Tuesday 12 May 2009

Its the final countdown!

The year has finally come to an end and all the pressure and strain has left. Having first arrived at Wakefield College back in September of 2008 seems like it was only yesterday that I was sitting down to receive my first HND Interactive Media assignment. Over the last year I have under took seven different and mixed creative and academic briefs that challenged me in different ways every time I did a different assignment.

From designing paint tubes using Abode InDesign and creating websites to w3c compliant standards using Adobe Dreamweaver I have experienced many different software applications and tools that I never thought I would use.
The first assignment that I did was A2: A Journey of 1000 miles. The brief for this assignment was to investigate the technical requirements of web design and present my research in academic format. When doing this assignment I really enjoyed doing the research on the equipment and what a web designer would use, but when it came to writing my finding down I found it difficult and struggled to say what I have found and this resulted in me referring the first time. After getting feedback about what I did wrong and needed to change I had one last chance to get this right and fortunately I did.

The second brief of the year was A3: Sounds Like a Plan, which was to investigate a websites pre-production process and create a web plan, presented in academic format. Again for this assignment I felt comfortable doing the design and research work but when it came to writing the web plan in the academic format I did find it quite difficult and was not confident that I would get a pass because of this. Has expected I did not pass this assignment first time around but from the feedback given I did make improvements from the previous assignment that was a good sign of development and in the end I did pass the second time around.

The first semester came to a close and I had a sign of relief and time to relax before going back and doing it all over again but this time I was looking forward to the design work because I felt stronger at designing then writing word documents.
A4: Typecast and A5:Builder was waiting on my lap has soon as college started back up but this time I was managing them simultaneously and juggling between them on Monday and Tuesdays. This didn’t worry me much because designing was my stronger skill and I found it quite easy to think of ideas to use for the A4 assignment, which was to understand the principles of typography and to have an understanding of the language. Also for this I was set mini tasks that were to produce creative work for different briefs in a period of time. I felt excited when I found this out because I always work better when under pressure than having a long period of time to finish a certain design.

The A5: builder brief was to build the website that I previously planned and designed in A3: Sounds Like a Plan and validate to standard-compliant web standards. This task for me was like second nature because before joining college I was already good at understanding and coding websites so it didn’t take me has much time has I expected. But during the development process of this site I made a fatal error that was to make me lose out on a higher mark. It was that I didn’t check to see if the website validated correctly

I felt really embarrassed but also annoyed at myself because I didn’t pay attention to detail and instead of managing my own workload I was too busy helping peers. But after looking at what I needed to do I quickly amended the websites code and got a pass for the unit without and need for feedback.

After the assignments where finished their were no time to relax because another one was waiting around the corner but this time it was a more creative and practical assignment which meant no writing. A6: The Big Picture, this creative brief was set out to investigate Adobe Photoshop and use it has both technical and creative production tool. During this assignment their were many creative pieces of work that needed to be produced with full development ideas generation that through out the year was recorded in my sketchbook.

I had to take part in a group presentation that involved presenting a technical Adobe Photoshop tool that would be useful throughout this assignment, create three banner adverts that met standard regulations and where optimized to the correct type of medium/format, Design a website interface based on a separate creative brief which I got given three options to chose from. The options where to design a website for The Magic Circle, Sandal Castle or First time visitors to earth.

For this I chose to concentrate my ideas to the First visit to earth but later on in the process I changed my mind and selected Sandal Castle for my website design interface. This took me quite along time to develop and creating all of the different icons and buttons where time consuming but paid of in the grading score and didn’t need to further develop the creative work.

Through out the year I have had many good experiences of learning new skills but many times where I felt that I was not challenged to complete the work. After looking back at what I have done I hope that I can progress into the second year with a more enthusiastic attitude and get the marks I push for.
Personal Learning Outcomes:

• To obtain 3 merits and 5 distinctions
• Improve my Spelling and grammar
• Put more than 70% into work effort
• Be more confident in the work I produce

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