007 Reasons to Plan

It's been nice having some time off after the assignment although my mind is now actively thinking like a designer most days.

Everywhere I look I see bad design and misuse of colour and comment on it in my head as if I were going redesign it.

Just today a friend of a friend emailed me to show me his new website that he had created himself, as the one I had reasonably quoted him for a couple of weeks ago was too expensive.

He said he had decided to cut costs and have a go himself using free hosting space at www.piczo.com

He asked for my opinion at the wrong time, after all the talks and lectures about what NOT to do when designing a website that we discussed at college I proceeded to relay all this information to him in a shortened form that literally pulled his website to pieces.

Flashing titles, bad navigation, garish colours, inonsistency, large text and... and... ADVERTISING.

Deans Analogy Time:
If you spend the money, take the time and plan, you end up with a Roger Moore or Sean Connery of a website but do it on the cheap and do it quickly ignoring good advice, you end up with a Timothy Dalton or in this case a George Lazenby.

Im looking forward to going back to college next week to get stuck in even though Ive had a virus all week.

Feeling a Little Horse

Today is deadline day!

This is the first test on a serious 2 year journey that so far I am enjoying immensely. I am just thankful that I decided to hand in my assignment on the same day as the HND students as the Wednesday for me was the most crucial day so far.

I spent most of the morning letting people read my assignment and in return reading theirs for inconsistencies. What I thought was a submission ready piece of work turned out to be far from that. I still had too much information that was not needed so most of the day was spent editing and streamlining.

I got some very invaluable feedback from people who I least expected to get it from. I think this saved me from handing in a piece of work that was not meeting the criteria laid out, and mentioning no names, I thank the individuals involved.

When the assignment started I felt I was a bit limited to the word count that was set but after taking out all the jargon that was already in my sketchbook and in my evaluation I ended up with an essay that I feel proud of.

I was involuntary elected as a scrutineer in the morning as my peers seemed to think I had a knack for pointing out spelling mistakes, which I was slightly reluctant to do as I am not an expert and I am sure that my own piece will contain quite a few errors. I think my age was being confused with experience. At the end of the day I wouldn't be on this course if I was a professional in all the aspects of design.

I am excited now as to what lies ahead. The length of this assignment was just long enough to enjoy without getting tiresome. Other than a couple of Blog entries the next 2 weeks will be nice to just take a break from what feels to have been some intense studying.

I think from this assignment I have learnt many, many lessons that will go towards helping me with the forthcoming ones. The need to overly impress has gone (well subsided) and I now know what is expected of me.

This isn't going to stop my eagerness to learn but going from walking to galloping in the first 4 weeks Im now willing to get off the horse and learn to trot and cantor first.

Getting Blogged Down

A good talk on Blogs in the morning made me spend a bit of time enhancing my own blog, put links on it, put all my classmates blogs on and tidied up the wording.

This week has been one of the most hectic weeks I have had so far. I finally got my assignment into the near completion stage when it all came tumbling down around me.

The assignment layout and presentation on submission day has been playing on my mind and seeing as there have been 3 Prime Ministers and 4 USA Presidents since I last did anything like this, things have changed, considerably. To put it another way, if I had missed Wednesdays lesson my assignment would have been 'returned to sender' no doubt.

The lecture on fine tuning the assignment, the talks with Steve and the valuable talk with Diane put things into perspective on Wednesday. I KNOW Ive done too much research, I KNOW I'm a bit eager to please and I KNOW that I have done things for this assignment that are maybe not required but that is in my genome structure and Im proud of that.

The fact of the matter is it did not meet the criteria expected of a college student. The learning curve this week has been 'not to do more than what is expected'.

I am treading a fine line, it's my nature to be meticulous in my work to achieve merit grades and achieve a high standard, I have done it for most of my life. I am left with a feeling that I am having to hold back on what I normally do. It's just that I do have a genuine enthusiasm for this course.

The people at college a great, there isn't one of them that is not approachable and I am enjoying it immensely.
I spent a small part looking at other peoples assignments. The ulterior motive was to check that mine was okay but I also helped a few out pointing out the odd spelling mistake and small inconsistencies.

I just have to get into the habit of acting and thinking like a student.

Anyway looking at the other blogs and people showing off their 'final' designs, heres mine.

Less Haste, More Speed

I sat down on Monday at 9.15am and proceeded to do a full days work. Things were going okay but time went by very quickly and by the end of the day I didn't seem to get a great deal done.

On Tuesday I decided to catch up and and I have to say 'what a difference a day makes'. I managed to do all the things I planned on Monday but much easier.

Ive been working on my design for the first assignment and was quite happy with it until going to college on Wednesday where I got some feedback on the layout from my classmates. The basic comments were very good and I think I gave others a few ideas from my work which was uplifting.

The plan is coming together and other than a fine tuning on what is a graphics heavy website, I feel I need to streamline it a bit more to make it quicker to download.

After designing the bulk of it from my drawings in Photoshop I was told that the final design was to be in Pagemaker which has put a bit more work into my schedule but have got to know Pagemaker a whole lot better in the process and it's limitations.

I also feel looking around at others that I have a nice compact website in comparison with some and have been designing it with a view as to what is achievable in Dreamweaver with the knowledge I have of the programme.

All in all a good days work was done today as the font I had used would not install in the college computers so I cracked on with my assignment layout and made a start on the design in pagemaker to finish off at home.

A learning curve is developing.