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