On September 14th 2006 my first blog was written, titled 'Who Am I, and How Did I Get Here?'. In it I wrote about myself, and my previous experiences and I also wrote one key paragraph:
"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."
Well now I am almost half way through the course, and already so much has changed.
A day after writing my very first blog I wrote a second blog about my first week on the course. In this blog I spoke about already having 2 assignments, the first been the Sketchblog assignment, the second been the 'Great Briton' assignment.
Once again this blog had key points to it, most notably the paragraph about the sketchblog assignment. In it, I write about the sketchblog assignment been down to 'habit' and remembering to write my blog and stick things in my sketchbook. I then write that if I remember to make my sketchbook the first point of call for all work 'I can't really go wrong' and that 'only time will tell'.
Famous last words.
I've found the blog a very enjoyable thing to do, I think this is obvious by the fact that I sometimes can do 2, maybe even 3 blogs a week. Sometimes I have written blogs and not published them for their relevance to the course was limited. Perhaps this was a mistake to make? Perhaps I should have made a more personal blog to voice my less relevant points? I have since learnt from these mistakes and can rectify them in the second year.
The sketchbook on the other hand was a completely different story. From the word go I didn't do as well as I could have done. I got a few images I liked and stuck them in, I took notes, I drew designs, but none of this was good enough.
Adding colour, getting more inspirational art, two very simple things, and yet both I failed to do until the last few weeks of the course. At this moment in time I sit still unsure whether the amount of work I have put into my sketchbook assignment the past few weeks is enough for me to pass it. I hope it is, but if it's not, there is no one else to blame but myself.
The Great Briton assignment was much better, and as the 'first' assignment, another very enjoyable experience.
I think my main problem with this assignment was that I spent too much time researching, and not enough time designing. Spending hours trying to find a copy of John Peel's book, which would most likely of had very little useful information in it was possibly the biggest waste of time. If we were actually making the website and putting content into it I'm sure it would have been very good, but just for a website plan? Useless.
Three weeks into the course and yet more famous last words - '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'. My own thoughts and yet I didn't even take them into consideration with the sketchbook assignment.
One major fear factor of the course for me when we started was having to learn new software. I had some basic experience in Photoshop, some experience using 'The F Word' and that was about that. Dreamweaver, Flash, Freehand were all new to me, and I'd never even heard of Pagemaker.
However, as young and naive as I was, and in some respects still am, I think that the technical side of the course has been relatively 'simple'. As was discussed this morning, the amount that we have to use some applications barely scratches the surface of what can be done. This is no fault of Steve's of course, to fully learn an application could take months (at least!).
With the limited time we have had in class to learn pieces of software, spending time at home learning them has been one of the most important items of self study I have done over the past year. Without knowing the software, how are we supposed to get anything else done? This I feel has benefited me greatly, probably most in Pagemaker than any other program.
In my own opinion this is shown in the 'Picture This' assignment more so than any other. I know I keep ranting on about it but the 'task bombs' as they were nicknamed produced some of my best work to date. This surprised me immensely as it was the first time that I had been forced to create something in such strict, mini time scales.
The Picture This assignment was not all fun and games however, in fact the majority of the assignment was hard, exhausting work. Probably the hardest part of the assignment was the presentation aspect of it.
Many people, including myself, have had limited or no experience of giving presentations and so this was a very nerve racking thing. The fact that we were being assessed on it made it even more nerve racking personally because I knew that if I really messed it up that I could fail the assignment and then possibly the course. This sense of unease also ran into the final 'test' of the assignment which was a lot more formal than the previous timed assignments we had been doing.
Luckily however, this was not the case with our Back to BASIC assignment, as this was much more laid back and less time restrictive than the Picture This assignment. This was quite a boring assignment as a whole as it was pretty much identical to the previous Great Briton assignment we had done, just with a different subject.
There were a few minor differences in the assignment though, the major difference was the knowledge that we would actually be making the website and so we had to find/create all of our own content for it. This was our first glimpse at not only creating a working website, but also into copyright laws and just what we could and couldn't do to obtain images. Google images was immediately ruled out of the question which left people with the challenge of finding images.
Finding copyright free images was a lot harder than I imagined because I had no experience in it before. I got most images from Wikipedia for the majority of the assignment, and it was only late on that I found out about the free image site SXC.
I think this is something that has plagued me throughout the year when it comes to images. Been somewhat tight when it comes to money, I have wished not to spend money on images that we may use just once or twice. I have since come to realise however that this is a very negative attitude to take and that if buying an image is the difference between pass and merit, merit distinction or worse pass and fail, then I should not dismiss it as easily and just pay £1, or even less to download it.
This was a fact I wish I had once again learnt a lot sooner than I did, as once again in A7 it has caused me no end of troubles. At first in the assignment it relatively easy to find the images I want, I collected the images from SXC in the correct resolution and I thought that was that, and on I got with the assignment. It is only recently that it has become clear that one of the images I downloaded was copyrighted and so I couldn't use it. If I had bought an image then the likely hood of it being copyrighted would decrease, but at the same time there is no point just buying an image for the sake of it.
The Fax of Life assignment has probably been one of the most interesting to do, and a big jump up in the amount of work we have had to do. With so much work to think about at the start of the assignment I was worried about making the deadline, but with good time management I have managed to complete nearly all of the assignment already, with a few days still to go so hopefully I won't be leaving everything until last minute.
Looking right back to my original blog, a lot has changed in well under a year. I am now more technically able than I was back in September. After all, although I mention about having self taught skills, these in no way compare to the level of proficiency that I have learnt in my first year of the course. I am also really enjoying the course, something which Steve always says is not his plan but a subsidiary of the course and I think this is really helping motivate me to get my work done and try and do the best I can.
With the first year almost over, the second year will be my chance to try and make another huge step up. In the next year my main goals are to:
- Get onto the second year
- Get at least a pass on every assignment first time
- Obtain at least 4 merits on assignments
- Improve on my design process (Design more than 6/7 thumbnails)
If I can do all these things I will be extremely happy, especially with obtaining 4 merits. Hopefully I will be able to do better than 4 merits but to start with I don't want to concentrate too much on merit criteria and end up failing the assignment for not meeting the pass criteria.
