Thursday, January 18, 2007

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"

4 comments:

Craig Burgess said...

The film thing I'll agree with, slightly too much time on the hands there, but the image?

Must have took all of five minutes to knock that up.

What's your feelings towards a presentation this time?

Scott Dunwoodie said...

Not wanting to sound like too much of a "Type" geek but I think that Helvetica is perhaps the best typeface, ever!

BTW M&S have been using Helvetica Neue for all their corporate branding for over 3 years, it used to be Gill Sans.

Chris Towell said...

You know a bit too much there Scott, the image looks, well 'interesting' to say the least but what about the creation of the PS2??? I thought that would be a big thing too.

Craig Allington said...

Even though the image may of only taken 5 minutes to knock up, it's still 5 minutes that could of been used for more constructive reasons. Each to their own I guess.

As for presentations, slightly more worried now this ones being assesed, but at the same time more confident as I have more time to prepare.

And Scott, I will continue with the motto of 'each to their own' on Helvetica being the best font. I would of course say Comic Sans was the best font around*. Perhaps the M&S fact may appear in my presentation/fact sheet though lol.


*Note to Steve - I actually despise Comic Sans, no need to fear