I'm InDesign

Within hours of finishing college for this semester, I was back to working on outside projects. Having had to cut back on these due to the approaching deadline day, I had a backlog of movies to create, as well as the Auto Sim Sport article.

I had been creating this article for several reasons. Firstly, I wanted to learn how to use InDesign, so that I could see if it was a marked improvement over PageMaker. I actually found it easy to pick up, as a lot of the controls which we use when putting the assignment into the template were available in the program too. I did actually plan out the article to an extent, by brainstorming what people would want to know about Photoshop, and what problems they were likely to encounter.

Actually writing the tutorial was all done on the fly. This is to say that I made the product, and wrote steps on it as I went. I had to remember that my target audience (which was Photoshop novices) would not have any knowledge of how the program worked. This lead me to creating a step by step guide, telling the user click for click what they had to do, and warning them of simple mistakes they could make.

I found that the photo restoration and banner design tasks which we did in class helped to highlight common problems people would come across, which made me aware of how different people interpret information.

As I enter the final stages of completing this document, I feel that I have created a professional looking piece of work, especially considering that I started it before we had looked at PARC and had the lectures on typography. As with any project, there are areas where improvements could have been made. Most notably, I think that my choice of fonts could have been better. I should have chosen a lighter font for the steps, and maybe highlighted notes in a different font. At least I can say that the choice and use of fonts is consistent through the document, having set up certain styles for certain parts of the document.

As the document is around 103 pages, with a few small areas to finish, I will want to know if my effort has been worth it. I may set up an e-mail account so that people can send me feedback directly related to the article, so that I know which areas could have been better, in case I decide to do another tutorial.



As I look to starting the second semester, I am starting to feel more anxious about the result of my last two assignments. I feel that they went more smoothly than the first assignment, but that does not in any way mean that I will have met all the right criteria to get a pass. I am also not looking forward to actually creating my website, as I have no experience other than this blog in web authoring. I am hoping that the tutorial will outline exactly what I need to do, and that Dreamweaver is relatively intuitive to use. I don’t usually look forward to the process of learning, but I can’t wait to gain the skills. I guess I’ll just have to endure one to be rewarded with the other.

I have recently been toying with the idea of buying a digital SLR camera. I don’t know weather this would be a worthwhile investment, or if I’d just spent my time taking pictures of the cat. I have been looking at the Deviant Art website, which contains a huge archive of peoples work, from a variety of media. This also contains web layouts which people have uploaded pictures of, and would make great inspirational work for sketchpads. I enjoy doing image manipulation, and a digital SLR would open new avenues for graphical work.

A happy new year to all avid readers of my blog, and I hope that 2007 brings as good a fortune as the back end of 2006 did. I will keep you informed of how the magazine article goes, and possible professional work (for real wonga!) which I may be doing in the future.