The End is Near

At the moment I am just finishing my final major project ADIYL, a typical day in my life. A few words on my thoughts of the past two years first.

Well what can we say the year is coming to an end at college. I am in the latter stages of the course, only a day or so to go. It’s been good; over the last 2 years I have learnt a hell of a lot about what skills I need to for fill my ambition of Web Designer/ Developer. When I start on the HND in interactive media I wanted to be a Web Designer / Graphic Designer, but I have learnt that my interest lies more with the technical development side of the industry rather than the creative side. It has taken me these two years to admit my mistake of course choice. But not to leave on a sore note by completing the course I have managed to confirm a place at Huddersfield University on their top-up Degree in Multimedia computing.

I have enjoyed the last two years but feel it's time to do something more challenging - Huddersfield University, then who knows Web Development as a full time job. Having got to the end of the course I have finally completed my self learning plan for the course, researching into possible career paths to go down. Leeds University: - New Media Huddersfield University - Multimedia Computing Also I looked into the skills needed to progress my knowledge, if I want to become a web developer or web designer. Having looked at all these possible routes to follow, my six month learning plan got a little left behind; I spent a lot of time trying to get my work done rather that updating the learning plan.

I introduced myself to a couple of online tutorials in which to complete, here is a list of the sites I which I found particularly useful.

http://css.maxdesign.com.au/ :- An introduction to CSS layouts and navagation.
http://alistapart.com:- A site that listed the specifics of CSS, also had links to other articles on CSS
http://www.thenoodleincident.com/:- Purely CSS, the do's and dont's of CSS, Explaning the Box model.

Also I spent a lot of time looking at possible universities to go to rather than doing what my learning plan actually said. I created the plan to follow through the six months, however this was not the case as every time I sat down to follow the plan, there either was another assignment to do or in my case to go to work. I tried to follow it but other things happen. Adam

That was Fun

Who would have thought that Project Management could have been so much fun? I didn’t. Anyway now I reflect back on the job as P.M I think it has gone well considering the task in hand.

The finished product looks quite good to say the least. The assignment was a group effort. A website was created for a professional client – J Brown Fabrics the result can be seen on either of our portfolios.

The current site looks like this: J Brown Fabrics

The Portfolio links are:

Dave Sellers
Adam McKenning
Mark Feather

The work created is due to go online this year when slight changes have been made, for the client.

Also this Week:

Starting the new assignment (My Final Major Project) this is a brief taken from D&AD. The brief is called A Day in Your Life.

The brief looks pretty much open to all creative aspects of design, the assignment we use a whole range of applications software. All types of media will be used, such as images videos, places such as Flickr and del.icio.us.

See you next week, feel free to leave feedback. Adam

Project Management

Well what can you say about project management, it's very time consuming as I have found out recently after being voted in as Project Manager. This is for our current project which is A13 On the Job 2, the assignment involves another team effort.

The project involves 4 of us, to complete a professional brief for a live client, we have just 4 weeks in which to complete the assignment from start to finish, as I'm typing this only two week or so left to finish it.

At the minute my efforts are concentrated on managing the project, however on some occassion I have had to stand in.

Just a quick post this week as I have a large volume of work to get through. Times ticking.

Here's what we have so far The Redesign, this is a quick site we have created which is not the final version.

CSS - It's all got box shaped

Well what can I say about CSS, when I started using it I thought it was a little dawnting at first but now. I find it quite easy to implement pages with CSS, that are also compliant with the latest standard, using XHTML 1.0 Strict.

I find that the Validating tools at W3.org are very good as you can check you pages locally and when they have been uploaded to your own webspace.

• Validate CSS
• Validate XHTML

When I final master the art of CSS, I am going to try to get my site fully compatable with the accessibilty guidelines. The guidlines are also set by W3.org, however there is also other guidlines towards accessibility such as section 508, which is the American guidlines to accessability.

Here is what I have so far for A8 Cissy assignment: The brief is based upon the reboot website, re-design the BBC home page. This has been incorparated into our assignment. However the site is to use CSS.

Links:

• News Page
• Weather Page
• Sport Page

Please post any feedback on my current designs, your comments are welcome good or bad.

Flash - Not so Flash

Well what can we say from this month's assignment, I only have one word that comes to mind "Flash".

The Flash assignment A12_KISS, I thought that this would be an easy one to do, until I started getting problems with Actionscript. What a pain, most of the time it doesn't do what it says it does. Like making the script go to the next scene, frame 10 for example, just because you miss out the handler it throws a paddy and errors like made.

Put the actionscript coding right and still it won't work, also doesn't help when your using a slow computer, as when testing the flash file it judders alot this doesn't make things easy for testing.

On a better note though I final got my Flash assignment complete, all be it at the last minute, everything seems to slot into place when you have a short amount of time left well that's what it felt like today.

Tasks for Next Week:

• Work
• More Work
• And even more Work

Will be finding out next week as to the new assignment. That's it for today, untill next time

CSS - Layouts

Had a good go at some CSS layouts this afternoon. A lot easier than I first thought, I just have to take my time when typing them out, too many typo errors. I have to make sure to save one set of CSS instructions then type out the rest and so on. Errors can then be picked up more easily.

Things to do things Week:

• Home Page
• Weather Page
• Sport Page

All done in CSS incorporating technologys from the BBC Reboot brief. I think after this afternoons go at more CSS layout, I am confident that my CSS site can be up and running in a shorter space of time. This will then allow me to test for errors and finsh off task 3.

The outlooks bright, the out looks Or--nge

This week’s progress is running smoothly at the moment, I set out a list of tasks that I need to get done. Keeping to the blog rules as part of the criteria.

Here’s a list of tasks I need to be getting on with:

A7 IME:

To carry on with portfolio
Change elements of site – Peer Feedback
Blog
Time Management and organisation of work load
To look at the extended help on the assignment sheets
Make sure to plan time effectively

A8 CISSY:

To get final sketches in place
To choose from final sketches
Receive feedback from peers
To look at the extended help on the assignment sheets
Make sure to plan time properly


The New Assignment: A12 KISS

This assignment is to create an interactive e-card, in the form of a Valentines Day card.

Research
Design
Feedback
Iteration
Alterations of Designs
Create
Test

The hand in date is in 3 weeks from now, to create a professional e-card.

As from next week I will cycle through the various assignments and comment on each individual one weekly.