Designing Dislikes

This week has really provided me a valuable insight into the design industry. Having to listen to the music that Steve provided us with over and over again certainly wasn’t my cup of tea. If I’m honest, the music was that peaceful and quiet that it almost made me fall asleep the first time I listened to it. But by doing this exercise, I have learnt that you don’t always design for something that you like or have interests in. Therefore, I have learnt to switch off my personal tastes and design regardless of my opinions.

One of my reading week tasks has been to create some ‘mood boards’ relating to the music I have been listening to. At first I found the idea of these a bit silly, but as I’ve been putting them together throughout the course of the day, I’ve come to like them and discovered how much of a great visual aid they will be to me. I decided to do three story boards relating to my tracks; each one shows the three main themes I feel are present at some point throughout the four tracks.

The first theme was a calm, almost dreamy track which helped me to picture clouds and water in my mind. Colours schemes appropriate for this would be shades of blue accompanied with white to create a tranquil theme. For this, I think that some form of ‘flowing’ font would be suitable, therefore a script font like Mistral or Staccato would be perfect. Forte would also be suitable.

After track one, the piece progressed into what reminded me of the jungle. A percussion instrument is present and sounds almost like bamboo sticks being struck together. Obviously this kind of theme would go perfect with different shades of green. Typefaces that have a jungle like appearance would be best, so for this I stuck Papyrus onto my board, I also think Eccentric would also be a suitable font although it lacks that jungle appearance.

For the final theme, I couldn’t help but think of Arabia, sand and snake charming. An instrument that is present during the final 15 minutes or so sounds exactly like a shake charmer’s flute and this brought me to thinking about sand and pyramids, camels and sunny climates. An appropriate colour scheme would be oranges and yellows, warm colours to depict the sunny climes the final part reminds me of.

Throughout the past two days, I’ve been collecting logos in preparation for the final assignment of year one. From what I know so far, this is going to be a big assignment and I’m really looking forward to it. It will be nice to include all the aspects of design that we’ve learnt so far into one assignment and really show the amount of knowledge I have gained since starting the course back in September.

I have really enjoyed this reading week, it has provided me with a challenge and some music which I didn’t really like, but has shown me that I can put my mind to something, even if I don’t like the object I’m designing for. A valuable experience.

Thanks for reading,
Sue

Nyala by Carl Stone

Carl Stone – a name that doesn’t give any clues as to the genre of music he may fall into. Therefore, upon listening to his music for the first time, mystery is brought upon the listener creating a sense of curiosity and intrigue. For the more daring listener adventuring into the unknown, Nyala is a set of 4 tracks that continue on from one another, creating a piece that gradually brings an atmospheric but demure conclusion.

Nyala begins with a steady introduction, an almost silent piece that steadily builds into a crescendo of stringed instrumentals, which provides a calming ambiance throughout. A tranquil piece that could relax even the most stressed out listener. With the addition of a percussion section on the second track, a variety of musical compositions and soundscapes are explored. Repetition plays a big factor in the dynamics of the tracks and helps to make them blend into background music.

As the song continues, we are taken to more eastern climes. With a melody reminiscent of a snake charmers flute, accompanied by the inaudible drone of a male singer. With the relaxing atmosphere throughout the piece, the listener can easily drift away and take their mind off things. Em:t 1196 is a calming album that provides easy listening during stressful times, perfect for anyone wishing to wind down after a hard days work.

A6 - Revert to Type Evaluation

Another assignment completed and handed in, an assignment that I thoroughly enjoyed as it wasn’t like any I’ve done before. The topic of typography mixed with the ‘as and when’ issue of timed tasks certainly kept me on my toes. Preparing myself for the timed tasks really paid off, having a few hours messing about with Adobe InDesign really familiarised me with the menus and therefore saved me time when building my designs.

When I received this assignment, I must admit I was slightly daunted by the fact that one of the main tasks was a presentation on a chosen typographer. My chosen typographer was Stanley Morison, a 20th century typography consultant who designed Times New Roman. Researching into Stanley and his work was really interesting, the amount of information that I found regarding his work was unbelievable. It made the task of putting information onto presentation slides less painful.

Presentations aren’t something that I like doing – at all – and this really shows when I present, I get all breathless or I ramble so fast through my presentation that I end up finishing before the time limit. To try and overcome this, I constantly practised and practised my presentation to myself and then to family members. Some of the hard work paid off as I wasn’t as breathless as I usually get, but more work could have be done to stop myself from speeding through the presentation.

The rest of the assignment consisted of a handout to accompany the presentation and a series of timed tasks. The timed tasks were really scary to begin with, the thought of working under such strict conditions made me anxious. Getting the first one out of the way helped to ease some of that anxiety and after a couple, I fell into a comfort zone with them.

Hokai (Paint Tube)
The first of the timed tasks and also the one I dropped from my submission. Of all the timed tasks, this one provided me with the biggest challenge. The amount of content you had to fit into such a little space meant that there were only so many ways I could lay the content out. This task was dropped due to a small mistake I had made on the design.

‘Vodafone’ (Newspaper Advertisement)
Vodafone provided me with a challenge from the start, deciding what column structure to go for proved difficult. In the end, I decided to go for a long but thin advertisement and I was really pleased when the design I wanted to achieve fit in the dimensions of the column structure.

‘Jonathan Gee’ (Newspaper Article)
This was by far the one I enjoyed the most, even though I spent most of my time trying to get my columns to align at the bottom, it gave me a great sense of achievement when I finally succeeded. I produced a design that I was really pleased with as it didn’t stray away from my original design.

‘Grid’ (All that Jazz)
Grid was harder that it initially sounded. Designing a newspaper layout when I didn’t have any idea how long the content was going to be made me wary and forced me into playing a safe bet. Due to the previous newspaper task, I felt really comfortable having to do another newspaper layout. Everything was still fresh in my head from the week before and therefore made things a lot easier.

Story (Snake Davies)
The final task of the lot and the one I completed in the quickest time. As already mentioned, I was comfortable with newspaper layouts and due to my mind-numbing experience of aligning columns the previous week; I was in the knowledge of ways to solve the problem.

The ‘design studio’ experience has been a major learning curve, adhering to strict deadlines in a studio atmosphere has given me a feel of what things could be like in the employment world and it provided me with a sense of reality. The fact that I have managed to hand all my timed tasks in at least 25 minutes before the deadline has made me aware of how efficient I can be with my time planning. In future, I could use the spare time I have left to check over my design more and ensure everything is how it should be.

If I was to do this assignment, I think the only major thing I would change is how I presented my presentation. Although it went better than last time, I can still vastly improve the way I present. Of the silly things noted in my blue presentation, I think I managed to cut a good portion of them out. To stop myself from fiddling with my pockets I wore trousers that didn’t have pockets and my handout was left on the table so I wasn’t playing with that all the time.

Goals
From now on, whenever I do a piece of print work, I should take full advantage of being able to use a more diverse font – rather than the box standard web safe ones, e.g. Verdana and Arial. This seemed to be a habit of mine and something I want to break out of. When I search for inspirational pieces of typography, I can now use the definitions I have learnt to annotate my work. Doing this and practising the terms will keep them fresh in my mind and therefore will embed them in my head.

Continue to use the method of time planning that was produced during the timed tasks, due to the short space of time I had to do tasks, I felt that my time planning had to be spot on. Making the duration of tasks as strict as possible will keep me in the pressured design studio experience and will therefore get me used to the environment.

So for next time:

• Use typography definitions more so they stick in my head. Keep revising them.
• Keep the time planning as strict as possible. Plan a day at a time rather than a full week as this seemed to be more effective.
• Use my time to its full potential. Check everything over multiple times before handing something in. It’s too late to change mistakes when the work is submitted!

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Thanks for reading,
Sue

Late feedback on A5 Website

After undergoing many different layout designs, here is my final design.
Please feel free to leave any comments or feedback!

Thanks,
Sue

Getting things finished and tied up

As the forthcoming assignment deadline creeps nearer and nearer, I am more confident that I have ever been this close to handing in date. I suppose this is due to the weekly practise I have had with my time planning - which means I can now precisely plan things more accurately. External factors are no longer a problem for me which means I get my work done and on time.

Due to some hosting issues, my A5 website will be down for a few days while I swap over my nameservers/domain. Swapping domains should allow me to iron out the problems that I was having with my feedback form. For some reason on my old hosting, the emails containing my feedback information weren't being sent.

My 'Revert to Type' assignment is going good, each week I've been faced with a different timed task and each week I've managed to come up with a design that I'm pleased with. Each of the tasks has also been submitted at least 15 minutes before the deadline - which I hope I can manage on the final tasks next week.

This weeks task was to design a newspaper layout for some content we had been given about Jonathan Gee (You can see my design below). I found this task more challenging due to the previous ones due to the fact we had to fit things like gutter spacing and bleed areas. The text of all columns had to line up, so therefore my design had to be accurate in all areas.

With only being a week away from deadline, this week will be a 'getting things tied up and finished' week. This will mainly be focused at A5 as A6 won't be fully complete until my journal entry next week.

So for next week, I need to:

• Write an evaluation for A5, reflect on compromises and changes made to original web plan.
• Write up merit & distinction criteria for both assignments.
• Get my usability testing questionnaires and results ready.
• Ensure I have plenty of plastic wallets for my A6 assignment!

Thanks for reading,
Sue

Gasping Breath

I somehow feel that I always start my journal entry off with "This week..." or have the word 'week' in the first sentence. So here's a shot at something different:

Over the duration of the past seven days, I have gone through some mixed emotions regarding my work:

• Happiness - When I complete a part of my work to a standard that I want.
• Saddness - When my printer decides to not work or run out of ink.
• Frustration - When after numerous attempts to get my perl script working on my feedback form it just doesn't want to do it's job.
• Embarassment - When I realised the stupid mistake I'd made with my perl script. A silly little reason why it wasn't working.
• Elation - When with some help from Gary and Tom, it finally worked!

My website has developed immensely over the half term holiday, most of my pages are now complete - the design was slightly changed (and will slightly be changed again!). The testing session on Monday provided me with some very constructive feedback, some changes were suggested which I've taken on board. Some of them may be implemented over the coming week in time for a pre-submission check next Tuesday.

Another timed task was presented to us today - this time in the shape of a newspaper advertisement. Certain restrictions on the size of the newspaper space we were allowed to use were imposed, which provided us with a small design task before any sketches were even drawn. You can view my design below:

Bits and pieces of my work need tying up now, mainly my evidence log for my website build. Last week I took some time to get some browser shots for the operating systems and browsers I want my website to work in. Another set of these will need to be done this week so that I can get shots of the slightly changed design.

After a practise run of my presentation today, it was brought to my attention that I sound out of breath when I present - mainly due to nerves. This is something I need to try and overcome before the real thing on March 4th as it was the biggest drawback of my presentation - that and fiddling with the pockets on my trousers.

So, for next week I need to:

• Use the feedback received on my usability forms to ensure my site is the best it can be.
• Begin to stick all evidence in my sketchbook and annotate.
• Practise my presentation more, try not to get nerves get the better of me.
• Have all my work ready for a pre-submission check next week.

Thanks for reading,
Sue

Boost of confidence!

This week has taken some of the pressure off of me, after receiving some feedback on my referral work, I can now look forward to the hand in date knowing that I'm on the right track. My restoration is a lot better this time, the colours I had chosen previously made the image appear bland so they needed some work. I'm confident that I can hand my work in on time, as well as keeping on top of the current assignments.

My website is altering slightly, after some feedback I received yesterday, it was suggested that I horizontally flip the header so that I can make good use of the space and align things properly. The current layout seems a little harsh when it comes to alignment. This shouldn't take me much time to do, I have already done a template and validated it to XHTML 1.0 Strict so the next step is to begin entering my content.

During the course of this week and next week, I'll be considering the questions I should include on my usabililty testing questionnaire. Testing the website with people outside college will provide me valuable feedback from my target audience. For this I have already got 4 people lined up.

Today we had a 2 hour timed task in which we had to design the label for small tube of paint called Hokai. This timed task went a lot better than the previous one for FontBook, I planned my time a lot more efficiently which enabled me to hand my work in 20 minutes early - which is how I like things to work out. I really liked the finished idea that I produced and was pleased with the whole process from roughs to digital product.

My presentation/typography assignment is going well, I feel that I'm on top of everything. My presentation needs practising a lot more so that I am confident with the information that I have included - so that I can hopefully recite from memory.

During half term, I'd like to:

• Finish my website, upload it and begin my testing. Gain feedback on the forum too.
• Get as many of my target audience as I can to do my usability questionnaire.
• Practise, practise, practise my presentation. Know my content inside out.

Thanks for reading.
Sue