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.

Word Count: 1117

Testing, Testing...1...2...1...2...

This week has been a relatively straightforward week (for a change). Wednesday was primarily spent testing each others websites and then fixing the problems, where as Thursday morning was spent doing 'task bombs' whilst Thursday afternoon was time for us to work on our presentations.

The user testing went better than I had imagined, most of my feedback was positive although I was quite worried that the aesthetics of my website received quite low marks. Luckily however, I had received feedback on why it didn't look as good as it could and I was able to rectify my website using this feedback.

I also used CSS for the first time this week, and to start with it was quite daunting. Perhaps if I had asked someone within the group who has prior knowledge of CSS for some help it may not have seemed so scary, but that would of been sensible.

CSS isn't as hard as I first imagined, I picked it up quite easily and manged to make my website better in the process of it. Although it is only a simple bit of CSS I have used, I am sure in later projects it will prove extremely valuable.

Thursday was a completely different day to Wednesday. I woke up feeling extremely sick, and tired (as I have much of the week), and was contemplating not coming into college. The knowledge that we would be likely receiving new tasks to do today though spurred me to come into college and battle through my ill feelings.

As I suspected we did receive tasks today. Not one, but two. The first task was to design a structure for a jazz newsletter and then in the second task to add the content. I was not best pleased with my final results of either project, although I was extremely close to the deadline on both occasions, and feeling ill wasn't helping my mindset too much to allow me to be more 'creative'. However, saying this, I don't think that they were my worst projects of the mini tasks so far.

Next week is half term, and that means that I can get some rest, relax, clear my head and catch up with some work that I have fallen behind on from being unwell most of the week. My presentation is still in it's very early stages and my handout sheet so far is non existent. Although I am slightly worried about being behind on my presentation, I know that over the next week I will be able to catch up and therefore worrying will only make it worse.

I have learnt a lot from user testing this week, and the next time user testing comes about I will know a lot better questions to ask and be able to receive even better results and feedback. My next goal once my presentation is out of the way (in between practicing) is to go through my collected data once more, and check that I have done everything that people have suggested (of which I believe is the correct thing to do).

Have a good week off everyone.

Projects So Far...

Below are two images of the projects we created last Thursday. My newspaper design and my paint pot design. My B2B website can also be found at www.craig-allington.co.uk/b2b.

Paint Pot Design

Newspaper Article

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"