The Tide Is High But I'm Rolling On

I am pleased with how the current assignment is going. I have finally got to grips with keeping an assignment plan that I created that helps me to foresee any problems that may arise at a glance. This is then easily rectified if something happens to change that plan by always having some spare home study time to play with. The spare study window does close slowly towards the end of the assignment but by that time the bulk of the work has been done.

A typical example was creating my CD centre on Wednesday. My plan was to complete my booklet, my inner booklet and then concentrate on the centre. The first part I managed, however with other things going on and then remembering that my bleed needed to be created at the source file rather than in PageMaker, I put some time aside to do this. I had this in mind from the beginning and created my files at 310dpi to give myself some scope for these types of occurrences which I have always done in the past. It just gives you a safety net in case anything needs budging. I have also managed to create all the images without creeping out of the gamut range. Incidentally you can change the colour of the gamut warning in preferences if like me, the default colour is difficult to see against a sandy picture. I changed it to bright green so it was more visible when checking.

After thinking about my final design, I decided that it was still missing that extra something that said ‘electronic ambient music’. So it was a 5 step process to get to my final design. (the bottom one) This has been from a 20 step tweaking process from my first thoughts on this particular design. I know I have now captured the mood, the music, the genre and the title in a subtle and relaxing cover. I think I will try to do the title and artiste text in PageMaker and lose the gradient so the text really stands off the picture.

And here are the inner booklet and back cover. Page 4 will be the same as the cover minus text and the sandy tone overlay.


My idea for the CD centre took longer than I anticipated as what I was trying to create (a 2 colour section of part of my inner booklet) was extremely hard to pull off from my lack of knowledge with Freehand. I have rarely come across a program that has so many tools hidden away out of sight that unless you knew they were there you wouldn't know existed. I am still going to do this idea but with the use of a bitmap image that I can get down to 2 colours. I made the decision to use the black & white version of my logo on the centre as using the colour version will mean using up 2 of my 5 pantone colours just for this effect. A cost cutting exercise along with a simplistic design.

Another thing that has altered my time planning is the fact that Monday (my regular study day) falls on a bank holiday.

This is a time to spend with the family so for this week I am going to break it up into small sections when I am on my own.

I am pleased that everybody liked my designs even though it is hard to judge when you haven’t listened to the music. The track 'Orphan Waves' which the album is based upon is the best track on the album, so much so that it has made its way onto 'Now That's What Dean Calls Music Volume 4' something that is a constant ongoing production when I hear good songs. Like the electronic music it has an acquired taste and if it had to be summed up in one word, the word would be 'cheesy'.

I have my preflight document and my evaluation to finish but I am now on track. I do hope that everyone else is at the same point as I know for a fact that there were a few 'oh dears' going on when it was mentioned that your CD had to be 'actual 300dpi' and not interpolated artificially in Photoshop. I had a flyer come through the door that is a perfect example of low dpi text versus high quality vector text that I will bring in next Wednesday to show whoever is interested.

I have just completed a small free website for my Sons' Pre-School this week. I have done it for free because they are struggling for new starters in September and if they don't get enough applicants it may be forced to close. This will have a knock on effect as my son would therefore be out of preschool, meaning I will have to look after him, meaning I may not be able to complete year 2, which is not on my long term planning sheet. I have done the photography myself which permission had to be sought from each parent of the children involved. This is why my Alt Tags just say 'Pic 1’; 'Pic 2' etc as one of the conditions when seeking permission is that no child’s names or descriptions can be used.

I showed it to John as I have bought the domain name and space from him and with a few little tweaks using his advice looks a nice clean informative website which after one week has already brought 2 enquiries from another pre-school and a local school. Let me know what you think.

Ah, I can hear it echoing already "you could have done that easier in CSS".

Tell your friends and their children about the pre-school and I just may be able to learn it next year and stifle your constant preaching’s.