timothy stringer portfolio

Another thirtieth of the course over and it’s time again for my journal. Firstly I can’t comprehend how quickly the time is going. Looking back at my previous course I already feel more equipped to approach a career than after a year on that course.

My positives for the last couple of weeks would have to be in this order; the A4 mini tasks, the colour lectures, creating a presentation on proximity and receiving a pass on A2.

In more detail, with the mini tasks the design work is well and truly under way. I’m finding it both invigorating and frustrating at the same time. My ideas generation stage feels like it needs more work but the time I’m using is much greater than my peers. I usually look around and see others working electronically while I’m still developing.

To improve on this I need to take some time prior to starting my task and write down a schedule. Visualising one so far hasn’t worked how I would have expected although it has produced results.

I also had a reality check recently. After singing my own praises in my last entry my typographic knowledge was really put to the test, literally. With the introduction of an unexpected recognition exercise the thing I realised is that the game gets a whole lot harder when you increase the options.

Drawing this to what I’ve already learned and am starting to understand. Design is about removing the number of decisions to be made. Be this through the use of grids or repetition or any one of a number of techniques I am yet to learn.

Since my last entry I missed the first turn on the learning curve. My decision early on was to steer clear of “academic laziness”. I let myself down and resorted to referencing from wikipedia on my first assignment. Having missed the hidden away modification dates from my references I referred.

My lesson is learned and I have now put together a checklist to ensure I don’t make such a simple error again. I now have two new assignments to concentrate my efforts on.

The first of which is to create a web plan for a page on a Team GB, medal winning athlete from Beijing 2008. I’m looking forward to this twofold. Firstly because after Christmas this will result in me building a W3C validated web page and secondly because since Seuol 1988 I have watched every summer Olympic Games.

The second; and by far the more “hands on” of the two is the typography assignment. Still in doubt what the exact mini briefs will entail I’m absorbing things like a sponge. Already knowing there is a font identification section to this assignment I am trying to distinguish every font I see. This has been helped by Steve directing me toward a typography recognition test on ilovetypogrpahy.com.

After scoring only 19 out of 34 on my first attempt I was surprised and daunted to learn I would need to be able to score 34. After two heavy sessions of serif and sans serif research I now feel a great sense of achievement that after two weeks I can not only score 34 consistently but I can also explain the distinctive characteristics of the fonts themselves.

For me the content is getting better every week and it’s great to see my progress over such a short time.

Prior to Monday I didn’t really have any idea what kind of people worked in this industry or even what kind of person it took to run a business dealing in print and web design. This all changed with a presentation given to us yesterday by Dave Pannell and Craig Burgess from The Design Mechanics.

The presentation gave me a useful insight to the industry in which I want to pursue a career. I was filled with confidence when I learned that Craig had joined the same course as myself with no formal design background and an small interest in web design. This reminded me of someone.

The innovative way in which The Design Mechanics team work may earn them some enemies within the industry but I found it to be completely different form what I was expecting. To hear a logo can be developed within ½ an hour was a little daunting at first. It soon however became apparent throughout the presentation that this was no fluke.

Through careful planning and a comprehensive approach to fact finding, the briefs the designers receive are said to leave no doubt exactly what the customer is looking for. To me this seemed very interesting and the idea of working on a project with this kind of depth excited me.

The work brought in for us to review was on a par with that you would expect to see produced by much larger studios who spend weeks working on similar projects.

Overall, I was very impressed with the presentation and thought the advice given was much more honest than the run of the mill stuff. I also thought the fact that Dave suggested the IMedia course produced better designers than local universities was promising and just another reassurance I’m on the right track.

Originally designed by Microsoft’s Matthew Carter and with hand hinting done by Tom Rickner the true type font (ttf) Verdana was created in 1996. It was first released in version 1.01 along with Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) 3.0 in August of that year.

After the initial version there have been a further three updates to the font with version 2.10 where the font became part of the Windows Glyph List 4 (WGL4) and included in the launch of IE 4.0.

Version 2.31 added the € character created for the inception of a new world currency and version 2.35 included some minor table changes with no new glyphs being introduced.¹

Verdana is a sans serif font that was designed specifically for the medium of the screen. As such extra care has been taken with the characters that are commonly confused in fonts not designed for screen use. These are the characters i, j, l in lowercase and I, J, & L in uppercase and the number 1.²

Below you will find examples of the Veranda font at different sizes.

Another feature of the font is that it has increased legibility from larger spacing between the letters. This plus the simplification of the font also lends itself to clarity at smaller sizes unlike other similar style fonts. You can see the font in practice below in the form of a menu from the BBC website

Some people like to group this font in with other humanist fonts,³ meaning that the font tries to imitate the early 15th century Roman fonts. The designers however do not feel that the font falls into this category as the font was specifically designed for the screen as oppose to recreating an old style font.⁴

References

1. Microsoft Typography, http://www.microsoft.com/typography/fonts, Accessed on 04/11/08.
2. Channel Verdana, http://www.microsoft.com/typography/web/fonts/verdana/default.htm, Accessed on 04/11/08.
3. Verdana, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verdana
Accessed on 04/11/08.
4. Channel Verdana, http://www.microsoft.com/typography/web/fonts/verdana/default.htm, Accessed on 04/11/08.

The first half a semester is over and I’ve had a number of different challenges. By far the prominent one to overcome has been my ability to decide on inspirational pieces for A1: SketchBlog. When I do decide on a piece I don’t have issues explaining them it’s purely the selection which causes the problem.

The way I will attempt to nullify this issue is by providing myself with themes. I’ve recently discovered that themes allow me to concentrate my efforts in one specific area whilst also keeping my eyes open for other items to supplement the theme. Eventually there should come a time when I no longer need to set myself themes for inspiration as this will become a more natural decision making process.

I am enormously satisfied with myself that I have managed to set and achieve personal goals since my last entry, one of which was to have my first assignment finished by submission eve. I feel this was achieved by using my college contact time well suitably to familiarise myself with Adobe InDesign quickly.

After completing the final draft of A2: A Journey of 1000 Miles a week before hand in I can honestly say it felt great. To have a period of time where I knew everything was finished bar the formalities, was new to me and extremely welcome. One thing I did learn however is to ensure I burn my CD before proof reading the work to avoid any unnecessary wasting of my resources.

I was shocked to learn today six weeks have passed since the course began. Although the technologies and principles I have used so far are not dissimilar to ones I have used before I still anticipate my learning curve to kick in soon.

From dropping eggs out of the window and racing round a 500m track at 40 mph to editing some basic XML it’s been an eventful month on the Interactive Media course.

Having been set our first two assignments I’m delighted I haven’t yet missed a deadline (in class). On the other side of the coin I ‘m disappointed I have failed to meet some personal targets.

Namely, not leaving things to the last minute.

I know from previous experience that this is one of my major downfalls. I need to make some stronger decisions when it comes to my self study time and ensure I don’t just turn to web surfing.

In order to meet my own targets I need to break things down and give myself realistic goals achievable in reasonable timescales.

Another concern I have with not coming from a design background is that I am finding it hard to quantify my inspiration. I’m sure this will come with time but right now it just doesn’t feel natural.

It’s not all bad though from the friends I’ve made and the positive feedback I’m receiving I really am feeling part of the group. The course is truly underway now and I love it. I’m starting to think this was one of the best decisions I ever made. I am however completely aware that I’m going to be pushed to my limits both academically and creatively, but do you know what?

I am ready for it!