Dean Hubert - The College Years - HNC Interactive Media & Web Design

An Olympic Event

2007-06-13T13:43:00.000Z

Just a short blog to share this with everyone.

Saw it on the BBC website and I knew I had seen a similar design in my childhood. The controversial 2012 Olympic logo draws it's anarchic roots from the old Saturday morning show TISWAS. Flan flinging could still be an Olympic event.

If only they had gone with Richard Voysey's idea. An ingenious use of the first few letters to get the message across with the plus factor that it shouldn't give you an epileptic fit.

When I was 39, I had a very good year

2007-05-15T20:10:00.000Z

I was looking back over my initial Formative Statement as well as a few of my earlier blogs. I can see that before I even get into the fundamentals of the course that my writing style has changed to being more descriptive. I am constantly checking to make sure I have no grammatical errors. No doubt there are many throughout, but compared to before the course this has changed tremendously.

I originally began in September hoping to learn new skills in learning various web based programs. What has actually happened is that I have found out a lot more about the way I work, the way I plan, the way my thought processes work and my affinity for trying to end up with the best design possible by using my own initiative and not being swayed by the majority. In the end, the client is the number one priority, like the customer, they are always right. So what some people might see as having a first year of skill based assignments, what we actually have achieved is finding out about ‘us’. When you find yourself under a microscope and assessed on a regular basis, it gives you a chance to stand back and see yourself from a third person perspective.

It also helps to be pushed to develop your potential by being led down a path that is right for you. It would be easy to be told “that is good, this is bad” which is what you would get from a non committal teaching system. I have to admit that sometimes it has been hard to see a harshness that I usually wouldn’t have experienced in my younger days but the more you experience it the more you see it is relevant to the industry that we have chosen to further ourselves in.

I have enjoyed the SketchBlog assignment tremendously as it has been a good platform to air my views to a minority of relevant viewers. I am hoping that my mix of views, advice, feelings, pictures and explanations; I have achieved the learning outcomes that at the time of starting the assignment didn’t know much about. The Sketchbook has been a valuable source for expressing the thoughts that go into a design, along with some of the designs that didn’t make it, make up a learning process that can be seen by someone else and evaluated.

In the early days of the course I felt a bit disillusioned with some of the grades I was getting. After a few pointers of what is needed and how it should be presented I feel I am now well on my way to ‘thinking like a student’. I think my age and the new generation of learning was my biggest obstacle to contend with. I remember being terrified on the first hand in day that everything wasn’t how it should be or was in the wrong order.

I have met some great people too, in a different context than the usual circles that I travel in and this has been a tremendous help in creating a rapport between us all. There is no back biting or competitiveness, just a willingness to learn and get on with it. It is a real mix personalities but it all gels together nicely and makes for a relaxed working environment. I do hope that each and every one comes back next year.

The second year sounds like its going to be a test of wits. The first year was just a preparation it seems to get down to the ‘nitty gritty’. I am looking forward to learning the omnipotent CSS, this is my aim for next year to grab this bull by the horns and let it teach me the future. I know that this is when John steps in with his wisdom and knowledge.

I have been reading the first 2 assignments that have been posted on the HND site and I have to say they look very interesting. It’s good to see them early on because you can get the creative juices flowing in preparation. I am thinking about them already and hope that it will be a successful exercise.

Considering what our hopes and fears were from last year (some were a bit whimsical), my aims and goals for next year are as follows:

To learn CSS competently and effectively and not sacrifice design
To gain higher grades than the first year
To use my sketchbook more effectively than the first year
To input more thought processes and evaluation into my blog
To create a Dean Hubert Portfolio Website of work I have done
To become more confident in my approach to presentations
To actually get to the second year
To use InDesign instead of Pagemaker for Page Layout

The year has gone very quickly and looking back through my sketchbook and early blogs, I can see the improvement that I have made with a bit of guidance from the people in the know. I wish my first sketchbook looked like my second. I have begun to put the designs that didn’t make it in the second one to show the creation process from start to finish. I have actually started to plan ahead and manage my time more efficiently which is something I never even entertained before. I am looking at design all around me in a different way. I am seeing colour in a different light than I did before. I am noticing how text is laid out on a page when I’m reading the Sunday papers. I am finding myself giving advice to people who are unsure if their corporate identity suits their target market. My typing skills have improved along with my spelling and eye for accuracy.

Thank you to all involved and long may it continue.

The Tide Is High But I'm Rolling On

2007-05-03T16:07:00.000Z

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.

Life's A Beach

2007-04-27T14:48:00.000Z

A very productive day on Wednesday that seemed to be filled with answers to a lot of questions I had without actually asking. A talk on how to prepare files was very worthwhile and just confirmed a few things that I already knew but wasn’t sure if things had changed since I used to deal with the printing industry. I am still amazed that in this day of modern technology and higher resolutions that printers still work at 300dpi as they did in the days 20 years ago.

Converting to CMYK is still relevant too when using the 4 colour ink process. The reason our monitors view as RGB and print is CMYK is easily explained in the images below. The name usually given to this difference is sometimes called ‘additive’ and ‘subtractive’ colour. The monitors use RGB together to create white on a screen, take the 3 colours away and the image would be black. Whereas no CMYK printed on a piece of paper obviously make white. CMYK mixed make up your solid colours.

I was pleased with my pre-assessment for the sketchblog assignment. This has been the most enjoyable for me from the whole course. A way of sharing your thoughts and inspirations, yet at the same time seeing how others react to the same situations that we all find ourselves in, along with a book to record good designs that can actually be used at some point in the future has also worked well. Imagine if everyone did this with their everyday life, kept a scrapbook of memories, events and thoughts throughout their life and it was given to your immediate family at your funeral. Would they not be able to see your life from a totally different perspective? I can see that blogs will be a good way of achieving this in the future.

I happened upon what has to be regarded as the website of the year for me so far. My brother pointed it out to me. You can find it at www.tomahawkhotels.co.uk. You have got to see it and tell me what you think. Useability? Accessibility? Target Audience catered for? W3 compliant? I don’t know and I don’t care, I was just blown away how the pictures for the rooms implode into view like a movie special effect. Let me know if you can better it for graphical content, in the meantime I will try and find out how much they were charged (strictly for research purposes).

As I mentioned on Craig Allington’s blog about listening to the music of our chosen CD to inspire the design, and also incorporating the title into one neat package. He has incorporated both in his latest idea. After listening to mine the few times that I have, I found images popping into my head of being sat on a quiet, sunny beach with my headphones on. So my idea to incorporate this beach theme into my own design gels nicely together with the title ‘Orphan Waves’.

After spending an hour looking through coastal photographs through online photo libraries it dawned on me when I got home that the photo I was searching for was under my nose all along on my hard drive in ‘my holiday photos’. And what’s more it’s ‘royalty free’. The hard part for me is finding a way to alter chosen images in a way that compliments the music at the same time showing my ability to design.

I spent quite a bit of time 'inside' freehand when doing my logo, so this time as we are nearing the end of the assignment I am doing my CD centre in Freehand, Cover Image in Photoshop and the cover layouts and inserts in Pagemaker so I meet all the learning outcomes effectively or otherwise.

Timeplan Revised

2007-04-23T13:43:00.000Z

UPDATE FROM PREVIOUS BLOG:
After using the timeplan to plan the next 3 weeks. I noticed it needed altering slightly to accommodate the date and split college time away from home study time to make it easier to navigate.

The HNC version can be found here.

It can even be split onto 2 A4 Sheets if you find it too small to show 4 weeks at a time.

Assignment Timeplanning Solved?

2007-04-23T09:55:00.000Z

I know it's a bit late for this assignment but after my talk with John the other week I decided to do something about my forward time planning. Discussions in the class to design something that would suffice everyone seemed to break down early on and no definite decision was made.

I hope I have come up with a forward planning sheet for the whole of an assignment to suit both HNC and HND's planning. The sample forms below are based on an 8 week assignment but can be adapted at the beginning to suit any length, be it 4 weeks or 10 weeks.
Please have a look at them and tell me if they would work for you.

These would then go alongside the sheets that are already provided that work well for week by week planning. I have thought about this quite a bit and the forward planning has always seemed to be my downfall when the grades are handed out.

Comments appreciated please, print them out and try them, it may just help you to create a good 'overall' timeplan without having loads of sheets of paper to sort through that can be confusing during an assignment when sorting out the workload. Not every line needs to be filled out, the lines/hours are to give you a choice on how you spread a task out.

PDF Versions can be downloaded for you to print out better quality here.
HNC
HND
HND2

On another subject, I am a member of www.juicybrainspanel.com where you fill out questionnaires about all subjects and get rewarded with amazon vouchers. The one last week was called 'how creative are you?' so thought it would be just up my street. Upon completing it I was amazed to find I was in the top 1% of the highly creative population.

It made me slightly proud on the day and was a little boost to the ego for at least 4 minutes.

Final Logo

2007-04-16T12:49:00.000Z

I finally finished my logo for the Ambient World record label. This is the finished version after playing around changing colours and fonts. It has also been measured accurately so everything has a place and is surrounded by a white box when appearing on any other colour but white.

It has a 4:3 ratio as the design would have changed dramatically had it been 2:1 or 1:1. I am hoping that I can get some further comments, especially from the people who opted for one of my other designs. I went with my gut about what the image of the record label should try to portray. I think the colours say 'ambient' while there is an element of 'world' in there. All the while looking like it could belong to a company that produces and sells music of that genre.

I don't know how other people have found working with Freehand but this job alone has taken quite a bit of time as I have had the added task of learning Freehand. I have never used a drawing programme and thinking it would be just like Photoshop was far from the mark.

I kept in mind that among the learning outcomes was to use a Drawing Application effectively. I was hoping that I would have grasped enough knowledge to have a go at creating my CD cover in this application but with the deadline approaching I feel I won't have the time to spend using this programme to it's full potential as I can see from the sample files that it is a very powerful tool indeed.

It is a shame that we can't explore these types of programmes more when there isn't a deadline looming over our heads. I have just touched the surface of Freehand and would like to delve a little deeper when time and workload isn't against me.

A Nice Break

2007-04-10T17:52:00.000Z

I am really enjoying the Easter Holidays so far. It's nice to have a break from college. However, my wife is getting fed up of me keep pointing out logos and saying what is good and bad about them. It is all around you and you try to look for the hidden meanings or wonder what was going through peoples minds when they created them. I find the whole thing fascinating and feel it is something I would like to delve into more in the future.

I have been tinkering with Freehand a little more now that I have the same version as college, I only had Freehand 10 before and it is vastly different to the v.11 that we use in class. I am still at a loss how they manage to create these fantastic renderings with shading and texture from a few lines. I am looking out for a cheap Graphics Tablet as I find it difficult to use the mouse in some instances. This is something I am going to train in further in the Summer holidays when I have more time. This week has been all about keeping the kids happy, Days Out, Funfairs, Theme Parks, in fact any excuse to empty my wallet. Been nice though.

I have had a few people ask for websites this week and after going to see them armed with a website plan and lots of recently gained knowledge they all went for it. I looked a lot more professional than I have done in the past and knew what I was talking about when it came to accessibility and useability. They showed me previous websites that had been built for them and I was able to show them exactly what I mean when it came to getting lost in a bad navigation system.

It's all the little things that you don't realise at the time that make up the knowledge. All the rest just falls into it's own little place in your subconscious ready to be used at your command.

Orphan Waves

2007-03-30T12:03:00.000Z

A pass grade was all I could muster for the last assignment. A bit disappointed to say the least as I am trying to pull out all the stops to achieve what I know I can achieve. I thought I had all the merit and distinction criteria covered but alas, it was not to be. Until I get my mark sheet I won't know on which parts of the learning outcome I failed to do.

The next assignment will be different; I have my eye on the goals and my finger on the pulse. I had a one to one with Mr Munday on Tuesday!! which opened my eyes a little as to what time planning is all about. I have always filled out the forms honestly and fairly as regards a diary of my self study but I can see now that the 'forward' planning is not just about pleasing the tutors but to aid me in my own planning of a task. And you know what? it works. Thanks John for a very informative hour that would have been far better being two hours, even three.

Being able to split the next assignment into hours, and the hours into separate tasks I can see beyond the trees for once. Although the sheet I handed in on Wednesday did not really contain the information I wanted it to, as I had only gained this insight on the Tuesday afternoon before.

Our Wednesday morning session was just as enjoyable as the previous Wednesdays. Being able to look at the logos that my fellow peers had created was an eye opener. This type of task is when you can see how the rest of the group thinks. I was particularly impressed with Rich's, Bens, Mirhads’ and Marcs’. When the majority was unsure of which they liked best, reducing them to a small size usually made up their mind for them.

The group was split when it came to my 4 main designs and in the end it was my decision using the feedback I had been given, I am now experimenting with different colours on my final 2.

It has been an interesting self study week when I finally got round to designing my logo in Freehand. I am finally getting to grips with how the basic tools work and how path points and curves are created. I would like to go into Freehand more in-depth but I need to keep the rest of the assignment in my mind and stick to my planning sheet which so far is going to schedule. I had to rearrange it a little bit on Wednesday as some of my logos would not open at college due to the lack of fonts, so I used the time to research a bit into Spyra, the whole concept of creating electronic ambient music and gathered some ideas together on what the target market would want to see on the CD cover from the information I had translated from listening to the music.

When I listened to the CD for the first time, I sat with my sketchbook and wrote down keywords and thoughts that cropped up in my mind from hearing each track. The list by the end of the CD looked like a nostalgia trip to the eighties. I now have more understanding on what this type of listener would want to see on a CD of this genre and hopefully I will fulfill that with my final design in time.

As you all know I buy a lot from Amazon. I regard these people to be one of the best in the buying online market.
Every now and again they send me emails with a list of recommended reading material that is supposed to be a 'personal' insight into what I might like. Either they have a camera hidden in my house or they can read my mind. I have included a screenshot to show you what they recommend this month. It's uncanny.

Have a good Easter holiday and will see you all in 3 weeks refreshed and overdosed on Chocolate.

Any Dream Will Do

2007-03-24T14:36:00.000Z

Again, an enjoyable morning on Wednesday looking at more logos. I wasn’t really prepared to get up and talk about my favourite but enjoyed listening to my fellow peers’ views on their favourite logos. My favourite that I knew a bit about having done some research was ‘amazon’ which is very clever but my utmost favourite is the governments recycling logo. It has everything. (apart from a 1:1 or 2:1 Aspect ratio) It’s green to convey environmentally friendliness, it’s clear and concise, readable font, has a circle to say what it is trying to say, and has a heart to show love. Brilliant example of a simple logo that does what it says on the tin.

I haven’t done any more sketches since Wednesday but a weird thing happened on Thursday night, I designed one in my sleep. When I woke up I remembered the design and wrote it down and it is by far the best so far in my sketchbook. I even dreamt the colour scheme which shoots down the theory that we dream in black and white. I wonder if I can put these 8 hours of sleep down as ‘self study’ or use it as a merit and distinction category for ideas generation. Nah, didn’t think so. I can’t work out whether I have an overactive subconscious doing my work for me or I’m just sad and that I have nothing else to dream about.

I’ve been looking at logos outside, on the web and in magazines for 2 weeks now and find them really interesting, even the crap ones. I think everyone should have a logo just for their own name that conveys their personality.

When it comes to putting my ideas down in a vector format and experimenting further, I fear my only let down is going to be my lack of Freehand knowledge. The timescale doesn’t allow for too much training to create the type of logos that I have seen on my travels. Although my sketches give the basic idea, you can never tell if an idea is going to work until you have tried it with various fonts and shapes. Certain ideas will work with certain fonts, whether the font stretches below the baseline, seeing if all letters can be made the same length, using Capitals or Lowercase. How thin or how thick the font is, if one font should be used or more than 2?

So I am taking my sketchbook to work with me this weekend to try and choose my favourite 4 in between sets and bingo. I can then use Monday to put these ideas into a nice clean, crisp, accurately measured format in time for Wednesday. All the time listening to my chosen CD.

Incidentally if any of you aren’t doing anything on Friday 30^th March and fancy coming along to see what I actually do for a living, I will be performing at the Lupset Hotel on Horbury Road.

Hopefully we will have learned our Wolfram Der Spyra medley by then.

Einstein A Logo

2007-03-17T09:03:00.000Z

Another interesting talk, this time from ex-student Marc Bowers. He works at Real Radio and like Jonny the previous week seems to really enjoy his job and the company he works for. Would be interesting to see any students who haven't found gainful employment and their struggle to find a job. How they would have changed things and what they would have done different.

The morning of Wednesday was filled with one of my favourite subjects: Logo Design. The lecture asked questions like instant recognition and what to look for in a logo and the theories behind the logo from an advertisers point of view. This is somehting that I look at all the time and was relishing the fact that the next assignment would be to design a logo. After an indepth but informative lecture we were told to design not only a logo for a company but a whole CD cover, inlay and centre for an album that actually does exist. We chose a title and next Wednesday we are listening to the music of said title which by all accounts is music for ears of a trained persuasion.

It's nice that that I have an assignent that combines both my love for design and my love for music and even though I have had chosen for me a title that sounds pretty and retro, I know that the design will have to be based on our own interpretation of the music. The one I have been assigned is 'Orphan Waves by Spyra'. Looking at some reviews on the internet I am interested to hear what one reviewer describes as "Bleeps and static give way to a slow relaxed rhythm and little delicate melody that you can just lay back and luxuriate in,"

when I listen to music I listen to the lyrics over anything else and I am hoping that this piece will contain some throughout its length. These would at least give some clues to how the cover would look. I have a book already that may be useful, '100 Best Selling Albums of the 80's'. Looking at albums nowadays the designs haven't changed that much and very rarely relate to the title.

This week I am cutting out logos from magazines for ideas, (something I have always fancied doing but never had a good enough excuse other than being sad). I am also taking my sketchbook to work to jot some ideas down for the 'Ambient World' logo until I get my piece of music to either inspire me or destroy my music system.

Some good logo sites to give you inspiration. This one has all the most famous ones and an explanation on how it came to be. (don’ t you just love a good back-story)
Here is a massive A-Z of just about every famous major corporate logo, you can also download some in vector format.

Finally my favourite explanation and please tell me if you already knew as I didn’t, and think the idea is brilliant. It’s good old amazon, and guess what? The orange arrow or ‘smile’ underneath is actually pointing from ‘a-z’. Ingeniously clever and well hidden meaning? Or have I just been thick missing the message?

I'm Bad, I'm Bad, Sh'mone

2007-03-09T13:08:00.000Z

I am relieved to say the least that another assignment has been handed in. It has been the biggest learning curve so far and has given me a taste of what I want for the future. Being at college has been a real eye opener, it hasn't just been a case a doing the job that is presented to you, it makes you look at things in a whole new light. Opportunities are everywhere and new things that you didn't know about are just 'happened' upon.

It is getting to the stage now where I am looking at work I have done in the past and seeing that it does not meet certain criteria or it is incomplete. I have taken it upon myself to contact a lot of my previous clients and tell them just what a bad job I did and I am sure with what I know now I can do them a much better job. With websites, it has come to fruition that the design and look of a website is only half the job. The functionality, accessibility and usability is the other half and think that both things should be looked at as a separate entity and charged accordingly. Whether these people are willing to pay for this extra input is up to them but my job now is to let them know how important this is.

I did quite a bit of research into search engines, keywords and ranking (see previous blogs) and I have managed to get my assignment website in the top 5 of a Google search when looking for 'your pc explained' & 'pc explained'. This was just an experiment to see if it could be done by using googles' addurl and verification service. I now know that when I do my portfolio I can play up there with the big boys by using the correct keywords and phrases carefully.

I designed a flyer from an old template I made a while ago and have just had 5000 A5's printed. I gave the client a final proof and purposely put an error in it to make sure he had read it correctly. I knew he was not scrutinising it like he should and he didn't pick up on it. However when I sent the design to the printers, they said they had looked at the website that was printed on the flyer and it wasn't there. I quickly realised that I had used .co.uk instead of .com on the flyer without realising. Neither the client, nor I, had seen this error that could have been costly. The cost would have been to the client though and not to me as I had given him a final proof to check thoroughly. Next time I am going to use a similar system that the printers gave to me where you sign a form saying that all has been checked and you are happy with the design.

Incidentally, I shopped around quite a bit for the cheapest and best quality litho prints I could find on the internet and managed to get them for £96 delivered. For 5000 full colour A5’s that’s not bad at all. If you need any they are Fairprint, be warned though, they are the same price for 1000 as they are for 5000 so it is worth getting 5000 and using them as toilet paper for a while.

Looking forward to next Wednesday when we get the next assignment and open up a Pandora’s Box of design wonderments.

Honey Pie

2007-03-03T12:13:00.000Z

What I thought was going to be a run of the mill talk on Wednesday from Jonny Haynes turned out to be very interesting and very informative, he really knows his stuff and looks like he is doing well for himself, so much so that I emailed to tell him. It did help that he was an interesting guy and certainly had the patter for talking. His use and knowledge of CSS seems to be the foundation that I need to build on.

This assignment deadline has really crept up on us and it has been one of the most enjoyable so far. With doing websites beforehand I was able to use my study time for learning about different things, in particular CSS. The involvement of CSS in this project has led to a few messes up with coding and things happening and not knowing the answers to.

The main outcome has given me a new willingness to learn something that I know nothing about and I'm looking forward to it. I know there are quite a few in the group who also didn't know anything about CSS and they have really come into their own on this project to the point where they are showing the stalemate CSS gurus how to do it. I must admit I was impressed by this and couldn't believe what I was seeing.

I finally got my feedback forms back from every single person, even though it was a bit late in the day. The outcome of that was very very positive for me and gave me the impression that there wasn't much to change. One thing that I had thought about was the use of green for the jargon bar and the same green for one of the categories, this was picked up by an unexpected source and prompted me to change it. There have been some minor changes from the feedback I received but on the whole I am happy and my only problem now is to put this information into chart form which I had not planned on. My questions were mainly made up of yes and no answers and self opinion. Seeing as how all the answers were yes the pie charts would be 100% each which in effect is just a circle.

I am spending the rest of the week tweaking, finalising and completing my Evaluation which I am told can exceed the word count if need be, this was welcoming news. Also glad to know we have a 5pm deadline which gives a little bit of time on Wednesday to fine tune.

Amazon Grace, How Sweet The Sound

2007-02-25T13:39:00.000Z

First of all thanks to all my fellow peers who helped me out with my user testing on my site, both of you. I have had to resort to asking friends, family and basically anyone who knocks at the door to help me improve upon it for next week.

This week has been filled with illness in my household and I am suffering from a bad back which hurts mostly when I sit in front of the PC. I thought I would use this time to read and try and absorb some information that I may find useful in the future.

I was reading about broadband speeds and the fact that even though your ISP may say that you have a 4MB connection the fact is in most cases it won’t be working how it should. There are various tests on the internet that you can run but a recommended one that gives detailed information can be found at www.thinkbroadband.com. Mine came out just slightly below the 2MB that it should be but that is due to this fraction being used for ‘upstreaming’ as this part of the 2MB is less used than the downstreaming.

For my own amusement in my spare time I have been looking into capturing video, editing and converting to DVD. Just over a year ago I bought a Dazzle DV Bridge unit that cost me nearly £200. In just a short time the cost of buying a DVD recorder has come down so much that it is worth buying one to do your converting for you (providing you have analogue in connections) and at the same time you have yourself a DVD recorder for recording TV programmes to boot. Im looking into buying one of these in the near future. I have so many VHS Videos that could be compressed onto just a few DVD’s it would save space and be more secure.

I’m looking forward to getting back to college on Wednesday after missing last week. I need some snippets of advice on the magic of CSS which I have been using in my assignment 100% more than I used to. My website is practically complete and I hope to research more into CGI, in particular Formmail which I am informed that we should hopefully be getting a small tutorial about shortly.

Lastly, anyone who actually reads my blog and is in the market for a USB Pen Drive and your after something else from Amazon. They are down to a BARGAIN £2.14 for 1GB and £7.19 for 2GB.
If you want to buy something to make it up to £15.00 to take advantage of the free delivery then check out this website. Type in the amount you need to make it up to £15.00 and it will search Amazon for something EXACTLY that price.

Nifty, informative, useful.

Uptown Top Ranking

2007-02-16T16:15:00.000Z

This week was my first time of being absent from college. I do believe that because I only go one day per week I should be able to attend what ever I feel like, however I was full of cold and so were my kids, also I didn’t want to spread my germs around a closed environment. I was a bit fed up missing the user feedback testing as I had my site ready and my form all ready to go.

I do hope my fellow peers can help me out here by downloading my Feedback Form and looking at my website www.dhubert.co.uk and give me the feedback that I missed out on. I have had a few people fill out the form already and even now at this early stage it is interesting to see what a third party will pick up on that I would be otherwise blind to. The website form does not work so please don’t fill it in as I am in the middle of trying to get this to be fully functional.

I am enjoying creating this website as it has a lot of new elements in it that I have been learning in my self study time. The main one being CSS. I can see the very important advantages of using CSS from a ‘cascading’ point of view but would like to learn the advantages of actually ‘creating’ the site using CSS language. There are lots of tips and tricks to remember when designing this way but how is this advantageous over a WYSIWYG way of creating a website? I have read numerous articles both in print and on the net but I still haven’t grasped the idea of using coded language to impress upon a piece of text to be padded by 5 pixels when the Dreamweavers tabular approach does this with a click of a button. I think I need to be sat down in a dark room with a light shining in my face to explain the benefits of when to use CSS and when to use Dreamweaver.

On another subject I have been researching ranking and search engines, Google in particular. Every time I create a new website I get asked the same questions as soon as it is finished.
Why isn’t my website appearing in Google?
Why aren’t I in the top 10 in Google?
When I search for ‘man’, why don’t I appear in Google? I’m a man so I should be there. Etc, etc, etc.

It used to be, a long time ago, that you just had to embed Meta Tags in your HTML pages with a title, description and as many keywords you could think of. Investigating it now it seems that things have changed a little, mainly to do with the vastness of the ever growing internet. You now have to add your website to the Google addurl link, this stops the big submitting programs from submitting irrelevant material in bulk. Even then you are not guaranteed to appear. You then have to verify that you own the website by inserting a page that Google will tell you what to name, upload it to the server, then get it verified. You then have to go one step further after all this by creating an XML sitemap and attaching it to your domain. Which is what I am looking into at the moment.

I am all googled out now but as a thank you for filling out my feedback form and sending it back to me I will leave you with this useless but fun link I came across while researching search engine ranking. Just type in a name and it creates a Google style logo for you. Here’s one I made earlier.

My Website is Neopolitan in Flavour

2007-02-09T14:41:00.000Z

A very interesting day was had by all on Wednesday. I do like the little tutorial talks as I find this is an excellent way to learn, not just for me but for the whole of the group. This is how I thought this course would be most of the time but the bulk of it is finding out on our own. A follow up tutorial would be good in the afternoon after playing around and noting any questions you may have and problems that need arise or need solving.

Creating a form is relatively easy to achieve in Dreamweaver as all the elements are ready and waiting for you to insert onto your page. It’s the CGI script, editing and linking up to the form that’s the problem. I have usually always taken the easy way out by using a PHP script to process the form but I have set myself some personal goals for this website. These are personal goals and are not part of the goals on my assignment, they may be small but it gave me a chance to make things different this time.

The first goal was consciously going for a horizontal navigation system rather than a vertical one as I tend to do vertical ones all the time. I think it looks smarter in certain instances; however this particular website would have been more advantageous using frames to keep the navigation bar in the same place on each page. I stopped working in frames a while ago and as it wasn’t to be used on this assignment I decided against it.

The second goal was to create my navigation buttons using text boxes and not pictures. I have always used images to achieve navigation buttons as rollovers are easy to produce and you can use any font you like with an image. The disadvantages are bigger download times which was a third goal to try and cut down on. Doing it this way was purposeful in the fact it gave me a chance to learn a little bit about CSS, something which I have never used. I can see the advantages of CSS for cascading throughout but still have to see the value of using CSS as a way of actually creating a website from scratch.

Another goal was to use fonts that I had not used before, as this is a bit limiting with ‘web safe’ fonts I chose TREBUCHET. This changed when designing the website as it always looked different on various platforms, Apple Macs being the biggest to change the way it looked. Although Apple Mac users are not the target audience for this website it would still cut down my user audience which I wasn’t prepared to do, so I opted for ever faithful, good old readable, VERDANA.

This is the first time have used Alt tags throughout a website and can now see the advantages of doing so after some fellow peer testing outside of college, it was brought to my attention just how visible these are in Internet Explorer but not as much in Firefox which is what I use.

Thanks to James and Craig for their help in sorting out my CSS for me, getting it to do the things I need it to do is proving difficult aesthetically. I’m sure there are ways around it that I just don’t know about or have the knowledge to do. I think I will wait for user testing day next Wednesday to get some more input before I go around changing things at this early stage. What I think is wrong may be right in other peoples eyes. (which happens a lot in this trade)

If anybody wants to give me comments about things that are very wrong they can do so but there is still some ironing out that is still ongoing. An overall first impression is what I need.
www.dhubert.co.uk

Haven’t had a good analogy for ages but basically just tell me what the cake smells like and not how it tastes.
The cakes for Valentines day.

London Boys

2007-02-02T18:18:00.000Z

This Wednesday was the trip to London that we had been looking forward to for some time. After a pleasant journey we proceeded to make our way to the tube where we got split up after only 20 minutes. This was the start of an eventful day that would see us sliding, drinking, walking, talking and shopping.

The main reason for visiting London was to see the wondrous ideas that the Tate Modern would fill our heads with, only to find that all the exhibits were closed due to industrial action. After a couple of goes on the slides that adorn their corridors, which was a laugh, we met up to find some of our group had gone to the design gallery which I wouldn’t have minded myself.

It was then a case of just wondering off on our own steam to meet up at 6.30 to get something to eat. I didn’t have a clue where I was, where I was going or what I wanted to do. I presumed there would be more of a plan and some tips on what might be useful. My only knowledge of London comes from Monopoly. It is not a place I have visited frequently and know much about.

It was interesting and an eye opener, I have never seen so many people in one city with 75% of them jogging. The architecture is awe inspiring, spoiled only by the masses of builders’ cranes adorning the landscape. Our group just set off with no clue and no plan, after looking for a tube station for nearly an hour we ended up in Soho where we made the decision to split up as we all wanted to do different things and with a group so large you could not please everybody. Even after splitting up, the idea of a good day out in London was all very self opinionated. It was a case of trying to please everybody by doing a little of what everybody wanted.

I got to know a few people a lot better and talked to people who I don’t usually talk to at college. As a team building exercise it was a total success, as an aid to my design development not as much.

High point of the day was when Jamie, Chris, Craig and myself happened upon, by accident, Trafalgar Square all lit up at night time (I took these 3 guys because if I had lost them we had a spare of each). We had a great laugh and each of us had our breath taken away from the floodlit architecture all around us.
An exhilarating end to a very interesting day.
Thanks to all who made my day a good one and I hope Steve will arrange another visit in the future so we can see what we missed this time.
On another note, to appease you guys who view my blog on a Mac and told me that the font size was too small, I have edited it to a larger font size in the hope it will be readable by all.
Let me know if it is better or not.

I wanna, dream lover, so I don't have to dream alone!

2007-01-26T12:21:00.000Z

The general feeling amongst my fellow peers this week was one of frustration. Getting to grips with an application as vast as Dreamweaver is quite an undertaking in such a short space of time, even with a good knowledge of page layout and design programmes. The how's, which's and where's are easy, it's the why's that get you. Why are my tables collapsing? Why does my cell appear a different size in my browsers? why are there 3 layout modes? Why does this colour not match up? Why won't my table stretch to the bottom?

These are a few of the many questions I was asked on Wednesday from various people in the class, as if I was some kind of Guru or 'dream weaver'. Truth is, (and if you look at one of my first blog entries you will see why) I am on this course because I had a portion of knowledge about various design applications, just enough to get by, and the idea was to learn the rest by having it taught to me in a bit more detail. I knew the how's, which's and where's before September. I, like many others, wanted to know the why's.

I am learning at the same rate as everyone else, the only difference being I have a head start, or so I thought. There are others in the group who are far more experienced in how to put a website together but maybe don't have the creativity to end up with a polished, appeasing product. Then there are the ones who have a great eye for design but not sure how to put it into practice due to their limited knowledge of Deamweaver. I'm sure that most of the class fall into one of these categories, myself included.

I am very interested to see what happens on the user testing day on the 14th February. A recreation of the St Valentines day massacre? or will Cupid be shooting around his arrows of love and adorance?

The only advice I can give at this stage is to check out these 3 books. They are listed in order of preference. These books were invaluable when I started from nothing, to creating websites that were far from dynamic but half decent.

Dreamweaver 8 for dummies, Amazon, £11.21
Dreamweaver 8 Bible, Amazon, £22.39
Sams Teach Yourself Macromedia Dreamweaver 8 in 24 Hours £14.51
(note: Sam is a big fat liar)

If you buy all 3 of these books you may also need to check out this link too.

In my own work/spare time, I finished a website this week using the same ideas I used for my assignment screen designs. The concept being that I thought it would help me practice creating a similar website and make my assignment go much quicker. I created this one in Dreamweaver 4 which although it has it's limitations, is easy to get to grips with. I am creating the assignment site in Dreamweaver 8 which is like going from a Reliant Robin to a F1 Grand Prix car overnight.
Very similar but watch those turns.

Comments very much appreciated and YES they asked for an intro screen. However I would like to know why there is a white box around the animation in IE6 but not in Firefox. If you know how I can solve this then please let me know. And please tell me in plain English. (sorry CSS trio)

I also created a small 3 page website for a Roy Orbison tribute act who has finally taken the big step of getting a web presence. Doing this website has also taught me about frames, search engines, keywords and ranking. Thanks to John for explaining this in a very informative email and somethiing I aim to find out more about over the coming weeks.

Maker of Dreams, Creator of Nightmares

2007-01-20T09:11:00.000Z

Nice to be back after the Christmas period and nice to see that everyone else is back too, all eager to get started on the next assignment.

On Wednesday, those who had not used Dreamweaver before were treated to a small tutorial on the basics of this wonderful little/massive program. I decided to listen in on the lecture as the whole idea of me being on this course is to learn new things. I have never used Dreamweaver 8 so it was nice to see how this new version is different. I have to admit that it was worthwhile as I found lots of new and quicker ways to do things with it.

I feel sorry for some of my peers being thrown in at the deep end to create a full website with a program they hardly know nothing about. It took me 3 months on and off using Dreamweaver for dummies and then moving onto the Dreamweaver bible. It was worth it, this is the application that makes it all worthwhile. Along with Photoshop you will all be designing like professionals in no time. Even though the deadline seems pretty tight with a project of this magnitude.

I am looking forward to the London trip as it will be a chance to relax and get to know some of the people who I don't usually talk to. This trip, although a worthwhile exercise means another day less to have the website ready for user testing on February 14th.

I was over the moon with my assignment grade and felt like my hard work had paid off. It gave me a bit of a boost along with a sense of relief that a fairly large obstacle was over. I am now back in the ‘zone’ and eagerly looking forward to the rest of the semester. A few things have been straightened out at college and at home and I feel like I am starting with a clean slate.

On another subject, this week I decided to give the Kitchen Designer on the B&Q website a go as we need a new kitchen at home and needed to find a rough cost. A company of this size should have the money and the knowledge to pull this off but I found that what looks like a marvelous idea, fell at every hurdle.

It is classed as the ‘only online kitchen designer in the world’ but I don’t think it has ever undergone any serious user testing. These are the problems I found.
It only works in IE but does not tell you the fact.

The kitchen layout is far too small for any screen size.
When inserting a door it has a no go area surrounding it and doesn’t count for doors opening the other way.
When inserting a window it doesn’t ask how high from the floor it is.
After 2 hours of trying the final drawing could not be rendered.
The ‘email us your problem’ form does not have a submit button.
On the main site none of the feedback forms get processed.
The only email link that works is the ‘send us a compliment’ link.

I sent them (eventually) a long email stating the problems and asking if they have actually sold a kitchen using this method but so far have had no reply.

Award winning? I need proof.

Where do you keep your ketchup?

Formative Statement 2

2007-01-12T10:17:00.000Z

As a follow on to my formative statement, this is an update on my progress so far on the HNC course.

When I started the course in September I thought that it would be plain sailing and I would find the whole thing relatively easy. I was wrong.

The detail that goes into an assignment is like nothing I have ever done before. I myself have a need for the detailed things in life but the attention that has to be maintained throughout the two assignments so far has been immense. I wonder if my fellow peers have the same problem or if they are used to it with doing these kinds of courses before.

Learning has always been a great love of my life especially when it is something I enjoy and I do enjoy the course because it is a challenge in more ways than one. In 3 months I have learnt lots of things I didn’t know about before so I imagine the things I will learn after 2 years will certainly help me later on in life. It is crucial that I complete this course and get good grades as it is my last chance to do something for a living that I enjoy. Retraining at my stage of life not only gets harder but the chances of gaining employment also decreases. I feel I have the skills, as I stated in my earlier Formative Statement but they just need to be nurtured and developed.

On top of this I have met a new group of people who I can call friends that will drop everything to help out each other which you rarely find in this competitive industry. I have got to know them well, not just in the class environment but also their inner thoughts from reading their blogs. It is like being given permission to read someone’s mind and even be able to comment on it. The blog allows you to gain insight into someone’s persona without having to talk to them that much.

I enjoy working with Drew who is on the same section of the course as me as we have very similar ideas but from different eras. What he thinks is retro was modern when I was his age. Funny how things are viewed 20 years on. I am also looking forward to working with Chris who is joining our small feedback group.

I am happy with my progression but I have to admit that I was taken aback a little when I got a referral for my first assignment, however this was quickly sorted and gave me a good starting point to make my next assignment that much better. I thought initially when the course began that I would just need to work to get through each day but what has changed is now I am doing my best, not trying to do my best but DOING my best.

I have to admit that I find the note taking quite laborious at times but you never know when you are going to need parts of it so writing everything down sort of covers your back. The references in the assignment are another thing that can make or break a time plan if they are not thought about correctly. Sequential numbering per page would be far better than sequential throughout as this would enable you to add and change sections without the need to renumber the whole lot. This alone did stop me a few times altering parts that I thought could be improved upon but to add one paragraph would have meant nearly 20 minutes of renumbering.

Niggles aside I am looking forward to starting again and getting down to some serious design and creation. I hope that things will be explained in full all the way through this time. A couple of times I have felt like a high diver who has jumped off the diving board only to be told at the last minute that I am diving into the shallow end.
Everyone was told that on Thursday.

Another Year Over, A New One Just Begun

2007-01-05T10:51:00.000Z

It seems that wherever you go the world is full of design, some good, some bad.

It wasn't until I started this course that I realised just how much design plays a part of our lives. Advertising is the main use of it as it is intended to make you buy a product just because it looks nice and is well designed, even if you don't really need it. I have been taken in by this lots of times but lately I am beginning to see under the surface of the design and actually look at the product.

I imagine the meetings when the client comes into the advertisers office. There must be so many tips and tricks to make the packaging, the advert and the appeal to the target audience. Yes, just like designing a website.

I am going to be more wary of this when buying products but at the same time use it shrewdly in my own work in the forthcoming months. Christmas has taught me this when buying toys for the kids. The 2 main presents for each of my children were a nightmare. We were taken in by the advertising and the packaging, ultimately buying inferior products. While they did not tell untruths, they skipped over what you shouldn't know by showing just the good points.

I started building up Mega Motors Anti-Grav Barrel Challenge on Christmas day. It says on the pack 'suitable for 8 years and over'. Now that might be the right age to play it but to build it you had to have a degree in highway maintenance, physics, engineering and have the remarkable ability to kneel down for great lengths of time.

I finally finished building the track on 3rd January working on and off, constantly spurred on by a 6 year old whose excitement was getting the better of him.

The children have great smiles on their faces, the cars whizz round at great speeds with lights on, the controllers are enabling you to control the speed.I am talking about the picture on the box. In reality what we have for our £50.00 is a track that was built spanning 2 years, the loops fall down when a car goes over them, so far the most one car has done is half a lap without falling off and now we are left with the fear of putting it away and having to do this all again when they play with it next time.

Don't get me started on the other present.

Always learning.

So this is Christmas, and what have we done?

2006-12-29T12:25:00.000Z

A week into my holiday and I thought I could take a break from thinking like a designer. Even on Christmas morning, the kids were opening their presents and I found myself looking at the packaging, seeing how the kids reacted to the colours on the box, was it easy to read? did the picture on the box reflect accurately what was inside?

I suppose if you are thinking about your future all the time and how you are going to pay the mortgage, this is how you think. I know this from my singing job. If I hear a song on the radio I write it down with a view to performing it myself. Is it good? Would it keep the audience interested for 3 minutes? Would we use microphone stands or hold the mics? Should we move around? Which set would it go in to be most effective?

I have been like this for as long as I can remember, low latent inhibition (look it up) is about the closest I can describe these feelings. I see objects and people and rather than see a whole I tend to strip them down into separate elements and emotions that helps gain a better understanding. I do have a knack of judging people from first impressions and can usually tell a lot about them by just talking to them and watching their body language for a short time.

I am going to use this free time from college to catch up on some work that I had neglected just before assignment deadline when I couldn't concentrate. I have one website to do and I showed them my page designs for the assignment and they liked the idea for their own so I am going to try and create something along this theme.

I'm also trying to concentrate on my singing career to try and learn some new songs as this has also taken a back seat since I started college. It's all about keeping things fresh, not just for the audience but for ourselves so that we don't get bored.

How many times do you hear people say "I will do it tomorrow", "I will do that one day", "I've always fancied having a go at that" but never actually get round to it.

My New Years Resolution is to say more frequently: "TODAY I'm going to do this...

...Hold my clothes"

Happy New Year and have a downright prosperous New Year.

PS. 12 years on and I still don't think it's worth learning the entire lyrics to 'Auld Lang Syne' to sing for just 2 minutes per year, it's just not cost effective.

Please Put A Penny in the Old Mans Hat

2006-12-23T11:23:00.000Z

A few last minute adjustments were called for before handing in the assignment on the deadline. A friend of mine read through it and found a few grammatical errors that I had been oblivious to after reading through it so many times. Even pulling up in the car park I proceeded to give it one final check only to find out that things were just slightly out of order to brief. Phew, all done.It's now a time to relax after what has been a hectic few weeks, work related, personally and academically.

You could sense the sigh of relief among my peers on Thursday. Personalities seemed to change and there was an air of freedom about them which made for a good afternoon of Christmas celebration and personal achievement.

I have met a new circle of friends that I get on well with and feel I can ask them for advice and feel they trust me enough to ask for mine.

What started out a rushed enrolment, it seemed I didn't have time to catch my breath at first and thought a few times that I had made a mistake. I can say that now as I am now 100% sure that I have not made a mistake and still thoroughly enjoy it enough to make it through future semesters.

I have aimed for a merit at least on this assignment as my referral from last time gave me a kick up the backside, I have put in extra effort and managed my time more efficiently, this alone won't warrant a merit or a distinction but can say I did the best that I could with the allocated time and the word count, along with my limited knowledge at this stage, I can only hope I achieve this. Word count was again higher than I needed but I find it's better to take more notes and edit rather than not enough and have to do more research.

I was disturbed to find that when filling out my merit and distinction criteria sheet and asking others for advice that there were some that said they were not bothering and seem to have given up trying to get a better grade. It is so frustrating to see this so early on in the course when there is so much time to improve.

Imagine if Captain Cooke had given up after his first voyage, we wouldn't have Kylie, Neighbours or Dame Edna Everage. Now I know that may be a good thing but what I'm trying to say, (and you know who you are) 'never give up', 'never submit, 'don't just muddle by', 'no retreat, no surrender' etc, etc. I have seen elements of your assignments and you have fulfilled at least 2 of the criteria for merits. I could understand if you were not up to the job, but it is evidently clear that you certainly are, you just need the confidence to know that you are.

Now I have got that off my chest I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Prosperous New Year.
Goodwill to all men and not forgetting Gemma.

Heres my way of saving a tree.

The Geese are Getting Fat

2006-12-17T09:56:00.000Z

Due to a few people requesting I post my screen design, here it is.

And yes I had already put the binary code in the title before I saw Scott's, mature minds think alike methinks.

Christmas is Coming

2006-12-14T17:01:00.000Z

Time is drawing near now to the end of my second assignment. I thought I was really behind until I looked around and found that some of my peers were in the same boat.

Wednesday was very welcome as it allowed me time to finally complete the tedious task of editing my content as my word count was above 5000. I should have realised this sooner after multiplying 75 by the number of sub categories we have and found that it came to nearly 3000, which left less than 1500 words to complete the rest.

After mentioning this to some of the others at lunchtime, it seemed to register with them also and no doubt a few went back in the afternoon and quickly checked their content. I managed to edit it quite well and put all my references in and finished with about an hour to spare.

I had a few questions for Steve which all seem to be answered quite quickly. By this time next week it will be too late to rectify it. I do know that I have learnt from my mistakes from the last assignment and altered the way I work dramatically and Im sure I have included only the required/relevant material. Only the word count limit has held me back but I understand it's there for a reason.

I feel my design is just the way I had planned and I'm more than pleased with the colour scheme for this particular project as I did a bit of research into colour, got ideas from other sources and used my competetive analysis to bring me to my chosen colours for my design. The talk we had about colour the other week seems to have scared people into using only one or two colours with variations in tint seperating them.

Thats now my next job, to make my design in pagemaker which is proving very frustrating with it's lack of features and abilities. It does seem a waste of time making it in this programme as font point size and the fact that high resolution images have to be used with no way of automatic resizing. However, this is what is required to use and this is how I will do it.

I can only look forward to creating this website in the new year as like my Eric Morecambe Website Plan seems a shame not to put it on the web for all to see.

What? No Humour in Dean's Blog?

2006-12-08T11:58:00.000Z

Not that much to report this week.

Wednesday was a 'crack on with assignment' day which came as quite a blessing as I really needed to start typing all the things I had written in my sketch-book. This assignment seems to have crept up on us quite quickly and I feel that I will struggle to get everything to submission standard by next Wednesday, even though I have done more than my quota of home study (my time sheets will prove that) and this time round I have only done what is required and done nothing that is not relevant. It is a bigger assignment this time as the content proved to be quite extensive, however I have made a conscious decision to try and use a separate resource for each subcategory and I haven’t used wikipedia at all. I read an article about it the other week and found it has massive flaws that are too vast for the owners to sort out. They only tend to concentrate on the important stuff like George W Bush, Tony Blair and other influential subjects.

So I will take this opportunity to say how privileged I am to be on this course. I found out that there were quite a few people who didn’t make the grade to even start the course, never mind complete it. I am enjoying it immensely and look forward to Wednesdays every week, I wish I could have done the full HND course but my time would not allow an extra 16 hours per week.

I can also say that ALL of my peers are a very supportive and easily approachable, a great bunch of people from all walks of life. I try to talk to everyone at some point and always get good feedback. Each has their own little groups at break and lunchtime but that is nature’s way of colonising personality traits.

I am looking forward to getting this A3 assignment out of the way with at least a pass but I am now conscious of the extra work that is needed for merits and distinctions and hope to show that in my sketchbook.

I have always lived my life with a very positive attitude and will only attempt to do things that I think I am good at and know I will enjoy. (one of the reasons I didn’t go Go Karting)

The past few weeks have taught me lots of things that I thought I already knew but didn’t. Not just academically but personally. I have always known I have a flair for design but it’s akin to singing. Anybody can sing in the bath, it’s easy, however to sing on stage with a show that is planned, coordinated, keeps people entertained and give a large amount of self satisfaction all comes with knowledge of your trade, your environment and your target audiences.

This course is now starting to teach me this, which goes to prove you CAN teach an old dog new tricks (although Wikipedia might tell you otherwise) and the master plan is now being realised. If we can achieve this kind of knowledge in a few weeks, imagine what we will be like in 2 years time. I thought the course was expensive when I paid for it out of my own pocket but it looks like you get what you pay for.

I thank you!

Enough evaluation for you Craig?

My favourite type of 'ography'

2006-11-30T13:56:00.000Z

A tasty little subject was the topic of the morning and one that I was interested to find out more about.

Different types of fonts, font families, leading, etc. might seem like a boring subject for some people but to a designer the type of font used is absolutely crucial to the look and feel of a design and the way body text is read.
I knew about Serif and Sans Serif fonts but never actually knew the difference.

I also did not know that there was another font type called Display which has to be used very carefully as too much use can result in an explosion of tackiness and illegibility. Just take a walk down Westgate in Wakefield to see some examples.

Wondering where 'font' came from and my thirst for useless/useful trivia (delete where applicable) prompted me to find out from www.reference.com.

"The term font derives from Middle French fonte, meaning "(something that has been) melt(ed)", referring to type produced by casting molten metal at a type foundry. English-speaking printers have used the term fount for centuries to refer to the multi-part metal type used to assemble and print in a particular size and typeface."

It will be interesting to see who takes note on this short but important subject when incorporating it into their latest assignment, or any future assignments for that matter.
Our target audience for whom we are creating this website for is aimed at relative beginners and novices so the typography used on the screen designs should reflect this.

Alternatively if designing for a babies Christening then this font should be used.

A good days work was achieved afterwards which came as a bit of a blessing as I still had one content subject left to research which was 'software'. Limited slightly by the 'WWW access denied' syndrome from the college computers I did some research into colour. Being colour blind, as are 8% of the male population, I find colour very important when creating any kind of design, particlarly with Red and Green.

Much to Marc's amusement he proceeded to test me using colour blindness test charts amazed that I could not see the numbers embedded within. After being diagnosed with this problem at an early age I was told I could never become a train driver or a firemen. So with this 'disability' I became a Photographic Colour Printer for 11 years.

If anybody has actually read the descriptions for the sections in our Colour Index book you will see that combinations of certain colours convey different messages depending on how they are used. Yellow suggests positive energy and growth where as natural colours express an earthy no-nonsense approach.

Like fonts, colours play a big part in the image you are trying to portray.

Take the test yourself and check your colour vision and let me know if you are spectrumly challenged like me.
Or try this one and see if you can see the hidden message and act upon it:

A James Dean Production

2006-11-23T09:01:00.000Z

Well what a day at the House of Thornes. Talk about being thrown in at the deep end.

"Research a colour for it's cultural and psycological significance, prepare and deliver a 2-3 minute presentation about your findings using speech, slides and a A4 flyer handout. Have it ready by 2.00pm". The looks on everyones face were priceless. Feelings of dread and of excitement were flying around the room at a rate of knots.

The colour I was given was PURPLE. James also had the same colour so we got together and worked as a team to try and come up with something worthy. This is the first time I had worked with James and I enjoyed his input tremendously, he not only has good ideas but he can also take on board other peoples opinions with ease.

We had a good method, if a tad unplanned initially. We would both come up with as many ideas as possible, write them in our sketchbook then split the tasks so that I would find pictures for the slideshow and sort the order of the presentation in cue card form and James would design the flyer and the slides. We then had the difficulty of trying to find somewhere to practice and rehearse. The library being the usual option was far too quiet to be using expressionistic dialogue so at the other end of the scale we settled in the refectory.

After major adjustments to the order of the presentation we each went through it. I was surprised to find out that James was a natural in this kind of thing and his so called 'blagging through it' was actually 'expert improvisation' and would have put some professionals to shame. I felt that we both had a very good little show and was confident that it would go down well.

James went up first, which turned out to be a good thing as I could use his feedback to input into my talk. Over running was James' only problem which I bared in mind.

I went to give my presentation and was surprised by how nervous I was as I do worse than this every week. I tried to talk clearly and use my hands for expression. Nerves do make you forget a couple of things and in this case it was a bit of shuffling and not moving on my second slide. During my talk, I looked up at the slides and I realised how professional they looked on the screen which nearly distracted me from the job in hand.

I feel that in the timescale given we did extremely well and were pleased with our 'performances'. I think nerves played a small part in my delivery but this is only a natural at this stage in the course.

Also well done to James as his input gave it an edge that I could not have done in such a short time.

An interesting talk with Steve about the blogs made me realise the importance of 'the email' he sent out and also that the comments we leave should be more constructive using criticism with equal amounts of praise. Comments I leave in the future will be constructive and concise, in theory.

I feel the afternoon was a bit wasted as we had to wait in the refectory that has a distinct lack of research material unless you are on a Domestic Cleaning Services Course learning about 'large women in large smocks with large mops and wrinkly socks' (Dr Seuss, 1982).

The Thin Blue Line

2006-11-16T18:23:00.000Z

What a difference a fortnight makes.
Last week and the week before I was feeling pretty miserable but I have to say that this Wednesday at college was my most enjoyable so far. After a short lecture on Sir Isaac Newtons colour wheel we were left to get on with our assignment(s).

This was a chance to really crack on and compared to my home study was a big advantage in the fact that I could confer with my peers as I researched and drafted my goals, target audience and delivery requirements. Any queries that arose as I studied help was within arms reach. This, along with me now being rid of my virus made a refreshing change. I have to say, (but don't quote me) I think the extra hour at the end of the day helped tremendously too.

Even though on paper it seemed like I had not done much, I had made loads of notes in my sketch book and amended them 2 and 3 times so that they were accurate when it comes to typing up my assignment which I am leaving till the latter end this time round.

A talk with Diane was also very helpful . Contrary to what people thought, the whole conversation was connected to my current assignment. I also found out things about previous courses and how things have evolved into the course we are currently studying.

A fun day too having a laugh now and again added to the enjoyment while still being able to work in the classroom environment without resorting to my nomadic lifestyle in the quiet study area of the library.

On another note my latest completed website can be found here www.goldringphotography.co.uk and before you all start commenting on splash screens, tables and lack of CSS, this is what the client wanted and all I was able to achieve in the tight deadline AND budget that I was given. I am pleased with the design and the blue is his corporate identity colour.

The glistening logo at the top of the navigation bar was solely my own idea. I have no experience with Flash other than a couple of moving logos that I have created in the past. This particular one is just 2 jpg files, one with starburst and one without. The starburst is laid over the top and and the opacity changes throughout a 10 second cycle giving the feeling of random movement. This is set to repeat in Dreamweaver and looks quite effective.

The galleries were created in less than 30 seconds using the 'Web Gallery' feature of Photoshop CS. There are about 20 others to choose from if a bit limited in their flexibility but they are easy to use and time saving. I showed this 'hidden' feature to Diane who was impressed by its simplicity.

Give it a go fellow peers with a few images in a folder and let me know if you like it.

On a lighter note I have learned that the college is to draw a blue line around a designated smoking area outside which us smokers have to stay within the boundaries when puffng at breaktime.

Situated in the Creative Media section of the college, it will apparently be 72pts thick, pantone 2718C in colour and have its own website. Analogous colours used in the design of the website will be taken from Sir Isaac Newtons' NICOTINE section of his famous colour wheel.

Against CAPITAL Punishment

2006-11-10T09:30:00.000Z

The week has taken a while to get kick started. I have struggled to make the new assignment different from the last one in the fact my goals are all measurable. The rest of the assignment will be enjoyable finding out about the different components and software relating to PC’s.

I do find I have to plan what I can get done at college and what I can get done at home. This is mainly due to the fact you cannot access all websites from college as many are blocked.

The talk on creating a business card was one of the most interesting so far and the reason for me being on this course. This was also interesting to see other people’s thoughts on how a design should look. I was quite pleased with my design as it had at least 2 out of the 4 requirements, Proximity, Alignment, Repetition and Contrast. My use of capital letters on the company name was my main downfall. The reason for me doing this was to bring back importance to the company name as I had put it on the bottom to try and make it different from others.

I’m not sure who wrote ‘not in order’ on my design but the brief said ‘order of importance’ which is quite different to sequential order.

Wrong

Right?

I have also found out this week that the libraries are finding it difficult to keep up with the computer sections. Lots of books explaining how the fast processors of today like a 486DX??? can handle applications running Windows 98 with fast modem speeds of 56k.

I think a visit to WHSmith with my sketchpad might be more useful.

My peers (I do hate that word, they’re classmates) seem to be really cracking on with the assignment in a big way. This is mainly due to the fact that they have 2 assignments rather than just the one that Drew and I have. I must say though the Picture This assignment looks right up my street.

Living at home with two children makes the college classroom seem really quiet and peaceful, however I have found solace in the quiet study area of the college library. It’s like being in space without a helmet on the planet Libraria Antiqua, the out of date book planet.

Incedentally boys and girl. I came across a brilliant book called 'Don't Make Me Think!: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability' by Steve Krug that you should read. It has some very, very useful bits of information about how a web user thinks and how to take advantage of this when designing your website.
There are 4 copies in the college library but the book is on Amazon here for £12.49 which is a bargain as the RRP is £24.99.

All play & no work makes Jack a skint boy.

2006-11-06T15:28:00.000Z

I've been busy this week working on non-related college work. I seem to have a surge of people wanting design and print work doing quickly.

I have 2 websites, 3 flyers with 5000 print run off each and some birthday invites.

Although my design style has not changed that much since starting college I have a clearer outlook on what is expected and the ability to plan and manage time more efficiently.

So as and when I do these jobs I will post them on here to hopefully gain some constructive comments.

Heres a brochure I did a few weeks ago. The Society did not have any stock pictures or any photographs of the principle players. After a few designs I decided to hand draw a picture of Scrooge which was terrible to begin with so I then made it a silhouette. I then created a shadow in Photoshop then using the filters and lighting effects created a background that gave it a 'Mona Lisa' old feel to it.

By the way, always get the client to check and double check your work then you have no responsibility for any errors. The 3500 leaflets that went out had Tues 16th October printed on them (which was in my brief) when in actual fact the Tuesday was the 17th. It had been checked by 4 members of the society.

This flyer is to promote the Day Care Centre at Kinsley, it is a new unfinished building but they wanted to advertise before it is fully completed. They have a corporate colour, so the design had to incorporate the blue and the various logos. A few pictures set the scene well and it hopefully looks like a fully functioning Centre.

Will post the others when I complete them. Comments and criticism greatly appreciated to help me in my quest.

Thornes in my side

2006-11-02T20:16:00.000Z

Dragging myself into college after coming down with some kind of flu virus and sorting my car out after I got towed home along with 2 deaths in the family I felt that nothing else could go wrong in this nightmare week.

The grades went up on the wall for the first assignment mid morning and expecting at least a pass was horrified to find a referral next to my name. The only consolation was that I was not alone. It was as if I had painted the Mona Lisa and someone had drawn a moustache on it just before unveiling.

I didn't even know what a referral was until John kindly explained it to Drew and I. I had obviously missed something off that I had to wait until the afternoon to find out about.

This has all been a test of nerves and has given me a bit of a kick up the backside to try just a little bit harder. Not that I did try my best but it all boiled down to my inability to think like a student. It is becoming more and more apparent, especially in this first assignment that I am missing so much on a Thursday that is quite crucial to the completion of these projects.

The feedback groups seem to have played a large part in enabling everyone to bounce ideas around, check the progress and most importantly, get some feedback.

I also found out after the assignment that I could have included an addendum at the back to point to merit and distinction qualities that I did but failed to give pointers to in the main body text. This could have included my research into Stock Photography that I carried out quite extensively as it is a big interest of mine.

A couple of little tweaks however did warrant a pass in the end that I should have picked up on in the first place. A bit of a 'photo finish' just creeping in because my nose is that bit longer.

The next assignment was given and seems to be very similar to the last one, so with that in mind I shall retire to my stable, pump myself full of steroids and win that damn race next time.

Booked an appointment at the Glue Factory though just in case.

007 Reasons to Plan

2006-10-26T17:40:00.000Z

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

2006-10-19T09:05:00.000Z

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

2006-10-12T19:40:00.000Z

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

2006-10-04T18:16:00.000Z

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.

It's All About Accuracy!

2006-09-27T17:07:00.000Z

Enjoyed the session today, I found out a bit more on which direction the assignment needs to go.

The main task today was design and redesign. We were given a pre-made template of a layout and had to come up with a different design using the same 4 elements. The header, the title, the text and the picture.

The morning had been mainly a brief tutorial on using Adobe Pagemaker which I have never used before but it had the distinct smell and flavour of an old favourite of mine QuarkXpress which helped me immensely.

I found that it is very difficult to specify a layout on paper using very accurate measurements like millimetres but after a little playing around found a way to represent it more accurately from paper to screen.

I didn't have my work commented on, maybe it was a subconcious thing on my part but feel I did a good job on one of the designs and knew what I had done wrong on the second design (text too big).

I Will put my designs on my blog as soon as Ive figured out how to do this.
Another task to add to my never ending task list.

On a separate subject I have made the decision to move from pencil to pen in my sketchblog, I look like the only one using pencil. I can see the reason why as our mistakes are there to be seen so I will adhere.

First Real Day at College

2006-09-20T16:41:00.000Z

Today was the first real day after a few induction days involving more writing than I am used to.
We were given an assignment last week to design a website about a 'Great Briton' meaning one of 100 British people chosen in a BBC poll a few years ago.

I chose Eric Morecambe. After reviewing some of the others on the list he seemed to be the logical choice as I am in the same business that he was.

I spent most of my home studying this week researching about Morecambe & Wise and surprisingly, found a distinct lack of webspace devoted to this great comedy entertainer.

My next job is to plan how I will go about designing this site by splitting all the tasks into sections. I have formated a basic plan of how things will proceed and already started the first section of my assignment which is reviewing the competition or 'Competitive Analysis' as it's known.

Looking at the progress of others in my class, I have either gathered too much information in the early stages OR they are very fast workers as most are well ahead of me in terms of progress.

I will stick with what I think is right.

With deadline date in October I feel I have plenty of time to catch up and get designing a feel and look to the website in the forthcoming weeks.

Formative Statement

2006-09-19T17:23:00.000Z

“Where have you come from?” is a question I rarely get asked. To start at the beginning would be long and laborious so the best place to start is when I left school.Like most students when leaving school and venturing into big wide world I had no clue what that one, enjoyable, mind stimulating thing that I would like to do for the rest of my life. I had lots of ideas mainly involving music, but nothing concrete.

I started in the photography trade by accident as a last minute mix up as to where I was being sent on work experience, I enjoyed it immensely and when the owners offered me a training scheme for two years, I jumped at the chance. This was THE trade to be part of, as everyone would always need photographs. That was until the digital age reared its head, everyone panicked (including myself) and thought the time for cameras, film & processing was at an end. The correct decision was made where I worked at the time that this was the way forward and after travelling to London to see Photoshop in action I was astounded by this ‘modern magic’ that was digital imaging.
Finally I had found the fundamental thing I wanted to do. A medium so versatile that it can take the shape and form of anything that can be created by a person’s imagination and most of it without getting up from the comfort of your seat. Over the years I have explored many programmes, mostly in design, others in music and video but there are so many that it was difficult to keep track of them all as each one was forever changing and improving with each new version.

At the moment I have arrived at a stage in my life where I need to concentrate on the one thing that I enjoy and at the same time keep me in employment until I reach retirement age. The way forward is design, to be more precise, web design. I feel now is the time to change my standing as a ‘Jack of all trades’ and become a master of one. With help and focus from an accredited course such as the HNC interactive media course, I can achieve this in my life’s final trimester. Again, this was something that was happened upon by accident, however, I am a big believer in fate and so far it has worked to my advantage throughout the years.

In two years time I hope to be proficient in web design and all the elements that help bring a website together. I then hope to gain employment from this experience or alternatively, work for myself.At this stage in my life, it is too late for me to take the learning further after the initial two years, so I am confident that in the timescale, I can make the most of the input that I am given and use it more wisely than if I was twenty years younger.I am looking forward to creating and designing products that I am proud of and at the same time, a product that the clients will be pleased with. I hope to gradually gain more experience as time progresses and achieve the potential to complete the course. I think everybody has a talent, if they recognise that talent, and it is nurtured well, then anything can be achieved.
Dean Hubert

Back to School - Literally

2006-09-09T13:32:00.000Z

So this is it, back to college (which incedentally is in the same building as my old high school). I have decided to gain another skill in media and web design, some of which I have a bit of experience in anyway.

This is something that is very new to me and after an intense first couple of days attending an induction to the course can see that it is not going to be plain sailing. On the upside, I am enjoying my sessions so far and find them really interesting and have already learned some new things that I didn't know about which is the main reason for me being on the course.

The main thing I have had to alter is my lifestyle and particularly the time management aspect of it. Wednesday at college is fine but the home study day is something I need to work on. So far I have managed to get all the hours in that I need and more, however, the begginning is the hardest part as there are books to read and things to sort on top of the note taking and assignments.

The first assignment is to design a website for a 'Great Briton'. A list of famous British people that I can design a website for. The planning aspect is the most important, along with the design rather than the content. The structure has to be detailed and all the information you need from lots of different sources has to be meticulously listed and referenced.

Today is my home study day and after this entry into my blog I intend to start planning from scratch and hopefully work out a timescale for the project and cost using the notes I have.
After years of designing 'on the fly' this is a whole new concept to me.

Wish me luck!