Keep on Plowing

As the deadline is only a week away, the main objective is to get both A3 and A4 up to submission standard. After last week’s despair at not being able to design a decent website layout, this was one of the main tasks of my self study time. I looked at Steve Krug’s “Don’t make me think” book, which clarified what I needed to do for my design. I went to work in my sketchpad, and made a substantially better design than I had done previously. My design can be seen below.

In Wednesday’s lesson we had a production day, where I churned out substantial parts of my project, including the feedback form and site structure diagram. I feel that these both looked radically different from the first project, and that I’m becoming more of a designer each week. I felt proud that I overcame problems from last week, and created results which were far better than I could have expected. I hope that when it comes to marking my assignment, Steve will also notice the improvement in quality over A2.

Thursday was all about the template. Although most of A3 had been put into it, I still had fiddly parts like bullet points and captions to put in. A4 is currently being put into the template, and I hope to complete it over the weekend. My aim for the current week is to get everything ready to hand in on Wednesday, so that I can spend the day checking my work for any silly mistakes.

I think that my time planning has improved a lot over the A2 assignment, but I still do not feel as though it is coming naturally to me. I believe that with the production unit next semester I will struggle to learn Dreamweaver, as I have absolutely no experience with that program. The only way that I will be able to pick it up is if I put in a lot of time learning the program, and following tutorials on books so that I will feel more comfortable with using the program.

Recently I have been getting into print based design more than the web design side of the course. I enjoy the tangible element of print design, rather than the web design which I feel has less creative scope for me at the moment. As I am currently making a document for print in my own time, and have been collecting print resources, I feel that this is the direction I am currently heading in. This could easily change of course, as we start the web building unit after Christmas. I have enjoyed the A4 assignment task 2, and think I have learnt alot of skills from it by putting PARC into practice. My banners can be seen below.

The feedback groups for after the Christmas break have been decided. I am working with Scott and Mihrad, which I am very pleased about. I feel that Scott can bring an element of professionalism to the group, which will add an interesting new angle. I am excited by working with Mihrad, as he is a fellow Photoshop fan, and after looking at his banner designs I think that I can learn a lot from him.

Due to so much time being dedicated to the project, there isn’t a whole lot of outside work being done. However, avid readers will be interested to know that the Tony Benn website creator did get back to me (after a wait of several weeks). He basically said that he uses the Lycos web design tool, which is rather limited. He asked if I could give him some advice on how to make the website better. I have not got back to him yet, but will aim to do so over the weekend.

My confidence has certainly improved over the past week, and I am now starting to see the improvements in my design skills. I believe my outside projects are allowing me to become more familiar with the considerations which are being made in every piece of design work. I can not only see what decisions other people have made in their designs, but what aspects I can replicate in my own work. I’m hoping that this new level of confidence will show in the quality of my assignments. Roll on deadline day!