Time and Time Again

A6 has been probably one of the strangest assignments we have had to do. In fact, it has been probably one of the strangest assignments I have ever had to do, ever.

Because of the nature of the assignment (to test and prepare) it has been extremely difficult to prepare for a lot of things. Although this is what the industry will be like, experiencing it for the first time has been a huge step.

6 months ago when starting the course, my knowledge of typography was, shall we say, limited. Today however has shown me just how much I have learnt in such a short space of time. From knowing Pi only in the mathematical sense, to know knowing it is a type of font too (Dingbats - a.k.a web dings/symbols) I have received a great sense of achievement in the past few months.

As a 'part time' journalist I thought that I knew quite a lot of the different elements that made up a newspaper or magazine, after all, I've been part of making one once before. However, if I could go back and make the same newspaper again now, it would be so much better as I actually know what I am doing. Mastheads, gutters, decks and more, once pure gibberish to me, now firmly set in my mind as important information that I must not forget.

To start the assignment off I was primarily worrying about the timed tasks aspect of the assignment. I had no idea what was being planned and what would be expected of me, but it turned out that I produced (in my opinion) some of my best work to date. Admittedly I may also say I have produced some of my worst work to date (Jonathon Gee re-design), but I think that was mainly down to panic of the first timed task.

With the rechristening of the timed tasks as 'task bombs' the mood soon lightened, and perspective shifted to the presentation. For a while I left the presentation, and didn't really give it my full attention, worrying more about getting the website up to scratch for A5 than researching about my font. "It's only one font, and there will be loads about it" I kept telling myself. I needed a kick start to get me going. Luckily (or perhaps unluckily) this came a couple of weeks ago when it suddenly hit me that our practice presentations would be in a couple of weeks.

Once sufficiently motivated, and hyped up on coffee, I began working on the presentation. I wish I had done it sooner as immediately I was faced with a problem. Max Miedinger... My-ding-er? Myde-in-ger? Just how do you pronounce his name?

My-ding-er I think was the option I chose, and so I continued with the presentation preparation.

My first real problem I faced was what to put on the presentation. Finding information wasn't as easy as I first thought, and with no real examples of my font available to me, panic soon set in. Eventually however, I got my presentation finished, well I thought so anyway, and in usual style set about making my cue cards the night before the practice presentation was due.

This was definitely a bad choice as it gave me no time to really practice my presentation, so I had no idea about timings or even what to say. I just knew that my script would be purely read from the cue cards. And it was...

After getting some feedback from Steve and other members of my group, it soon became apparent that parts of my presentation were lacking. I was quite shocked to hear that I was the first person to actually get there sketchbook to write down the feedback we were given, as I believe that it is vital to keep a note of it. If it wasn't for the feedback I had written down from my last presentation I don't think I would have been anywhere near as prepared.

With the practice presentation completed, I had just over a week to tweak and perfect it. Plenty of time I thought.

There is never - Plenty of time.

Once more I believed my presentation was completed. That is of course until the day before I was due to give the presentation, when I was talking to Steve. He may as well have said 'Do it again'.

I still had lots to do.

That night I stayed up quite late preparing for my presentation, adding slides, taking slides away, practicing, practicing, practicing, and revising for the next days test. Oh how I wish I hadn't. I arrived at college tired, it was only a matter of time before something went wrong. Adding together a mix of tiredness and nerves, my presentation started off wrongly with me forgetting to change the PDF file to full screen, and then by me accidentally knocking the board and changing slides. Hopefully the afternoon would bring more luck.

With a few hours spare we set about revising for the afternoons test. We had no idea what to expect and I think that is what caused the most unease for me, not nerves, just unease. The task we were given was a simple one. Very simple in fact. With so much time spent dwelling on the subject, a lot of ideas came up, but creating a fact sheet about different type elements seemed relatively easy.

I wasn't that happy with my final product however. I think I spent too much time trying to remember all the different elements for the test and writing them down, instead of designing my fact sheet. Looking back now I can think of many things I have missed from my designs, including important information such as font types and sizes.

In the end I think I managed to write about 28 of the 57 which is quite a lot, but I keep wondering "is it enough?". With Steve's typical cryptic style, I don't think I'll find out until we get the results back from the assignment.

Next time we get a similar assignment I will be much more prepared. For a start I will use my time much more wisely. I will also take the time it takes to prepare something so small as a 5 minute presentation much more seriously, as the time I spent on it doesn't accurately reflect the time that should have been spent on it. Although I think I got quite lucky with the presentation and the information I could find, this will not always be the case, and therefore leaving things until the last minute is possibly a rather stupid way to go about it.

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