Julian Dyer's College Blog: It's flown by...

The Past

In my original blog post, the Formative Statement, I set out my goals for the future. At the time, my goals for the future were rather vague, as I only mentioned that I wanted to learn “different techniques and procedures” with new pieces of software. Since then, I have learnt substantially more than just software, which I will talk about in this post.

In the first assignment I felt that there was a lot of new information to take in, and that the process absorbing the information was a long and slow procedure. I believe this is because I had entered the course without knowing much about the workings of the internet, or the considerations to be made when designing a page. Looking back at my first website design, it looks awful in every way. Firstly, the design itself does not look pleasant, with its colour gradients and awkward layout. All that I could really take from the first assignment is that my English skills were still adequate, and that I passed it first time round due to the substantial amount of error checking which I did.

The run up to Christmas 2006 was a tough time, as we had two assignments running in parallel. I found that making the content for the web plan was a much more time consuming task than I had anticipated. During these two assignments I started to feel a lot more settled in, having got the first assignment out of the way. My web design skills for this webplan were substantially better than the first as I had put a lot more research into the layout. I believe this will be key for next year when we will be making a website for a real client.

My strategy was to keep the design simple, even if this sacrificed aesthetics somewhat. In some ways I think that I should have challenged myself more as it would have been beneficial in the long run. In the future I think I should make greater challenges for myself, as I think this way I will learn a lot more from overcoming problems, rather than just avoiding them by staying in my ‘comfort zone’.

It was during these units that I decided to use InDesign for an outside college project. This decision would end up paying dividends further on in the year, and I now believe that doing additional projects outside of college is essential for learning new skills. This has been highlighted by visits from previous students, as it allows you to build up a larger portfolio of work. I also taught myself how to use basic video editing software, and this highlighted many parts of the A4 such as image compression. As using codecs is based around similar principles, it expanded my practical knowledge of this subject.

After the Christmas break we again had to do two units at once. As I felt that my sketchpads were not up to the required standard, I focused on improving them over the Typography unit. This involved collecting more examples of design, which I annotated on in my sketchpad. This experience was key to this unit, and I felt that my skills as a designer were improved vastly by doing this. In a way looking at professional work informed my choices of layout and typography, which became evident in the final exam for the unit. As my outside projects had taught me how to put documents together quickly and accurately, I could work under the pressure of the exam time limit and produce a good end result.

During this unit I also improved on my ideas generation, as this was another area which I had identified as needing improvement. Before I had spend a lot of time just coming up with a single design. During this unit I learn that I could jot down several small designs in a short space of time, and this allowed me to supercharge the creative process. My time planning also had to improve, as being set short tasks demanded that I monitored how much time I was taking to produce a finished product. I found that braking the time down into chunks, and setting a series of mini deadlines was a method which worked effectively, and in some instances gave me some time to check for errors and improve on my work.

In the A5 builder unit I had to construct my website. I found the prospect of this rather daunting, as it was the first website I had ever built. I made a strategy of producing the site gradually, which allowed me to monitor how it worked in both browsers, which I knew could cause problems. I feel that this approach should repeated in the future, as learning CSS and Flash will be a new experience for me. I think that not over facing myself with too much too soon helped me to get a finished product from this unit which looked very much like my intended design plan did.

With the last unit of the year I wanted to take a new and more experimental approach to generating my designs. This involved taking pictures of textures and looking at a larger range of sources. I continued to collect pieces of print design which I liked, and expanded this with the research I did into album covers. I believe that if I want to make my work more professional, I need to collect lots of example of design from many more sources. This is something I must do a lot more of next year, as we will be making a website for a client and we must show a variety of designs.

In the last unit I felt that my work looked a lot more professional, especially my logo and CD design. However, the place which I improved on most was my web design and authoring. I decided to take the jump and create my website using CSS. I again took a gradual approach to doing this, as it had worked well previously. Even though I did need some help from the staff with this, I still feel a great sense of achievement at creating this website.

Doing this website has really ignited a desire to be more experimental in the future, which is what I am planning to do over the summer as self study. I think that with every piece of print design I do, or with every website I make I will see more and more improvement in the quality of the work. Throughout this year I have struggled to attain the D3 learning outcome, I now feel that I must continue to work towards this standard and beyond over the next year.

The Future

Now that I have reached the end of the first year, I know that I must not just leave the knowledge behind. As self study I will be revisiting all of the elements we have looked at since September. Now that I have the confidence to go out and try new directions, as well as evaluate my performance, I can effectively increase my experience and knowledge base. In my formative statement I mentioned that I wanted to work freelance. Over the course of the year I have changed my mind on this, as working with other people has taught me that other people’s views are crucial when designing.

As for the learning new software, I have learnt many more programs than I expected both in college and outside of college. In the second year, this will only increase, and I now know that I am fully prepared for the challenge.

For next year I only really have one goal; and it’s a pretty substantial one. This is to become more professional in every way, from ideas generation, time planning and right up to producing the final product, I want to improve them all substantially. These things are not something that someone else can do – I must take full responsibility in achieving them. To do this I will be doing more research into other people produce quality work, as well as finding more sources to work from. I found that in the A7 unit you can find some sort of inspiration from pretty much everything – you just have to go out there and explore.

I have really enjoyed the experience of college this past year. From the times it has been frustrating to the times it has been fulfilling I have found all of it has improved my as a person. Over the summer I have to prepare myself for returning in September, to take on more challenges, with more programs and with greater expectations of myself – it is a challenge which I simply cannot wait for.

As for measurable goals, I have come up with the following ones for the second year of the course: