"This week, I have mostly been learning..."

This week, most of Wednesday was spent learning PageMaker. Now, PageMaker may not be the most technological of tools – in fact in the industry it's laughable - but apparently it's a 'good learning tool'. So learn we did. For a change I found PageMaker extremely easy to use, and got a good grasp of it straight away. If that keeps up then I’ll have no problems learning all the other pieces of software we have to use over the next two years, although something tells me that’s not going to happen. The good thing to come out of finding PageMaker rather easy to use is the fact we have less than 2 weeks to get our assignments to submission standard. Every second seems to count at the moment, so I'm finding it quite difficult at times thinking I may fall behind due to college lectures both Wednesday and Thursday mornings.

It’s been a very productive week this week, despite having very little time on Wednesday to do any assignment work or on Thursday morning. I’ve somehow managed to get both my ‘neat’ screen designs done and drawn up in my sketch book (soon to be uploaded to my blog) and have even started work on my digital screen designs in page maker (again soon to be uploaded). My site map is finished, so I’m well on my way to achieving the target date for the assignment.

Next week I think will be rush, rush, and yet more rushing however. Luckily we don’t have Helen again until after half term, which gives us an extra couple of hours a week now to work further on our assignments, draw everything together, and get it up to submission standard. It’s scary to think we’re over half way through the assignment already.

Keep an eye out for my screen designs hopefully up on my blog sometime this week.

First Deadline: 3 Weeks (To be ready in 2)

Wanted

SCREEN designs. Five. Grainy, sketched, and annotated. Seek honest feedback from all readers. See below. Comments or E-Mail.


One:

Two:

Three:

Four:

Five:

Easy! Easy! Easy! .... I wish

Three weeks into the course and already the tone is set. We’ve already got two assignments, one of which we’re already a third of the way through. Yet despite all this it’s been a relatively easy week. After all, all we’ve had to really do is continuous work on the ‘That’s The Plan’ assignment throwing up question after question, problem after problem, and lecture after lecture. Ok, so maybe it’s not been an ‘easy’ week. But it’s the easiest we’ll get. Next week we’re half way through our first assignment. After only 3 weeks.

I must say though, I’m glad the weeks over. Not because it’s getting to the weekend, after all the work doesn’t stop when we leave on a Thursday afternoon, but because the worries that I had when I started the week have now gone. Starting the week I wasn’t too sure where I was meant to be in relation to the course. Was I meant to be up to my screen designs? Or was I meant to be simply still comparing similar sites? With this been the first assignment I just wasn’t sure what to expect. If anything though I think I’m now ahead in my work. Which again, I'm not sure if is a good thing or not. Hopefully if I am ahead, I’ll find out sooner rather than later and be able to go over things I may have ‘rushed’ or ‘skipped’.

In general though it’s been a very productive week after the initial stage of having enough questions to create my own game show that is. But since then it’s all gone quite well. Though most of the assignment so far has been ICT research, now I'm finally getting onto the art and design part of the assignment, again, a very good thing. Though it’s not all been fun and games this week. It’s been extremely difficult to break old habits. Habits such as not writing down sites visited and times of visit, writing notes from all lectures - though after 3 weeks this is beginning to get slightly easier. Though I think that’s the key, just to keep doing it, and in a few weeks, hopefully, it will be instinct for me to do it.

In general through the week it’s been very straight forward. I don’t think there’s much I could have done that I haven’t done. Which I suppose is good. But in a way it’s also bad. After all if I'm going to mess something up I think I’d rather mess up at the beginning of the course than half way through. Saying that, I think I’d rather not mess up at all.

Next week I’ve got loads to do. I'm hoping to get quite a lot of research done, on various things, like my costs of building the site, and my costs of maintaining the site, etc. though that’s not all. Hopefully I’ll have all my thumbnail sketches done too and scanned in so I can get feedback on them from all the avid readers of my blog. Currently standing at 1 as far as I'm aware.

Weeks until first deadline: 4

Week 2 - Assignments 1 and 2

We’re only the second week into the course and already 2 assignments. I'm starting to realise just what the definition of hard work is. The scary thing is it's probably going to get even harder.

The ‘Great Briton’ assignment is actually quite fun, in the fact it’s giving us a chance to research and plan a website based around our ‘Great Briton’. I was a bit sceptical about the idea at first, thinking ‘How am I supposed to design a website, with no images or text, about a ‘Great Briton’?’, but now it’s quite clear.

It’s quite an arty assignment, as apposed to an ICT assignment, which isn’t a bad thing. It’s going to be a good start to get our creative juices flowing before we have to combine them with the ICT part of the course as well.

Photoshop is the only software that we’ll really have to use for the assignment, which is a plus, as I've got quite a lot of experience using it so I'm hoping I can use that to my advantage with the assignment.

The worst thing about the assignment will be learning the new ‘Harvard reference’ system. Gone are the days where a bibliography at the back of the assignment will suffice. Saying that, gone are the days where assignments were spoon fed to you with a ‘check list’ of thing’s you had to do. Yes, there may be ‘check lists’ in the new assignments, but to get them we’ve got to make them ourselves.

The ‘Sketchblog’ assignment sounds relatively easy. Keep a weekly blog, and do work in our sketch book. Right, now if it were only that simple. The blog part of the assignment seems relatively easy, as long as I remember to update this weekly. I'm sure eventually I’ll get into the habit soon enough though. It’s the sketch book part that’s troubling me the most. For a whole year, every thing that goes into my sketch book will be marked. Notes, pictures, sketches, designs, even things I just liked the look of and decided to stick in. I guess again it’s all down to habit, getting into the routine of taking notes, and making my sketch book my first point of call for anything we do. That way I guess I can’t really go wrong.

Only time will tell.

First Deadline: 5 weeks.

Where Am I, and How Did I Get Here?

I’ve come from a life that has always been very computer orientated. From a very young age I was always into gadgets, new toys I could play with. The computer was always my favourite however, and for that reason I began to explore it for more than just playing games. I began experimenting. Now, experimenting is not always a good thing. Many a time a new, ‘experimental’ recipe someone thought would be good has resulted in take away food from the local Chinese. But with the PC it worked. I found numerous ways to have fun on the computer, one of the first was using MS paint, a very basic design package, but over the years I began using more and more advanced packages. I moved onto Photoshop and FrontPage, and within no time at all had soon created my first website using my own ideas and designs.

I was hooked.

For this reason, I took up an ICT course at Wakefield College after leaving compulsory education. The course gave me an insight into various ICT units, but it was the second year I was really looking forward to. The web design units. Finally, a chance to get my passion recognised for something, instead of it floundering around, unnoticed on the internet, or sitting hidden deep on my hard drive for no one to see. At this stage I was having doubts about web designing for a living, and instead was thinking about taking up Journalism (another of my passions). For this reason I decided it was best to apply for both on my UCAS application. After doing website design at college, and having an interview for web design at Wakefield, I had made my choice - Web Design.

This now brings me to my reason for writing this. It is not so that in 50 years, when I’m old and grey, I can see what I was like as a child, but hopefully, so that in 2 years, I can look back at the end of my course at Wakefield and see what I gained from the course, and if it is what I expected.

My main reason for joining the course is to have fun and enjoy it, but I am also hoping to use it as a stepping stone, either to a job, or a full degree at university. Presently, all the skills I have learnt about web design, graphic design, etc. have been self taught skills. Something of which I am sure a lot of employers could do without. For this reason, I hope that from the course, I will gain the necessary experience and qualifications to further my career and advance to the next step.

Now, I’m no stranger to hard work, but I know that to get to where I want to be in 2 years will take a lot of hard work, probably a lot more than I’ve experienced before. But at the end of it, when I’ve gotten the right qualifications to get the job I want, I’ll be able to look back, and know it was all worth it.