Confession

It's been a while since my last post because I haven't really been concentrating on my artistic side since we handed in our last unit. But now I have had a small holiday I feel ready to get on the next unit...dreamweaver. This unit in particular I'm looking forward to as I see it as one of the options I want learn the most about, however I'm not so sure as a career just yet...

I was just looking at some stuff on the guardian website and I stumbled across this review type thing of a Jane brown exhibition who was a photographer that shot a lot of people in a dim lighting and relaxed atmospheres. I think it just clicked a few ideas of what I could do for layouts of websites.

When I did photography back in college that was one of the types of work I was into. It also gives a few pointers on good photographs, always useful...

Packaging re-visited

Yesterday was a pretty stressful day because I still had quite a bit of work to do on my packaging. I didn't know the amount of work I was going to have till I hit the problems in my work. The main source of the problems was the typography. The typefaces were just to small and being was it was eligible for viewing.

On top of this I had a project from the day before to do, taking pictures and cutting up my final pieces ready for hand in. I think today is going to be interesting as I have a huge list of things to do...

Business Identity Re-visited

For the business identity I felt fairly on top of things. I had a few bits and pieces to do, like brushing up on my research and starting to get the design boards ready for print.

The start of the day consisted of going out taking pictures so I could finish my thank you project. Because I was doing road markings I wanted to show it in context. Once I had done that then I put all my working ideas onto a design board with an explanation. To keep my work looking professional I wanted to create a design board which would have the same layout for each project.

Once I had sent my Roosevelt work off for print I was free to finish off the design board for 'Thank you' and this is what I came up with:

Thank you re-visted

So at the end of this week at 12:30 is our hand in for this whole unit. I am hoping to finish a project per day, which should have me finished by thursday if I stay on schedule. For me thank you was the hardest project to remember where I left off, generally, cause it was so long ago. So I looked back through my notes and did a bit of research to familiarise myself with the brief and because I'm back into the work mode I was able to think up a lot more concepts than I was able to at the start of the year. So here is the concept I will be hoping to use as the final piece for "Thank you:"

The idea is to create a set of pavement signs like people see in cycle lanes, animed at cyclists. The final piece will be a verticle with the dunlop logo being used as an arrow to direct cyclists much like the signs themselves. John Boyd Dunlop is the inventor of the first rubber tire on a bicycle. Therefore I think my signs would work best on the ground to echo the tracks that tires leave.

Paula Scher

Yesterday was the Paula Scher talk, I wasn't really sure what to expect because I hadn't really done the research into her work. So I was quite surprised when I found out the sort of work she did. DNAD wanted the talk to be of her history, so there wasn't much I could do, but to hear the history of how she came about doing what she did was really interesting.

I think what inspired me the most was the fact she regarded her practice to be able to do anything, she wasn't necessarily a graphic designer, or an illustrator she was whatever she wanted to be, and whatever she wanted to do, making her more of a visual communicator, much like myself.

Advertising inspiration

I was looking for a a mac or some sort of computer I could use in a poster to advertise memory systems... and I found this. Thought it was quite funny.

Dreamweaver 4

The session this evening was about making pages to go on my website. We learned how to create new pages, and link them to each other.

We also learned some java script code for our thumbnail images. ill try and explain...

click on the thumb>tag inspector>behaviours and link it to the right file (.html)

On the .html file I had to write a link to shut the window again. So I wrote close window and highlighted it, in the behaviours this time I clicked on 'call java script,' in that box i wrote 'window.close()' In the properties bar at the bottom I wrote a # to make the close window turn to a link.

So to summarise I felt today was quite a productive session, I would like to learn a different way of image tiles, pop out window etc.. so they look good

A day in the life

Woke up, got out of bed, BRAIN SCIENCE, lunch, Uni, BRAIN SCIENCE, library, book: advertising next, BRAIN SCIENCE, newspaper, home, BRAIN SCIENCE, Winton, art shop, Lidl, pepsi, home, BRAIN SCIENCE...

That's my final piece, or a sequence at least

my mind is blank!

is it to late to change?

Tutorial

So it's friday, and I have literally been sat at a desk trying to work out what brain science is about, I think so far this has been the most difficult project... and for some reason the ideas just aren't coming.

I had a look on youtube for some ideas on puzzles and prediction, and I found this video...

I thought this would influence my ideas on creating mind puzzles, but i kept hitting a brick wall, with how it could be presented.

So then I moved on to look at illusions, but that also hit dead ends. When I got to the tutorial a huge burden was lifted, and I was put on the right track.

I was asked to think about sequences in learning, much like a child would try and try and try again before they get it right.

So my job over the weekend is to come up with some ideas on sequence. I hope next week won't be to stressful, cause it will be a busy week...

Dreamweaver 3

Last night we were half way through our dreamweaver sessions for this year, and they are going quite quick now. I think this session was quite exciting compared to the others I have been on, cause I think I really had to listen because most of the stuff was a bit new to me. I haven't really been used to writing the code in for the css styles. I think one of the best things I learned was the fact I could look at other peoples codes by going view>sources, which would help with ideas for my own site.

I was also very interested to find out about meta tags and keywords which, when you type certain words into google, will find your your website. The more links to big sites you have the higher up the list you'll get on the google search engine.

Next weeks session will be all about starting to put my own work together, so I need to bring 6 images less than 550px in width, and make 6 thumbs of those 6 images which will be 50x50px.

Laser Cutting.

Today I did a session of laser cutting in the 3D studios. We were shown all the health and safety procedures to the machines and how to use them. It was actually a lot more complicated than I thought it was going to be at first, but having all the stuff done in illustrator made it a lot easier for me to pick up, as I know the program quite well already.

Hopefully I'll have some pics up in the next few days of what I did, but being able to see how to use the equipment, and actually using some of my work as a sample was pretty cool.

DNAD discussion

Speaking to a few of my classmates this afternoon we were looking at the different briefs for DNAD. I was quite excited about the prospect of doing this, there were three in particular that stood out for me.

• Advertising - Integrated, Create an integrated campaign to bring to life Lloyds TSB’s partnership with the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
• Advertising - Viral, Create an original and underground viral to drive a diverse and creative audience to the Fred Perry Subculture music website.
• Open brief - Moving image, the City is constantly in transition and mutation, disappearing behind changing environments and shifting identities. Create your own ‘adventure in motion’ that explores this.

In the end we decided that the ones we would most like to work on were the Lloyds TSB or adventure in motion, but couldn't decide which would be a better brief. We decided in the end if we were to do the Lloyds one we would have to be politically correct on everything, which could prove to be difficult plus in the adventure in motion it was really open for us to do whatever, which was quite an exciting prospect.

So now I am working with Ben, Jack, John and Luke to discover a final outcome. While researching I found this Pigsy in space, I thought it was a really good, simple idea and it worked really well.

LinX finalising

I heard back from Bob at LinX today, he said he had finally got all the phone numbers sorted and that they would be launching the company tomorrow... He asked me to invoice him so we could sort out the final fee for the work. So I have sent that off! Job Done.