Tinned Veg critique

I think I got a lot out of today's critique, I also liked the feedback, as it was a lot more constructive to critiques I have been in before... Going first in the group had it's positives because I think I got a lot more of a class input than I would if I was towards the end. Some points I picked up from the Crit were:

• The logo was too harsh and I should make it smaller.
• The faces I made out of food were to small and I should make them bigger.
• I should keep all the logo's the same colour, instead of having one yellow to keep the continuity.
• When fitting the label on the tin make sure the type doesn't go around the corners.

Dreamweaver 2

We had a recap on our first session which I had already known from the summer. The today's session was much the same, and we just began to touch on CSS and aligning our page layouts to the same sort of thing as other websites.

Even though today's session was much like the last one it gave me chance to revise stuff I already knew and learn bits and pieces I didn't know.

So some terms I learned today...

Advanced tags: A:link= a link

A:visited= been to a link before (when it turns purple)

A:hover= cursor hovering over a link

A:active= What happens when you click

screen prints

Doing a bit of thinking on the style of prints I wanted to do for the event we are going to do for the fund raising, and I found these designs. I liked how simple they were.

A little inspiration

Just been doing some research into cans, and I found this design for cider, which I thought was pretty cool...

Monday session

I thought today's session was going to take the format of the usual Monday session, talk about live briefs, about fund raising and maybe the odd dig at how crap everyone's work is... etc etc.

Instead we started off with our C.V session which I thought we did last year, so I wasn't looking forward to it so much.. but once I started getting into it, I discovered the information was different, and was actually relatively useful, I'm going to list some of the key points at the end. After that we just went through a couple of live briefs, ideas for the end of year show and fund raising... so it wasn't all bad.

What a client looks for...

1. Work experience (most important)
2. Good attitude
3. Degree subject studied
4. Team player
5. mature attitude
6. Reputation of uni
7. Ambitious, Career minded
8. Natural Leadership.

The top point was regarded as what most clients looked for. In the survey 46% of clients said this was most important for industry. The lowest point was leadership, it only had 10% of clients interested.

LinX 2

I hadn't heard from linX in a while so I sent them an email to check what was going on. He looked over the bits I sent him and he's sent them to the printers, even though the proper phone numbers aren't set in stone yet, so it will be interesting to see how that works... hopefully ill hear back once it gets back from the printers!

Interesting discussions...

So a critique usually comprises of why something works/doesn't work so well and a few constructive ways of how to improve on your works...

To be honest I can't see how most of that discussionhelped me to push an idea forward, even though what I showed wasn't a finished product buta concept, I can see why the tutors went about it as they did, but then most of what they said was a bit to far..

For the crit I wanted my work to look professional as if I were going to present it to a client. So that is my reasoning for the layout. Obviously you wouldn't have a character with no teeth on children's food, so it was just trying to provide a better idea of the concept. I can't really present stuff on the spot so I hope I can bounce back and get the relevant help needed.

Old to new

So I have been quite busy at the moment with live briefs and trying to put somthing together for our old to new tutorial today.

I think the idea that I had was a good start, but slightly went off the point. I was really glad to get some real constructive feedback about where I could take the project to next.

My idea now, is to concentrate on the children/ parents as my target market, I am going to create a mix and match thing where the kids get to pick the veg they want and have a special bag they can put it in, also a little extra thing, when they put all the empty cans together it will join together into a figure.

Hard to explain now, but when I get my ideas onto paper then it will all be clearer....

Dreamweaver 1

Yesterday was our first session so it was always going to be the basics, and because I had done some research into dreamweaver over the summer by learning tutorials, it was sort of second nature, so it was like revising what I'd already learned, how to set up a document and stuff.

The good thing about this session was Neil talked about everything in more depth, so I found out what each function did, which I didn't know before. I learned some abbreviations as well:

Jpeg- Joint photographic experts group

Gif- Graphic interchange format

Png- Portable network graphic

CSS- Cascading style sheet

HTML- hyper text markup language

MITV completion

After they emailed me yesterday I had quite a few changes to do, nothing to difficult, just a bit of a clean up and make everything bolder and smoother. and it turned out to be exactly how he wanted it, which is a good thing, I guess. So next thing is the AVI file, once that's done then this particular job is complete. He has asked me to do another 7-8 so now I know how he wants it I can work a little quicker.

MITV

I have recently been working on some work for a company called MITV, they specialise in making model railway videos, and my task has been to create a trace of a drawing they sent me, so it could be over laid on their film. Once the illustrator file is completed then I will need to convert it to an AVI for use.

I just emailed Chris (MITV) today to ask him what he thought, if he had any changes for me to do and if I could go ahead with the conversion. So hopefully I will hear back in the next day or two.

Graphic Agency's

So I couldn't find a poll of the top 10 Graphic agencies so I have decided to compile a selection of highly rated ones, In no particular order:

Creativepool

Thinking Juice

Purple

Ecom Digital Recruitment

Propel

Monster

Reed

Coroflot

Aquent

Gabriele Skelton

F D. Roosevelt work...

around again...

The message that got me through last night when I was researching Mr Franklin was:

'The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. Let us move forward with strong and active faith.' - F D. Roosevelt.

I think that these words are an inspirational motivation to any project I encounter. After our critique today I received a lot of positive feedback to take away from me, and it was the least painless crit I have yet, which puts a positive on the day, I think this is mainly because I thought I had a strong piece of work to show.

So it's back to the drawing board, a new brief and a new mentality. I think this new work will be exciting because it's packaging and re-branding. So I shall see how it goes. The work from the crit will be posted soon.

Roosevelt tutorial

"The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself"- Franklin D. Roosevelt

Fear could be that I went into my tutorial today with not much of an idea, but a lot of research? I was confused about what I wanted to do for my final piece when I went in, and I think I'm even more confused about my final outcome when I came out...

I think that there is a long night ahead of me experimenting on ideas.

The client...

I have been doing some work for a company called Linx financial solutions, designing a logo and stationary for them. From throwing ideas back and forward we have almost reached a conclusion...When you design something for someone you don't expect them to completely change the whole thing!! and what they came back to me with.. looks awful I mean.. who stretches text? It looks unprofessional! So most of the morning has been spent re-doing bits. You also get to have a preview of the work..

How it's going to work...

I decided last night, that because it is the start of a new year, the blog will change, it's going to include a lot more of what influences me, interesting work and obviously work I am doing currently, I also want to keep it a lot more to the point, instead of those huge essays, Cause they just bore me...

Was having a look at some of the links I got on my brief, so I went to the creative review website to check out the Tony Blair identity project:

http://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2008/january/tony-blairs-new-identity-wins-wallpaper-award

I'm not sure if I really like the designs, but I guess it sums him up as a person. Prime Ministers and Presidents aren't to dissimilar so I think this will help me with Mr Roosevelt.

Back to uni

Back at Uni for a week, and this is my first post for a few months. I have started on the second project of this unit already... our job, to create stationary for a person we got on a piece of paper. So I ended up getting Franklin Delano Roosenvelt, did some research on his life as a politician and found this real useful website:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/franklindroosevelt/

I think this guy will be a challenge because a lot revolves around politics, hopefully once I get more into it then it will be easier to find his stationary identity.