The Results Are In...

Well I received my results this morning and I'm glad to say that I have made it on to the next year. Which is excellent! Good luck to everyone else who also got through.

The main reason I am posting though, is to quash some of the rumours that have been going round. I'm not leaving the course, I will be there next year. I think my last blog title 'So Long, Fairwell...' may have given the wrong impression to people.

So you all next year.

So Long, Fairwell...

Well a year (academically) is over and looking back, it has been quite a journey. Looking back at my first blog post, the formative statement, I can see how my perceptions have changed over the last few months. When I started the course the only reason I wanted to do it was to get a qualification so it would make it easier for me to get a job. Deep down I think I may have thought that I knew it all, but it has been proven to me time and time again that I really haven't scratched the surface of web design. It's such a fast and evolving industry that you can never really know it all and that's what makes it exciting.

The first project, That's the Plan, was to create a website plan, including screen designs for a great Briton. This was a task that I had never really carried out before but the more work I did on it, the more I could see how useful it is for web designers. I think of it is a self written brief. I enjoyed this assignment and produced some great screen designs for the plan.

Back to Basics followed in the footsteps of That's The Plan. This time though content had to be written for the site. The content part of the assignment was rather large and I underestimated how much work there was generating the content. The assignment after this, Builder, got us to produce a website from the Back to Basics website plan. I found this assignment enjoyable but I did seem to slip in the last few weeks and make some errors that made me not get the grades I could have got.

Picture This was an assignment that involved many smaller projects. The creative side of the assignment was quite interesting while the image compression report showed me that image compression is not as simple as it seems. Some images compress better in GIF than in JPG and vice versa.

The written assignments featured in Picture This I found interesting. Studying the work of Designers Republic and comparing two pieces of work from vector and bitmap forms helped me learn what the differences are between the two.

Another element of Picture This was to create web banners for a Jazz Club. I think that I created some quite good work for this task which can be seen on my blog.

Revert to Type was a project that I very much enjoyed. I've always been a fan of typography since studying it slightly at college. This assignment also contained the much feared (at the time) timed assignments. It was good to do the timed assignments, it was a challenge but it was extremely fun at the same time. I think during those timed assignments, I produced some of my best pieces of work. There was one task, the paint tube design, that just didn't work out for me and I think that is one of my weakest pieces.

The typography unit also featured a presentation in which I had to present my findings about Neville Brody to Steve. I didn't find the fact of presenting difficult unlike a few others, but doing the research was quite difficult. My only fear when doing a presentation is the question part where people could just ask you anything.

Fax of Life was the final major big project. I had to create a corporate identity, create stationery, design and code an online style guide, produce packaging for CD release and make a pre-flight document.

At the beginning, the pressure was on to get all the work that had been set done. At times I didn't think the time I was given was long enough but this seems to be the smoothest project I've ever done. Everything has just flowed together this time. There has been no pressure this time and I think it has helped me produce some good work.

And of course, the year long assignment of the Sketchblog. This has been the big one, 3 sketchbooks and 45 blog posts later and it starts to get worrying. This would be a big assignment to fail really but I think I should have done OK.

I think I have learnt quite a lot over the last year. I think my biggest lesson was learning that it's always best to start off on paper before even sitting at a computer. This lesson really saved my skin in the Fax of Life assignment. I decided on an idea for my CD packaging but when I produced it digitally, I just couldn't get the dark, spooky and mysterious image that I was trying to get across. So I went to a previous idea and that really worked.

I've also learnt myself a few things in self study. This year I produced my first CSS & XHTML site at college and this has helped me out in the workplace as well. I only make sites using CSS & XHTML now and it's a good thing as it is becoming more important to have these skills as a web designer.

I think my creative work has got better over the year but only marginally. I think the big advances have been in things like time planning and using software. This time last year, I'd never used InDesign or PageMaker but now I feel totally confident when using either. Photoshop was another tool that I have learnt more about and I have started using it more at work. I think by next year, I would like to have a higher level of skill in Photoshop as I think I have only mastered the basics.

In the next year I would also like to improve my time planning skills so I can manage work more effectively. I would also like to collect more inspirational work in my sketchbooks as I think this is something I may have neglected slightly this year.

While at college, I also went to work for a start up web design firm and I think with what I've learnt at college and what I learnt at the company has helped me transfer skills both ways. This is something I hope to build on over the summer.

Outside of college I bought a digital SLR and I'm hoping to get my camera out more instead of just sourcing stock photography, yet another skill to add to my creative bag.

Looking back, it has been a good year and I hope the next one is just as enjoyable and knowledgeable.

Next year I plan on making some goals. These are goals that I hope I will be able to achieve in and outside of college.

• I hope to develop my skills in working in a team environment.
• To have a lot better understanding of CSS and XHTML than I currently do.
• To improve my time planning and keeping skills to get me the higher marks in assignments.
• Outside of college I would also like to develop my photography skills so I can bring this into my professional and college work.