A Unique Opportunity

Much thanks to Steve and all at The Design Mechanics for giving me (and I'm sure the rest of the group) an opportunity to go to The Design Mechanics studio to see them at work. It was a fantastic experience.

Firstly, a quick apology to all of my peers who I am sure are all eager to hear about my experience at The Design Mechanics studio. I like to think that perhaps this late blog has increased the suspense somewhat. But before all that, there have been other things happening this week. Quite a lot in fact.

First of all, this week was the week that I got my feedback from Steve about the last two assignments. I was quite nervous about this feedback as my goal from the previous feedback was to improve on my grades, and I was worried that perhaps I would not have done and that this may affect my motivation on the course. This was amplified from the previous week of receiving our results with those dreaded words of ‘See Steve’.

When I went into Steve’s office I sat down and was shown my feedback. I was quite amazed with the fact that I had not only improved on my previous website planning assignment by ticking one merit box, but I had actually ticked two of the merit boxes. As well as this I had also ticked a merit box on the Image Manipulation assignment.

The worst thing about the feedback meeting was perhaps Steve telling me that he was disappointed with my lack of development work, as this was something he had picked up on in my previous feedback meeting. Although I felt I could have done more development work myself, it is always worse hearing it from the person who is marking your work, and next time I will do a lot more to achieve this target.

Also this week I have been using Dreamweaver for the first time. I am not finding it as difficult to use as I first imagined, but I am learning quite a few of the restrictions of Dreamweaver which I am hoping to remember for my next website so that I don’t have to make as many changes to my designs.

Now, the Design Mechanics.

As most of you were probably aware, myself, Craig and Ben weren’t in the classroom much on Thursday morning due to us preparing for our ‘presentation’ to Dave Panell. I’m quite glad that Steve gave us this chance to prepare as without it I feel that we would have just sat there in silence and not been able to participate as much. It was also in this time that we came up with some questions for Dave.

When we arrived I was firstly quite amazed as to how quiet it was in the agency. Where as Steve had told us that everyone is usually plugged into their ipods just getting on with their work, in reality no one had any music on what so ever and everyone was just getting on quietly with what they were doing. This may have been partially down to 7 complete strangers turning up and they were trying to impress us, or it may have been every day ways of working, I’m not entirely sure.

Once inside, we were taking to a room and were told about the company and the way it works. Once the talk was over it was time for us to ask questions, and I think everyone was quite nervous and thinking ‘I don’t want to be the first to ask’. Luckily however, Craig asked the first question and the rest of us soon followed.

Once this was over, Dave brought in Gemma and Oliver (from last years HND course) and we got to show them our work. Again there was a slight uneasy tension in the room with no one going up, but again everyone soon got into the swing of things. Everyone in the room seemed quite impressed with everyone’s work and luckily everyone got to show their work off (something which Steve had said there may not be time for).

Once we had all shown our work, it was once again question time for Gemma and Oliver. It was interesting to ask them questions about how they were finding the work, and the differences between it and the course etc. Overall, they seemed quite happy with the work they were doing and the only real major disagreement between themselves and Dave was over the use of Microsoft FrontPage for use of web design.

Perhaps the best part of the day was spending time with our ‘own’ designer. This was our chance to speak to the designers about their work and how they were finding it, what sort of projects they were doing at the time and what they had done etc. It was interesting to learn in this time that Dave had leant ‘my’ designer (also called Dave) a book on the graffiti artist Banksy (as can be seen on my ‘inspirational work page’) and I was unsure whether having the same interests as Dave (Panell) was a good thing or a bad thing. Steve later reassured me that this was most likely a good thing.

There is so much that I could go into on this blog about the events of Thursday afternoon. But if I were to go into everything then by the time you had finished reading this, the next meeting would have taken place. For this reason I am attempted to keep it relatively brief and all will be explained relatively soon in class with the help of Craig, Ben and Drew.

Once again however, I would just like to thank Steve, and all at The Design Mechanics for the unique opportunity of visiting the agency. Much appreciated.

Rock and Roll Queen

Coming from the AVCE at Wakefield College we were told to create a website to do with anything of our choosing. We were also told we could use either Notepad or FrontPage to create our site. Of course with these two amazing options to chose from, I chose FrontPage.

The site I created was on The Subways and I got an A grade for it. I'm hoping that if I can create a site like that with no real planning or use of any tables/cells AND using FrontPage, that I can create an even better site using Dreamweaver using the correct ways of going about it. Already I notice so many thing I could change about the site (Not centering my text for a start).

Time shall tell.

The Late Musketeer

Firstly, I would like to apologise to my fellow peers for arriving late on Wednesday morning. This could not be helped as it was due to a problem with the trains (mid journey) and I hope my late arrival did not disturb the lesson too much.

Anyway, on with the week...And what a week it's been.

When I finally arrived at college, I was greeted with a task of discussing our thoughts on the second semester, as I had missed most of the discussion I was unable to give me thoughts into the discussion but we were told we would carry on after break once we had our results. So off we went for our break...

After break we arrived in the room, and as promised the results from the previous semesters assignments were up on the wall. I glanced across at my grades and was pleased to see a 'Pass'. Relief passed over me as I thought I may have failed the assignment. I then looked at my 'Back to BASIC' assignment and saw the two worst word's I could have seen. Not even 'referral' could have been as bad as what I saw.

'See Steve...'

I had know idea what this meant, only that it was regarding the B2B assignment and was about my learning outcome 3.2. As it turned out it is just regarding the copyright of images in my assignment, of which I think I have just not made clear enough within my assignment, and may have 'hidden' them too much at the back. Hopefully I can show that the information is in the assignment and pass the first half of the assignment.

Once this was over, we were then given the second half of the assignment 'A5 - Builder' and Steve went through some of the basics of Dreamweaver. Although I have used Dreamweaver before, I decided to listen in to Steve's talk in case my basic knowledge of the software package was too limited. Most of what I was told, I already knew, but I am still glad that I listened in just in case.

We were also told on Wednesday that the deadline week would be 'slightly different' this time around and that 'all would be explained tomorrow'. The mind games continue.

On Thursday I was eager to find out what the new assignment was and what would be different about the deadline week. I downloaded the assignment from the Intranet and immediately saw what was different. Assesable presentations in the AM and a timed task in the PM.

Fantastic.

We were given a specific typographer to give our presentations on I was given Mr Helvetica himself - Max Miedinger.

Admitedly I had no idea who this man was before I started researching, and my first task (as Steve quite politely reminded me) is to work out how to pronounce his name correctly. And my next task will be to start making some sort of biography for him and his work. So far I have come up with a very weird and, in some way interesting website, Helveticafilm.com. No you are not mistaken, it is actually a film about the font Helvetica. Two of possibly the most random images ever can also be found on the site.



One can be seen at the Subtraction website.
The other is below.



As Chris said in lesson today - "Those people obviously have too much time on their hands"

A New Year, A New Semester...

A few months ago, we were asked to write our first blog entry about ourselves, our backgrounds, and our futures. Now that our first semester is over, it's time to see how far on to achieving my goal at the end of the two years.

The first semester has been, dare I say it, easier than I first imagined. This is not to say that the first semester has been easy, I think that I had just prepared myself for something a lot harder. I'm not planning on slacking off mind, as I know that the next semester, and the whole of the next year, will just get harder, more assignments, more to do, possibly less peers to keep up moral, who knows.

The class will already seem much emptier on a Wednesday, now that Chris has decided to drop down to the HNC. It will be interesting to see how this affects the minds of some people on the course, after Steve has mentioned about the 'domino effect' in previous years.

My main goal of the course is still to use it as a stepping stone, either to a job or a full degree, however where as a few months ago I was dead set on just a job, and not really considering a degree course, the news that Steve is applying for a third year at Thornes has made me think otherwise.

So far I seem to have learnt more on the course than my brother has in 3 years of university. All be it he is on an entirely different course to me, but from what I hear about his lectures and lessons (what little of them he has) not much learning seems to go on. Also, speaking to others doing similar courses at universities seem to be able to do very little work and turn up to very few lectures, and still manage to pull off a decent grade. It makes me wonder how employable they will be after their course, with or without a degree.

At the present time I am still trying to work out what I would like me end career to be. Up until know I have know that I would like to work in some kind of design or computing job (ignoring my journalism instincts for the time being), but have not sat down and worked out exactly what. This was probably something I should of done a long time ago, but I never really saw it as important. Working out what career path I wish to take at the end of the course will then help me decide on whether or not I need a full degree or not.

Whatever I decide to do at the end of the course, the first semester has helped me greatly. I have gained valuable experience in new software and theory, of which I can now put into practice in future assignments, to adapt and build upon my new found skills further. Because I have had very little experience working with web and graphic design, it is good to have more experienced members in the group and to use them as a sort of goal, and to try and improve my own work so that it is to their standards, and then try and improve further.

I think the next few months will be the most important yet, as we are using more advanced software (such as Dreamweaver) which we will be using quite a lot through out the rest of the course, and so getting used to it and learning it well will be my next key goal when returning to the second semester.

I look forward to seeing what new challenges the next semester brings up, and eagerly await my results from my previous assignment.