came in a variety of forms, ranging form paint tubes, to news paper articles. Each task went through 4 stages, the first of which is planning; I used a single time sheet to plan out what tasks I was going to do, and how much time I would spend on each.

Hokai

The aim of this task was to create a paint tube skin; I had the choice of colour I could use on the tube. I was given the company logo, the barcode, and the first stage was to create sketches of it, and I drew two small designs and one final design. I was given the measurements for it and basically just had to colour it in, this is why I chose to not include this in my work, and there wasn’t much design work in the task.

Vodafone

The aim of this task was to produce a newspaper advertisement, the advertised a job position at Vodafone, and we were given the Vodafone logo and the text that was to be placed into the document. I had to design the layout of the document, deciding where to place the logo, what font the text should be and how it was to be presented.

Jonathan Gee

This task was based on creating a newspaper article for Jonathan Gee, a famous Jazz musician. I was given on image of him and the text that was to be placed in, I had to create the template and implement some typographic skills I had learned.

Grid & Story

This was one big task, but was split into two smaller tasks, the first of which was to basically create the template for the content; the trick was that I didn’t know how much content there was so I had to give myself adequate space that I could use to put it in. the banner that I created was very basic, I wanted to include an image but we were not allowed, it was disappointing.

After the grid was finished, I was given the second task, which was to add content to the grid; I had to firstly sketch two ideas of how I was going to layout the page content. I then chose the one I liked most and sketched it to a larger scale. Adding the text was easy, finding a font to use it was difficult but I managed in the end. I cropped the image and added a quotation onto the third column.

Overall I am happy with both my presentation and with the work I have created in the timed tasks, but o better my understanding of software I will learn more about in design, find out how to get more things working.

The Finishing Touches

Its the final week before hand in, I’m feeling very confident this time, if I push myself this week I will be able to have everything done by Friday.

Monday morning was basically “Get on with it” time, I used this time to re-compress the website images, this is because it was stated in usability forms that the content was ether squashed or blurry. I managed to get a lot done within the first hour then after break I decided to take some more screen shots of my beta site, after this I removed it so it wasn’t taking any space up on the web server.

In the afternoon I continued with the image compression for the website, once I had done this I uploaded it, ready for Steve to test it.

Steve gave a lot of useful feedback, he told me to use CSS to animate the buttons, he also told me to center the site, to see if it gave it a better look, but by far the biggest task was to redo the banner, ill admit it was a pretty terrible banner.

Steve showed me a few tricks in Photoshop that I could use to blend the keyboard image into the background, I used this and I can honestly say my site looks a lot better now that it did last week.

There are still a few things to sort out, for instance validation, I have found it very difficult to validate the site in XHTML 1.0 Strict, and so I may change it to transitional. I also have to change the layout of the text to make it look neater and I still have a few images to compress and replace on the website.

Today began with more “Get on with it” time, which I used to edit my presentation, I change the background colour and the image I was using, and I also edited the page layout.

The second half of the morning was a timed task, this one was to create a newspaper tabloid about Jonathan Gee, and I found this task was by far the easiest, so I took my time with it, made sure I got everything right. I handed it in 5 minutes before the deadline.

In seminar groups Steve went over what was needed for next weeks hand in, and gave a brief insight to what was in store for the last assignment.

The rest of the afternoon has consisted of changing the presentation and adding the Type anatomy slides.

Note: I will be uploading my presentation in a PDF, I would appreciate feedback please.

Task for this week:

• A5: Validation test, Evaluation
• A6: Finish Presentation and practice

Usability and Productivity

Before I begin with what has happened this week, Ill explain what happened last week, I spent at least 16 just doing the CGI script for the website, that’s on top of A4 referral and the A6 presentation.

Monday morning began with the website usability tests, basically the entire class went round testing everybody’s website, we spent roughly 5 minutes on each website, than moved around the room to test another, so everybody’s site got tested by everyone.

I knew that there was at least one problem with mine, which was obviously my feedback form, last week I didn’t managed to get it working and became very stressed, like you do.

After this we has a short break, when I got back, I went over the feedback that I had obtained and began implementing it, this included placing a link to the homepage on some of the pages, getting rid on the space between the banner and the navigation bar and trying to sort my CGI script.

I still had no luck in sorting out FormMail, to I tried a different one that was placed on the HND site. I had no luck with this ether, Luckily help was at hand.

I decided to ask James for help, he shows me an alternative method that he had used, something called “cgimail” all he did was created a text file and typed in the names of the objects in the form, and edited one of the hidden fields and uploaded it.

It worked first time, I was utterly astounded, and he did in 5 minutes what I had been trying to do for 16 hours in the previous week.
I was pretty upbeat for the rest of the day, and managed to tidy up the site a bit.

Today began with a lecture on newspaper layout, after that we had a timed task which was to create a newspaper job advertisement for a graphic designer at Vodafone.

I must admit I found the measurements rather confusing and unfortunately wasted half an hour trying to fathom it out. But I managed to sort it and design the banner and have it finished 15 minuets before the deadline; I feel that I am getting more confident with these tasks.

This afternoon was the first practice of my Zuzana Licko presentation, luckily the group I was in were last, so I had plenty of time to prepare myself.

I feel that the practice could have gone better, I was nervous and did stutter a bit, I have to develop on certain areas of the presentation, but I should have the final draft done for next Tuesday.

My tasks for this week are as follows:

• A5 – Continue to implement feedback into the website
• A6 – Complete a final draft of the Zuzana Licko presentation
• Create a homepage for my ePortfolio
• Obtain and comment on types of inspiration

CGI Hell

First of all, I would like to apologies for not placing a post up on tuesday, its mainly because I wanted to place the link on for the website up here, unfortunately I am still having problems with it.

Its mainly the CGI Script, it keeps coming up with "500 internal error", if anyone can shed some light on how to get it to work, please feel free to comment or email me, also, I intend to have my completed image restoration up on here later on, so you can comment that If possible.

Thanks in Advance

Gettin' on With it.

As the title suggests, this week has just been a “get on with it” week. Monday morning began with Steve telling us to just get on with A5; I must see that I was very relieved with this as I had only just begun A5.

Unfortunately, things didn’t go to plan, there were many obstacles to get around. The first was getting the sites content inline on Firefox, every other browser works fine with the site.

I didn’t have a clue how to sort it out, so I sought out James for advice. He managed to get it all lined up by inserting something called a spacer GIF, which is basically an image, about 1 pixel by 1 pixel in size, and he shows me how to insert them into my site.

In Dreamweaver, they are evident, but when viewed in a browser, they are invisible. The second problem I had was a space between the banner and the navigation bar.

I seeked out James yet again, and he managed to sort it, but It has popped up once again, so I will have to sort it out myself.

The site is now going well, I have 2 more pages of content to create, and index page, and the form. I will have the site complete and uploaded by the end of this week, postponed I know but I've had to juggle A4 and A6 as well.

The rest of the day consisted of continuing A5 and I also had a meeting with John Munday, he asked me last week to re-write and complete the image compression task for A4, he went over it with me, just to make sure that everything was ok, it was apart form a few errors.


Today we began with a timed task, the first of our “Real” task. It consisted of making a Paint tube package, strange I know.

The task was due in at 11.00 but I found it really enjoyable, I decided not to do 5 designs, I only did three concepts and one realistic design, I managed to get the assignment done by 10.55 so I was quite pleased with myself.


Today’s seminar group involved looking over the Website questionnaire and the presentation hand out. I have to design the handout; all I have at the moment is notes.


My tasks for this week, and the half term are:

• Complete website and upload it – By Saturday Evening
• Complete handout
• Complete questionnaire
• Complete presentation and practice it

The Art of Type

Over the past couple of weeks I have had to do other areas of work, unfortunately my laptop had broken the week before college started again, and it had been “In the shop” since, I’m happy to report that I have it back and am cracking on.

Monday morning, wasn’t like another morning, Steve just let us get on with our work, this was mainly aimed at the people that had referred on A3, and this was the morning that Steve wanted it handing in.

Luckily I had completed it, but had to print a few things out, this was mainly because my printer has stopped working, so I must buy another one, preferably one that doesn’t take 3 minutes to print out one page of work.

Later on I handed my work in to Steve, I then received feed back on A4, unfortunately one of my main objectives is to redo the image restoration task again, this was the one thing I didn’t want to do again because its too time consuming and I already have a lot on, but ill cope, I have to really.

The afternoon was basically a get on with it time, I started my website, which I was thrilled about but I realised that most of the people in the class are ahead of me, so it seems I will have to catch up rather quickly.

Also that afternoon, I decide to start my image restoration again, but I only got as far as rotating it, cropping the edges and just started the spot healing process, but this time I’ve decided to use the grid tool, hopefully this will help me to get all the marks and spots off the image.

Today I didn’t start college officially till 1 o’clock, but during the morning I decided to continue the image restoration task and give the Zuzana Licko presentation a look over and edit parts of it before getting to college.

When I came into college I rechecked the presentation then printed it off for seminar groups. Steve went over every groups presentation, to see how much everyone knew about there chosen typographer, after all this was only a draft for the presentation.

Today lecture was titled “type Anatomy”, which spoke of the heights which text it to be centered, there are called the baseline and the x height. It also explained what certain parts of letter are, for example the line in the centre of an f is known as a cross bar, and the bowl is the curved part of a P.

This presentation has been very helpful to me because I can now elaborate on the typographers fonts. Explaining what font has certain parts to it.

My tasks for this week are as follows:

• Redo the image compression essay for John to look over on Monday
• Continue image compression task – using the spot tool
• Complete web form on website
• Inspirational pieces for sketchbook

In the begining there was......CSS

Monday was, I feel, a very productive day for myself. As usual Steve began with a lecture, but no normal lecture, this was my first CSS lecture, something I've been looking forward to since I started the course.

It spoke of the basics, which included what not to do with CSS e.g. don’t put it directly into a web page; put all the CSS code into one file. Steve also warned the class of the strange things that Dreamweaver, importing CSS and JavaScript without you knowing.

In the second half of the tutorial, Steve told us how the form elements work and how and where to place them properly on the page.

He also explained how each one should be used, like for instance, the check boxes should not be already checked, because this would give the impression of arrogance making the user think that they have to do check the box, they would prefer to opt in to a offer, not opt out.

Throughout the rest of the afternoon I continued with my A3 referral work. This is where it my day went down hill. I had almost completed A3 during last week and when I opened the files I realise that most of them had not been saved. I was extremely angry with myself, how could I have been so careless?

But throughout the afternoon I managed to get back on track and now all that needs doing is to and a few words in to a couple of paragraphs and spell check it again, just to make sure that there are no spelling mistakes this time.

I also had a tutorial session with John Munday half way through the afternoon. He went over what was left to do on A3, which I have mentioned isn’t a lot.

Today Steve started off with another Lecture on typography; I was shocked when I notice that most of it was mainly about spelling and grammar. It went over text layout, punctuation and the correct usage of hyphens.

In the second half of the morning I started up InDesign to continue with the Zuzana Licko presentation when suddenly Steve announced that it was time for one of the timed typography tasks. I was defiantly nervous about this one.

The task was to create a design for the cover of FontBook, I first began by sketching 5 designs out, this took, then I sketched a large draft for the design I had chosen, I showed Steve the design and he gave me the go ahead. I then I opened InDesign and created it.

I had to redo it twice because there were a few problems, one was a funny letter and the other was that for some reason it wouldn’t show the margin guides. Unfortunately I didn’t hit the deadline which I was upset about but thankfully it was just a test.

This afternoon was mainly based on getting more information of the typographer I was given. There was also a group seminar with Steve, which was based on A1 and how much work we had done for it, I have realised that I need to do a lot more work for it and this will be one of my tasks for this week.

My tasks for this week are:

* A1 – Obtain more inspiration and place in Sketchbook
* A3 – Complete A3
* A6 – Create the first draft of my Presentation

Back in the Saddle

It’s the first week back since Christmas; it felt good to be back in the “Workplace” after three weeks.

The only problem with today was that the entire class was getting their results for A3 and A4 and I knew even before I went back that I hadn’t passed. On the Wednesday before, I received an email form Steve regarding my work.

He asked me to look through my spelling because there were a lot of repetitive mistakes. Straight away I knew that I had referred both units, it was obvious. But I wasn’t upset or mad. I just sat down and got on with the spell checking, and I was shocked with how many mistakes there were, I was very disappointed with myself.

Monday morning started off with a lecture form Steve regarding the mistakes that the majority of the class made in the previous units. This continued on till break time. After break we were introduced to Adobe Dreamweaver, Steve explained how to set up a folder to the site and how to use tables and cells.

After lunch I tested what I had learned and recorded my progress by taking screen shots and placing them in my sketchbook. I also tested other things, like form tools, how to import images, inserting text and testing the pages in a compilation of web browsers.

During the afternoon I was called up by Steve to have a chat considering A3 and A4. I found out there was a substantial amount of work to do on these but as luck would have it, the deadline had been extended which was reassuring.

After this meeting I continued to experiment in Dreamweaver and stick my screen shots into my sketchbook and label them.

Today Steve began by going over both A5 and A6, and explaining what content is needed in both of the assignments. In A5, the web plan form A3 will be used to create the website. A6 is all about fonts and typography, the main task is to create a presentation of a typographer which Steve chose for each of us.

But as well as that we all will be doing Quick fire work and typographic styles, these tasks will happen at random and will be timed.

The typographer I was given to present is a woman called Zuzana Licko; I have spent all of the afternoon researching her work and have been making notes which I can implement into the presentation later on. I have also printed and glued all of her typefaces into my sketchbook; this is form reference as well as proof of research.

I was given my full feedback for A3 this afternoon and I am happy that there isn’t that much to do because I have gotten the spell checking out of the way already.

My goals for this week are as follows:

• Continue referral work on A3
• Begin implementing Zuzana Licko notes into a presentation
• Practice In Design and take screen shots