First Year Over :)

Did my presentation today, went alrighttttt! After many tears & tantrums first year finally over

:) :)

Awhhhhhh Yeh!

I have just finished my visual essay after about 8 hours a day on it this week! think it looks pretty good although I could have done it totally wrong..

Can view it at: http://holliefergusonvisualessay.hostoi.com/HollieFerguson_VisualEssay/visualessayindex.html

screen shots of visual website:

I have also done my presentation which I am doing tomorrow at 16:00 but need to go into uni to make the dvds.

so happy & stress freeeeeeeeeee :)

Last Week Of The First Year..

& I have finished all 3 of my projects - my interactive I feel being the strongest, animation obviously the weakest.

I have finished my assessment presentation & will upload it on here soon!

My visual essay after so much time & research is nearly complete :)

One Week To Go..

until deadline for visual essay & presentation.

Have just uploaded my interactive media & evaluation to the dropbox - also made it live.

My visual essay and presentation are about halfway through, have just got an email saying Waverley is closed for 4 weeks from next week which is brilliant as I was hoping to edit my film & animation.

I am going to try and improve my animation now but my track record with it this plan may not go too well! also if I have time will do my own edit for film Herds.

Also need to make dvds today if Waverley is closed?!

Interactive Media Evaluation

For this project we were set the task to create an online portfolio of our work, consisting of 5 link pages.

My main ideas and intentions that I was trying to express in the project were: that this is my online portfolio of my work, to advertise myself & my work for clients so it had to be professional but also wanted a sense of my personality to come across through the design such as colours, images & texts I used. There was no set “theme” as such for my project some people for example had pop art or a circus theme. I kept to the same background & colour scheme throughout which reflected me as a person such as pink text.

The methods I use to develop my ideas were: (brainstorming, , visual research, storyboards etc)
The methods I used to develop my ideas can all me seen on my blog posts over the duration of the project. I created a mood board at the start of the project to on the IMGSPARK website; there is a colour theme of pink - hence being my favourite colour. I like "girly" things such as make up, shoes, my boyfriend. The mood board portrayed me well as someone whom has never spoken to me could guess my personality from this. Doing the mood board did give me ideas for my portfolio - such as themes I could use, what I wanted to include in the portfolio & how much I could put onto the portfolio to make it about me as much as possible. There was also the idea of personal branding – “involves the application of one's name to various products.” I also created wire frames which both looked like simple layouts but with images, backgrounds and text it improved the look. I didn’t want to design anything too complicated that I had to follow as I would have ended up getting frustrated,I started with something simple that changed along the way as I got more advanced. To develop my ideas I also looked on other websites that I really found appealing – Kate Nash, Rihanna & The Orange Tree website all in different ways gave me inspirations for my own portfolio.

I took a risk by trying something new. (Explain): I feel my portfolio is quite different to those in my group. Like I said I wanted the personality of me to come across in it, so pink text & busy background images may not come off as professional but they create the theme that I wanted & I feel it works well.

Some of the unexpected problems I had to solve while working were: Interactive is my favourite as I find the software dreamweaver a lot easier to use than other software such as 3dmax and premier pro. A problem I came across though was when trying to make my website live as some of the images wouldn’t appear, I then realised it was as some of them were named in capitals – ie “CONTACT” not “contact” & this was pretty easy to fix when I realised.

The decisions and choices I made to help solve these problems were: This is quite hard to answer unlike the other 2 projects in which I had a few problems because I really enjoyed this project & I think that was mainly down to the fact that I didn’t have any problems & everything I had planned did work. Obviously not all the codes worked such as when I tried to align a photo the right I wasn’t sure how to do it so looked on w3schools.com which was brilliant for simple codes.

The things I have learnt from this particular project were: (Specific examples should be cited.)
I think that going straight into it & making a website wouldn’t have turned out as well as I think mine did if without the planning. Looking at other websites really helped inspire me into colours to use, image to text ratio & layout. I think it’s also important to try a few different layouts to see what’s best. For example I tried putting text and images in different places on the page to see what looked best as the final design. Producing the mood board helped me with specific ideas for my theme. Also it was important to check my website worked in all internet pages eg firefox, internet explorer, safari & google chrome as some people in my group had problems with this - mine works in all, although looks best in internet explorer.

Areas for improvement , If I were to do this project again I would change or do differently: Unlike the other 2 projects in which I could have made more than one change, I am very happy with my final product for this brief. To improve it I could have added a flash gallery which I did initially have to start with but as I have two different pages one for video another for gallery, both looked a bit bare but when I have created more work then I will add a flash gallery. After submitting to the dropbox I realise I haven’t added my logo! As this is a project will keep updated anyway I will upload it soon.

A new project that might grow out of my experience maybe: as this is my chosen pathway I am hoping a lot of projects will come out of this. I can improve my html skills over the summer & hopefully be able to produce a website for a client.

The domain is : http://hollieferguson.net46.net/HollieFerguson_InteractiveMediaProject_DP2/indextest.html

Screen shot images:

Not Sure Why..

but all my evaluation I wrote up on here didn't post! :(

Social Networking..

Todays lecture ( and the last one of the year! ) was on social networking, we discussed twitter, facebook and various other networks. Shaun showed us his personal facebook page & then his own facebook page which was effectively like an online portfolio - nothing from his personal facebook just work he wanted to show - I am going to make one of these.

Also linked my facebook, twitter, vimeo & blogger to my website! :)

Not many people in the lecture had twitter although I have had mine a while now & not only use it to tweet about what i'm doing but it's really good for finding out news, celebrity gossip & jobs are always advertised on there if you search for it.

Presentation

I'm presenting my dp2 presentation to Deb - would have prefered Shaun as I am doing the interactive pathway so my strength in the powerpoint would be this & not film but hopefully it'll be a ok :)

I'm doing a powerpoint & it seems pretty easy, 5 slides on each project - the design process of each one & how we think it could be improved, what's good & what's bad etc etc!

I now need to make my portfolio live - will try this tomorrow.
Finish visual essay & make this live.

Improve my ainamtion & film a little if time & finish presentation.

Embedding Video! :)

Embedding video onto my film page of my portfolio! Alot easier than I expected, now I just need to finish the Gallery page..

Typography

Todays seminar was about typography. The font used for a design - website, tshirt, book - anything.

Problems for web typography:

- Has to work across different computer platforms and screen sizes
- The Web designer must understand issues and to address them
- Maintain some kind of control
- Line length and number of lines
- Font sizes

Association with branding logos due to typography:

Less is more:

- Don’t mix too many fonts in a web page.
- Generally, 2 fonts are sufficient in any design.
- Don’t forget you can use the typeface variations (bold, italic, etc) for different content areas.
- Try designing a page that uses only 1 font for all text areas.

Quick Update

.. After another 2 weeks off.

I currently have 2 weeks left of interactive media & have no problem with the deadline as I am well underway with my online portfolio & really enjoying this part of the module.

I have started my visual essay & although I may not be doing it 100% correct I am pretty sure i'm on the right track and will finish it in plenty of time for the deadline - 27th May.

I need to start my end of term presentation which hopefully shouldn't take too long as I know what I am doing as I have already done one - saying this I do need to start asking peers for feedback & improving my animation which I keep putting off as I am dreading it!