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