The Hidden Goals

*Note* - This is not my main weekly blog, more of an interim blog. For my main weekly blog, please see below.

With the assignment deadline only a few weeks away, today I began to think about the website its self. Although I already have a working progress site, it is so far just something that I have designed and created without caring about usability and other vital issues.

With my previous assignments website, I created as part of my goals for the site, to conform to Accessibility guidelines 1.1, 2.1, 5.1 and 6.1, or to be more specific, 'Provide a text equivalent for every non-text element', 'Ensure that all information conveyed with colour is also available without colour', 'For data tables, identify row and column headers' and finally to 'Organize documents so they may be read without style sheets'.

I succeeded in all four of these goals which was a good thing, but I still feel I can do better. For this reason when I have completed the CO-ID of the website, I plan to implement the same guidelines, as well as try and add a few others in too.

Something I have already considered when creating the website was the colour scheme. Although I tried to choose a sort of ambient colour, I also tried to take into account the way in which people would see the colours. I found out that some of the hardest colours for people with colour blindness to see are red's and greens, and so tried to stay away from this. I also found out that blues and yellows can cause problems for people with colour blindness, but this is not as bad as red-green colour blindness as it is just the shade of the colour that is different, not actually the colour its self.

Doing this also brings to mind the lecture yesterday about the second year, where we were told that 'if an opportunity doesn't arrise to meet learning outcomes, make an opportunity'. This I feel has already started with this assignment, as although we were not told to actually create goals for our websites, in a way we all still have to create goals, even if we are not writing them down in the same way as we have been doing.

One small step to failure, One giant leap to fix it.

The first week back from the holidays and once again back into the reality of the ever approaching deadline.

Steve wanted to pre-assess sketchbooks this week, and with the knowledge I was already failing my sketchbook assignment, I decided to leave it until almost last to go see him about it. I have actually got more evidence for the assignment than I first thought, and perhaps I'm not failing as badly as I first thought, but the reality is I am failing it at present and I do still have a lot of work to do to fix it.

The main lesson of which I learnt from this is that I must take screenshots to evidence my work. This is a point of which I keep forgetting to do and will need to keep reminding myself of more in the future.

My other main tasks for the week has been mainly trying to come up with ideas for my CD cover artwork. The title of my CD is Hearts of Space and so the obvious heart theme comes into a lot of my ideas. I also took the approach of a sort of plasma electric ball to start with as I thought this reflected the techno/electro music on the CD.

However, I was thwarted when I applied the gamut warning mask to my design as it shaded nearly almost my whole design into grey.

Back to the drawing board.

Another idea I had created was to take a character card from a deck of playing cards (such as the king) and apply my own abstract twist to it. This was once again a play on the hearts theme which I can't seem to get away from.

Firstly I came up with the idea of an astronaut card facing up surrounded by other cards. These was shunned in our feedback groups as the background was too busy. Instead I kept the astronaut idea and changed it around a little. I came up with 3 versions of pretty much the same design of which can be seen below. Any feedback on the designs would be welcomed.





The first images font is not the font I would be using (unless there is massive appraisal of it) it was just to show the image in relation to the text.

Now my CD cover ideas are almost completed, I feel like I can concentrate further on my sketchbook assignment, and try and improve it so that I do not have to retake the whole unit again next year. I think this is one of my biggest fears of the moment and am now regretting my decision to sort of ease off on the sketchbook assignment to concentrate on other projects.

Another large topic which was discussed today was about next years team assignment and the various roles within the groups. Steve said that in most cases the project manager of the group is forced into the role as no one wishes to do it. This was then followed by a brief description of the roles of the PM. As this was been said I looked around the room and saw quite a few faces of worry, obviously hoping that they wouldn't be chosen as project manager.

Personally for me, if I was in a group and was nominated as PM I would agree to doing it. Not because I would be being forced into it, but from my previous course and experiences of team projects on that, I found myself quite enjoying taking on the role of being PM.

That is quite a while away now though, and my immediate plans over the weekend is to bump up my sketchbook work with examples of inspirational art work and idea generating techniques for further designs of CD artwork (as the inside and back of the CD still need to be designed for). I have also found myself behind in my time planning for this week already too, and may put in a few extra hours this week to get further ahead both in the project and to catch up with what I have failed to do so far.

After all, the deadline is slowly approaching all the time.

Travellers Tales

After spending the last 2 weeks away on holiday, the past few days have taken on some serious work.

Although I had planned to do some work over the holidays, I just didn't get the chance to. I managed to do an odd hour here and there but nowhere near as much as I had hoped to. However, the past few days have allowed me to catch up with some of this work, and I pretty much have all my designs done and dusted. I've yet to scan them in so I can't host them onto my blog, but I will ASAP along with my new site structure (as requested by Steve).

With only 3 weeks left until the end of the year, and therefore the end of the assignment, tensions are bound to be running high this week. Where as in previous weeks the atmosphere seems to have being quite relaxed, there is no doubt what every ones minds will be on come Wednesday.

Another bombshell was also dropped this week by Steve, when he announced that he would be pre-assessing sketchbooks. My sketchbook is still lacking (although I do have quite a few images that need printing off and sticking in when we return this week). Although my sketchbook work has improved over the past month or so, the thought is still in my mind of 'is it good enough?'.

Once more, I need to 'step-up' my sketchbook work this week and make sure that I pass the sketchblog assignment. Not only will this include finding more inspirational artwork, it will also include further use of my sketchbook for idea generation (if there is any left to do) and also concentrate once again on commenting others blogs.

This is something that I feel I need to remember at present. That the sketchblog assignment isn't JUST about the sketchbook and the blog is just something we are doing for evaluation purposes, but in fact that the blog is ALSO as much a part of the assignment as the sketchbook, and that by putting all my time and effort into the sketchbook, perhaps over the past few weeks I have let the blog slide a little too.

Finding the right balance is the key.

When Does The Holiday Start?

Almost a week into the Easter holidays and the 'holiday' has yet to arrive. Due to me going away for 2 weeks, the whole week has been devoted to trying to get my work done.

So far, I've completely changed my mind about the website site structure, and made that again (luckily however, before any work had gone into actually making the website content), created a page for my website, and began designing the co-id. There's alot I still have to do, and perhaps with it being the holidays I have slacked off a little in my work efforts and not done as much as I normally would have done in the time, but this is all going to change.

Over the next day or two I am planning to finish what I had planned to do for the whole of the holidays. It sounds like a big task, but I only planned 32 hours so it's not that bad.

One thing I have concentrated on quite alot this week is the sketch book. I have stuck in the co-id items I received from Atlantic Records, and have also been researching into e-mail templates and signatures.

I used an e-mail from Dave Pannell at TDM and an e-mail from Steve. Dave's e-mail contained a template and the e-mail size was a whopping 53kb where as Steve's e-mail with only a signature was only 6kb. Dave's e-mail was just quite a short, simple, text e-mail and was over the 50kb maximum page size that we have been taught to stick to. I found myself thinking that if a real attatchment were to be added to the e-mail (such as a document, file, image, etc) the size of the e-mail could be quite large.

I have still yet to decide whether to create an e-mail template or not, using the information I have gathered over the past week I don't think I will, but it's not just a answer you can pull out of nothing. Serious thinking has to go into it.

I shall let everyone know my decision, and what happens with the rest of my work when I return from holiday in 2 weeks time.

Watch this space.