Dream like Dean's

This is my second post of the week. Please read the post below as well. On Tuesday I came into college to catch up with some more work. I had the usual meeting with John at 10.00am, where I went through my referral work. During this talk we mentioned what plans I had over summer. I hadn't thought about the summer holiday much but this got me thinking. I needed to ask myself what can I do to prepare for next year. I wanted to do something that I could improve on. I decided that I should work on my main weaknesses. My main weakness is consistency. Some of my work has been referred for spelling words different every time it came to using that particular word. Or sometimes using a different word altogether. EG: sometimes I use ass 1, instead of assignment one. This also seems to happen on my CD a lot. I use capitals for some folder names and the rest will be lower case.

I feel that this is because I usually leave the CD to the last minute and don't have the time to change it. This is down to bad planning. To better prepare myself in the summer holiday and for future assignments I am going to create a CD checklist. This checklist will include things like: Make sure all folders begin with a capital letter (except for website folders), or check spelling. I feel that using this template would help me better prepare. Effective planning would also come in handy. I will make sure that I don't leave it till last in future.

My second main problem is choosing a colour scheme that doesn't conflict. I feel that I use too many bright, Mickey Mouse colours which sometimes make my site look untidy. Over the summer holidays I will need to revisit my colour lecture to pick up on details that I have missed. I would also use the colour index more carefully.

Working hard but not smart is the way that things seem to go for me. I usually spend hours and hours doing design work in my sketchbook, making tiny alterations and decisions. To me this helps me create the final piece and makes sure it couldn't be much better, although I do feel that it takes up the majority of my time. Some alterations and sketches are not needed. I feel like sometimes I go too in depth with some design elements.

By creating an effective time plan I can state that I want the final 4 chosen for such and such a time. I usually plan for this to happen, but feedback from myself and peers usually takes over, thus my plans run out of schedule. I must try to stick with these in future.

To help me achieve all these I will set up a mini assignment for myself where I can test all these skills and blog my progress. I will also be able to use them in the assignment that Steve sets us over the summer holiday. Has anyone else thought about things that they will be doing over the summer holiday? What do you think of setting a mini assignment up for yourself to test your weaknesses?

Another part of Tuesday was getting to see the second year's presentation. This was really inspiring, as I was able to get a sneak into what we would be doing next year. Although the students didn't have their portfolio completed they did give the presentation a good run without getting lost. I could see that they had been practicing. They were very nervous though, which just shows that even with a lot of practise things can get heated up. Here are the links to their portfolio site:
Dave Sellers
Adam McKenning
Mark Feather

The final part of my blog was about a dream I had last night. It was about the CD artwork for our current assignment. The music I was listening to for the assignment is called sea biscuit, but the music itself was quite alien. I kept thinking how could I put the sea, a biscuit and aliens together? In my dream I saw the image. I still have some tracks to listen to on the CD but hopefully I can get my dream sketched out and scanned for tomorrow's blog. The basic idea was an alien fishing in the sea. I need to decide if this is relevant enough though, before I progress any further with the idea.