Debate Will Continue..

Another timed task this week, again I feel it was successful.. I really think my structure in these tasks is an invaluable asset. The main resource of this structure is through my time planning. At the beginning of each individual timed task I thoroughly time plan, in micro format; breaking down everything I need to do in small sections. Having these to tick off every 10-15minutes really helps me keep my time structured and on course. I know exactly what to do, when to do it and with the combination of my brain, how to do it, I don't think people realise how much time planning can affect a small task such as this, even when it's only spread out over an hour or two. It really changes the way you think and go about the overall task, your more conservative with your time, checking regularly.. and it definitely culminates in a better design in the end. Due to the fact that all your thoughts are in check and organised. You are also almost guaranteed to get it in on time following your time plan accurately.

The link to my design, is here Jonathan Gee

I'm quite happy with my progress with both assignments, I've really nearly dusted off A6; with my presentation pretty much completed and only a few fonts that need to be input. My handout has been completed for a week or so and my script is the only thing I really need to write up, though I've got it quite efficiently wrote up in rough. I like my design for the whole thing too, I've got a clear design theme running through the whole thing; going for a classic style to match the feel and look of the fonts that Frederic Goudy designed. Only having a few bars that are 1px thick fading out, just adds a real classy touch to the whole presentation.

I ran into some major problems yesterday with A5, the battle between IE and Firefox was hard at work; my website worked perfectly in Firefox, but I've refound my old hate for Internet Explorer. The website looked absolutely terrible on IE, images were everywhere, text was everywhere.. it really was carnage. But with some steady fixing and amending of tables/cells and random pieces of code that weren't doing exactly as they should be, I fixed the problem. This week I was thinking about having the images linked to instead of just having the images on the site, hopefully reducing my file page size and also making the whole layout look smoother. Now I'm thinking of using lightbox instead, just because it adds smoothness to the whole site, and a certain professionalism. The debate will continue...

Referralgorithm.

This has been a good week for me, certainly at top 5 contender for the most enjoyable few days. I think this has been mainly due to the atmosphere within the group, it's become such a more relaxed enviroment to work in; humour inspires design in my books. And all this even without the usual Comedic stylings of Shaun Bellis for the past few days. Alot of the enjoyment as been down to the work we are currently doing, it's things that I really enjoy; building websites and making graphics, perfect combination to work in a harmonious fashion with the groups attitude. I think that alot of the students in the class are also improving at such a clearly vast rate, they can see the difference in their own work, when comparing it to ones of an earlier nature. Especially evident when the knell of the 'dreaded' timed task arrives. Well, I say dreaded in an obviously loose nature as everyone now seems to actually enjoy these timed tasks, not just myself and a select few. Work is handed in 3/4 of the way through the time limit, there's more interaction with Steve, more feedback given to eachother and everything is time planned exceptionally. They say time flies fast when your having fun and we really seem to jet our way through them at the moment.

Today's timed task was to create an advertising banner for 'Vodafone', including the logo and a set advertising content matter. As soon as I heard about this task, my mind raced with vuluptuous amounts of design idea's and ways to present my information. I first settled my heart on a tall-thin banner, thinking that this would enable me to present this information in a very well set out and professional manner. But when it actually came to working on the sizes of banners, a long thin one really caught my eye; I preceded to use that one, creating various different designs to encapsulate the look and feel I was going for. My main target was content, I knew there was no need for obscurely flashy designs. I kept it real simple, thoughtfully managing my white space with subtle design features and manipulating the content to best convey the serious but light hearted nature I wanted to put across. Juxtaposing idea's maybe, but I felt it necessary to project both to the reader with my piece. Due to the restraints of the college computers, I wasn't ecstatic about my particular design, but I still felt it put across the message I was vying for in the right manner.

Any feedback would be grateful - http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y24/seyance/vodafonejpeg.jpg

After a bit of a lull in my design hunger, I can feel it is nearly restored to it's former glory.. if not a little stronger, both in class and out. I'm really starting to love designing again, and if only my computer at home would stop being a virtum vial of annoyance, I'd be able to get on with this alot more.

My aims for this week are to fully finish most of the inns and outs of my website, including the form and validation. I think in the past I've left things to the last minute a little too often and this has hindered my performance on the course, and led me to not actually reach my potential with the design sides of it. Luckily I have been able to rectify this somewhat in the referral process, but I'm eager to pull myself from the dark, foggy depths of the referral process. Onto the nicely paved road to success and passing everytime. Not only will this stand me in good stead for the rest of this year, but will also be a good catapult for next year and the work that is to come for me, inside and outside college. Hopefully I've found the right sum to push me into this place.

Give A Handout

This week was a bit of a tightrope week for me, I really had to knock off the referal work quickly and do my best to get on with the current module; it's quite easy to lose sight of this one whilst your doing referal work. Luckily I made an effort to keep up with the rest of the class on the other assignments so that when it came to moving onto them, I stood in good stead and wasn't too far behind those that hadn't referred. I have completely finished A3 now and with bits to do on the A4 before completion aswell I'm confident I will be able to really start concentrating on the other module very soon.

I really feel I'm getting into this Typography project, especially since I started moving on into the handout side of it. With the handout I really tried to give it an overall classic feel, with hopefully would convey the style of Frederic Goudy, my chosen typographer. I'm doing both the handout and presentation in his very own font 'Californian', to add a real elegant feel to both my presentation and my handout sheet. I created gradient dividers of 1 and 2 pixel height, just to split everything up in a nice way and really give off a well organised presented feel to the whole thing. I went a bit of an extra special way on the handout too and produced a corner gradient divider, so that I could put text in a middle bit and it would be separated from the rest. This all meant that I would be able to input more text but still keep it seperated from the other information, making my whole layout look a lot smoother.

This handout task is a big design task, keeping a consistent design from the presentation to the handout means that there will be a theme running throughout your work. Hopefully reflected in your marks. I tried my best to use the design side last time in the presentation and in my handout, I think it worked well and Steve gave my good feedback for this, as not many other people really saw the whole thing as a design task. Needless to say Mark definitely did, by producing a very professional, well though out handout with cover.

I'm really looking forward to this week since I have the design accepted by Steve and can start properly building it for the internet, and especially for the user testing on the first Monday we're back at college. I'm hoping to get it done a few days before that so I myself can do some user testing with friends and family, to make sure my target audience can use it efficiently and just people in general. Also just those days to make me comfortable with the site so I can produce a final proper Usability Questionnaire, one that will ask effective questions and effective tasks to really get the user thinking and the necessary feedback I need to make any changes.