The exhibit, the end

Wow that was interesting, I am so proud of how well everyone did, It is great to see how each student has grown over the 3 years of the degree……I am also a little be jealous.

Mmmm, not a good feeling to have, but I intend to use this jealously and awe as a fuel to drive me and better myself. I mentioned a while ago that I thought maybe I should have done something more interesting, something more engaging and risky. I think I was right, my little portfolio site was fairly drab compared to most of the amazing projects on show. I’m not saying I regret doing my assignment, some of the designs I made I really really like, it has allowed me to practice and forced me to find new topics and make designs for different companies, it also has resulted in a portfolio. But I think I was too conservative and safe, I should have maybe taken a whole new direction and went for a really different site, interesting and exploratory site, pretty much the opposite to what I created. I still believe in appealing to all and making the site user friendly, clear and intuative; however I think I should have found a way to achieve this with a more risky and artistic design. Maybe including both a simple and common alternate navigation bar along with the main more artistic navigation. I plan to improve upon my design and keep along the path that I started, maybe also starting a side project that will allow me to create something truly interesting that one day may become my portfolio.

Touching back on the exhibit, I really appreciate Lorna’s work and strength in this course, she did a great job with the exhibit and I think it went well, it is a shame that some students didn’t cooperate and it is a shame that like myself some of the students didn’t enthusiastically present what they had done. It is good to see that most did, the effort of some of the projects was really inspiring. With the course in general I regret not truly embracing what was taught in the course and not put everything I had into the project, Im sure there are also others who are also regretting what they did (or didn’t) do when they are looking back.

Overall I feel I am wiser after doing this course, although I don’t have much to show for it other then an average portfolio site, I feel motivated to improve myself and go on to do some great things. This whole degree has resulted in the same way, I have always been a fairly good student (GPA: 6 ish), but I have never really been motivated to push myself. It has taken me 3 years to fully realise my passion and understand that the only way you can truly succeed is if you want to, and that you need to improve yourself, you can’t just expect everything to be given to you. I plan to do a lot of studying over the holidays and I am also looking into another degree, this time using it to my advantage instead of just flowing along with it. I want to do well, I love what I do, and I am sorry that I did not come to this realisation earlier.

This is my last post, all I have left are a few reflection reports and graduation, I enjoyed studio 6 and what it allowed me to do.

I think overall this degree has taught me to think in a certain way and has allowed me to try many different things. I will use this introduction to design and different media as a base, putting my head down and doing the rest myself. The degree has been a good one, I have made many creative peers who are my inspiration and many supportive and helpful lecturors and staff. I am happy to have done MMDS.

Goodbye…

ardian nuka

My Presentation (Wk 13) – presentation day

Well that was it. The final presentation.

I think it went well, the site displayed well, I spoke well enough and explained my little heart out. I have some reflections on my presentation, I think i should have worked out a way of standing and presenting, it would have been more clear and professional. The problem with this, I soon realised as I started to present, was that I had to regularly navigate through my site to aid my presentation. I thought about standing up, presenting and then showing them my site, but I think it would have been less descriptive.

I felt I presented well enough, if a little quietly. I had the impression that people thought it was good, but weren’t blown away by it. I think maybe I should have taken a different root in this course and tried something more risky or interesting, but I enjoyed creating my portfolio and It gave me a chance to practice designing and play with basic web development (I’m still shattered at my ineffectiveness at coding so far, but I am keen to put my head down and learn it properly).

Next up is the exhibit, I plan to make a poster to accompany the site. And I may add a few new designs.

The Day Draws Near (wk12 – Pres on monday)

Doomsday draws near, but I am prepared. Not much to talk about this week, i made changes to the site and homepage and then I continued putting designs into it and now a weekish later i am still doing more designs, I have about 13 designs in the site, and i hope to fit in another 10 (fingers crossed) before presentation. I am happy and i am sure this will pass as is, but I want to add more… anyway back to work, i have four assignments due next week………..sigh…why are they always due together.

Rush Rush Rush and Presentation (wk10 & 11) crit week

Drats, I should really just write this straight on my blog………oh…….oh hello I didn’t see you there.

I was just thinking out loud. I write all my posts physically in a notepad because I am not always connected to the Internet and can’t always get on the computer when I want to vent/blog, yeah i know that’s weird, and its a long story. Anyway I am only just realising how stupid and tedious this method is…….I am a little embarrassed…..oh well.

I start this blog at the end of week 10 and at this stage I have created the site completely and have added 3 of my designs to the portfolio section. The designs took longer to clean up, insert into the site, and write about then i originally thought but I think this is sufficient to give the teachers an idea of what the site will be like. I have another 15 or so designs that need to be cleaned up, so by the end i hope to have well over 20 designs in my portfolio. the site has come together well, it is presentable enough and works on all browsers i have checked (shame it uses tables). I’m happy with the site, and I am really enjoying designing all of these different designs. So far I haven’t go any real clients to work for, so the majority of the site will be uni designs, template designs for generic companies and miscellaneous designs. Hopefully I can do a couple of designs for some of my peers and a family friend needs a design for a jewellery store etc. Woo Hoo, ready to present on Monday

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Ahhh, its now a few days after presentation. The presentation went well, i was close to last so I had to wait around all day, but I feel I presented it fairly well, I got to ask a few questions, I got some good feedback and overall everyone seemed happy enough (if a little bored – im hoping that was because of the whole day of watching presentations and not specifically my assignment). One of the most usefull comments I got was for the homepage of the website, the lecturer said I need to sell my self a little more, and that the site plan on the side was out of place, each section looked the same. I agreed with this and fixed up my homepage, i added a full banner to the top (removing the navigation links) and instead used the plan to the right as the homepage navigation. I changed the site plan/new navigation to more colourful and individual shapes, they are also more readable. I also edited the welcome content to include the summary of the site and also a list of my skills/services and a link to my contact me section. This will hopefully better encourage users to continue and look through my site or go straight to my contact section for details. I have also started to add more portfolio designs, and now have another 7 designs, I feel im on track and should do well for this assignment.

Design Design Design (wk8, 9 & the Mid sem break)

mmmmmm (stretch), what a pleasant mid semester break…

My content and refreshed status, however is not deserved. I am a little behind schedule (little= quite a lot). The two weeks following the last post were quite productive, amongst the regular synchronisation of all assignment due dates I managed to finished the design, cut up the pieces and start to experiment with web site creation. Ultimately this brought me to a slight hurdle: moulding my design into a website (it seemed a little easier in my head). This little hurdle was experienced early in the mid sem break and I blame it for the lack of motivation over the break and where I stand now!

……hmmm, I can’t really blame anything else other then my laziness. I was trapped and confused and I lost enthusiasm. I wanted to create the site properly using CSS, however after all the tutes I have done I am still not grasping layout and structure of web site coding using web standards and CSS, I can’t work out how to create the site/design that I want. After kicking myself and sulking I decided to step back, take a deep breath and look at the big picture. I am creating this as a container to showcase my designs and graphic works, not necessarily to showcase my web coding skills. I looked at my timeline and with the due date drawing nearer (and the due dates of other assignments) I decided to cut my losses and use a mixture of HTML and CSS for the design (that means tables to organise the structure, which is not always good). This approach shatters me, but I have to think of the final presentation and what I am showing (behind the scenes perfection will have to be abandoned).

I am now creating the web site, and designing the work content that will be shown in the portfolio section of the site. The other content has already been written. I mentioned I was behind at the start of this post, I originally planned at the start to have the site and a selection of most of the designs completed by this week (wk10). so I am a week behind, with a week until I am presenting. I am still confident on comfortably finishing the site with a good selection of designs by wk11, I originally created the timeline with slack in it for situations such as this. I will get it done, but it makes me wonder how much different the finished product could be if I had have been more focused and less frustrated during the mid sem break.

The weeks following the critique, before the due date, will consist of hard work, focus and determination to ensure that the portfolio I have is the best it can be.

In regards to my future with CSS, I plan to do a lot of study and experimentation over the Xmas break, before I pursue further study and or employment. I see the work and need for more web designers, so It can only be beneficial to learn to code/design for the web in the most professional way possible (even if i work in a different area, i am sure it will be beneficial). It will be easier as well, without the baggage of having already created and become attached to a design (I can see my mistakes and I want to improve).

Final Project Plan (wk6 – wk8)

The last couple of weeks were spent editing, adding to and completing the final project plan for this major assignment and initiation of work on the actual portfolio.

I submitted the plan on 2nd of september, with inclusions based on what the tutors and students said in the week before. I was pretty reluctant to do the report when it was first brought to my attention, it seemed a bit excessive and useless; however, as with most negative thoughts about an assignment, upon finishing the plan I had a better idea of exactly what I wanted to do and how I would go about doing so. A lot of the report was useless, it was just neatly written physical version of what I already had in my mind and did not nescessarily help me start the assignment. Having said that certain sections allowed me organise what I was thinking, and working out the tasks I had to achieve to reach the final assignment and the timeline I created were really helpful and made the start of the journey less difficult and daunting.

So far I have created the basis of my design, the colour scheme and general layout and style. I am also using my timeline, ticking things off and if work needs to be delayed, editing the timeline. In addition to the timeline (having realised the difficulty of constantly editing tasks and times as nothing ever seems to go as planned), I have transferred that information onto a digital project plan/gantt chart to more easily adjust the ever changing schedule.

The design of the site is similar to the power point slides that I created for the presentation a couple of weeks ago (grey, red, blue) and I am going for a dark easy on the eyes look (as opposed to black writing on bright white BG). Also like I have discussed in the report and presentation I am going for a nice clean, simple layout. I am thinking of having the links in the banner to the right, which is a little different but very readable and easy to use. I am also contemplating a design that does not use scroll bars, all the information will be displayed in there respective areas in an 800×600 box.

Anyway that is pretty much were I am at the moment, in the following weeks I hope to have the design finalised and ready for input into site format.

Planning and Presenting (wk4 – wk6)

Here I am again, a day after the presentation of my idea, It did not go well at all.

I worked hard on the report, spent a little too much time on my presentation slides and ultimately not enough time on writing a good presentation. I mumbled, paused too much, did not effectively cover what was important in the time set for the presentation and I am pretty sure I conveyed how SH%$T scared I was. What annoys me about this is that until recently I have always held myself fairly well in presentations. I am usually knowledgeable in what I am presenting and show at least some confidence. I have begun to get lazy with these presentations, where in the past I would write a script, memorize it and practice speaking; I now tend to wing it with a mediocre script.

I feel the script is what let me down, it wasn’t well structured and wasn’t well known. I knew the subject/project of which I was talking about (I had just written a report), but I didn’t know the script and I panicked when I lost my place and the tutor gave me the 2 minute mark. I am positive that if I had have just written down titles of what I was going to discuss and just presented my idea, I would have done a lot better. I need to trust in myself more and ‘just do it’, not caring so much about what people will think or what will happen if I fail. That or write a half decent script and learn and practice it, this however is not always possible when swamped.

I have lost a lot of interest in this degree. Multimedia design has taught me a lot and I think this broad education has its good points, letting me experience a lot of areas of design; however I am feeling frustrated and want to just focus on areas I genuinely enjoy, certain subjects just aren’t connecting with me and I feel its a waste. This frustration seems to be showing in other subjects that I do enjoy such as this one.

I need to better structure how I work and separate work and leisure. When I sit down to work, I need to just focus on work rather then, getting side tracked and distracted by something more fun. The amount of time I work on an assignment is surprising, I could do it in more than half the time but I just don’t seem to be able to just concentrate and work. Maybe if I set specific times to relax and specific times to work I wont blend the two into an unproductive nothing filled waste of time.

Comments and suggestions of the report draft and presentation will be given out tomorrow, so the next step is editing the report and presentation slides for resubmission.

The Main Idea (wk2 – wk4)

Been a while since the last post for this course. I’ve been incredibly busy, as most uni students  usually are.

Anyway, the main assessment piece for this course is a freedom project, basically we create something that will show off our skills in an area that we are interested in. The final assignment will be displayed at the end of year exhibit. I have wanted this freedom since I started this course and now I don’t know what to do with it, I have broad interests and am swamped with ideas. In anticipation for this assignment (having seen the projects of the previous year) I have been brainstorming possible projects, pretty much everything from After Effects animation sequences, Marketing campaign designs and short films to physical computing and new media art installations.

I finally decided on a graphic design project so that I could practice developing designs and corporate ID etc for mock companies. I am keen on a career in graphic design in the future and enjoy all aspects of it (print, web, motion). I thought to maybe try something a little different for this last project, something that I may not get the opportunity to do again. After some thought I new that choosing something like graphic design would ultimately be a better choice, it is what I truly enjoy and this will reflect in the quality of the finished project. I am currently sketching up some designs and creating a plan to take on this project. So far I am probably going to create a basic site, that will showcase a range of print and web designs with explanation for each (discussing the design and what it means). If I am on track and feeling fairly comfortable I may experiment with motion graphics and include some in the final project. We’ll have to see about that though.

I’ll post regularly with project progress and anything else that comes to mind

mmds3802 – Multimedia Project II

HEY HEY, first post for this subject

For this ‘quick n dirty’ project i was in a team with Pete n David.

We designed and animated a new search engine for this assignment and presented it to the class

below is a short summary of our individual contributions

—————————

team Search.com (team 3)
here is the individual contribution

Planning
— we all got together and started to brainstorm
— came up with an idea for direction of assignment

design (each did own mockups and then chose best elements and made one
together)
— me
— david
— pete

animation
— me
— david

script

–pete

flyer

— pete

comp3000 week 14 +

I am now working on the portfolio report and studying for tests in other courses.