One man's junk...

During this week I have completed some large parts of the first assignment. I enjoyed writing the competitive analysis, as this kind of work was familiar to me. I also enjoyed looking at http://www.tonybenn.net/ as this website is the antithesis of what a good website should be. This provided me with a wealth of material to analyse, and was also rather entertaining to Steve in our group session.

Can anyone beat my record of finding the worst website ever?

In some areas of the assignment I still feel slightly lost, and could do with some issues clearing up. These are mainly formalities, and I am happy that I can construct large parts of the assignment without much help from anyone else. I may have to cut out some of the content so that I do not go over the wordlimit. This is mainly due to the huge amount of criticism of the first Tony Benn website I looked at.

During this weeks lessons I have felt that I can work more independently than I have done in the past. I also feel that in some way the assignment word count stops me from developing analysis further, but I am sure that as the course progresses I will find opportunities use these skills.

My sketchpad is now developing nicely, and already has more content than some of my A-level Art sketchpads. I am slightly concerned about how my sketchpad will look in comparison to others, as my handwriting is not the best. I am considering doing some of my evaluative annotation one the computer and sticking it into my sketchpad, as this will look neater and allow me to reflect on my work in more detail. This is something I will look into over the next few weeks.

At home I have also inherited an ex-CAD 21” Dell Trinitron CRT monitor, which looks fantastic and cost absolutely nothing! My Dad brought it home from work, as it was going to be thrown away. This will be rather useful for the course as the picture quality is excellent. Hopefully over the next few weeks I will be building a new computer to go with it. This will make me feel a lot more comfortable with my self study time, as I have a better equipped working environment.

Week 1

This week our tasks were primarily based around note taking on a variety of topics. These included topics such as 'What makes a good website?’ a web glossary and details about our first assignment.

For this assignment, we must plan a website about a famous Britain. I decided to choose Tony Benn, as I thought that this would give me a large scope of different designs, and could be tailored to suit a variety of audiences. These could include children, GCSE students and adults. We compiled a set of notes to help us understand what is involved in creating the assignment.

At the moment I think that the assignment will be a tough learning process, as it is a large step up from projects I have done in the past. I will also have to learn new skill such a referencing, and researching heavily from a range of resources including books and online sources.

Over the next week, I will be continuing the research I started in college so that I can build up a good knowledge about my great Briton and also about how this knowledge can be used in the design process of my website.

Formative Statement

In my past educational experiences I have learnt many skills which I am looking forward to developing in the future. From my artistic background I have gained an understanding 2 dimensional in the context of colour, texture and proportion to produce creative work. I have also learnt how to keep a progressive record of my ideas development and explain the processes behind them.

In my previous studies in English, I learnt how to produce subjective arguments with an appreciation for audience, values and literary techniques. These included essay writing, persuasive writing and personal reaction to the subject matter.

Processes which I acquired in Business Studies enabled me to identify the relation between business and client, and how each can influence the behaviour of the other. This included business and consumer relations, the ability to produce presentations and evaluate performance. These are all skills which I believe will be useful on the course.

I am currently interested in using Photoshop, as I have done several personal projects using this package. Having learnt these skills on my own, I look forward to learning other aspects of the package to improve my 2D computer generated art skills. As these develop I wish to produce professional work, as I know it will be beneficial for the future.

As there are several pieces of software I have not used before, I am interested in learning the different techniques and procedures these products demand.

For my long term future, I wish to be able to produce high quality, professional work from a large range of programs. I believe that if I could work freelance I would do so, as I think the independence and freedom this would give me would be a great asset. I hope to create a broad portfolio of work from the course to give me the best chance at succeeding as a freelance designer.