Collabrative Work Placement

For this Module, we were intended to do some digital based work for a company in a real-life environment, like as if we were working somewhere for real. It was open-ended in what specifically that we could do for work so it was left for us to decide.

Planning

Since I can do web design, I decided that I would do a website for a company, which I thought wouldn’t be too hard to find a company who needed a website creating. Luckily, a friend of mine’s family recently started a business in York, which made things alot easier for me as they did come to me asking if I could make them a website.

The first thing to do, was to make contact. I was emailed by both the founders of the companies directly, each of them giving me an idea of what they wanted, and ensuring that I could do the job.

We then had several meetings throughout the design period and into the finished product, with them providing me with a basic layout of how the content should be shown on the page, and then I created several designs for them to choose from. I think this was a good method of doing it, as whipping up a good variation of designs isn’t too hard and also tests my skills in the field.

Doing this kind of interaction with a real company did give me some decent experience as I was not too sure how the project would work out. The 2 founders of the company did help me alot though, they emailed me lots of content and text for me to use, which was very helpful. Here are the 3 main designs I offered for them to choose from:

Implementation

Above are the 3 main designs I offered to them initially (click on them to enlarge), they wanted their logo to be noticeable and also white to be a main color used. They chose the design on the right immediately, so the web development on the content could begin.

They sent me a series of emails, and also we had a few meetings at their offices in York about what content should be, with Word documents with text content being emailed to me, and then I would respond with a link to the latest version of the website.

This method worked well as they could see the website changing and their content fitting in, and they could offer suggestions which I could try.

Evaluation

The experience overall was a good one, the clients were friendly and so easy to get along with, and understand what they wanted from the project. The clients also were very decisive and this helped me greatly as when being explained to of what they wanted, I knew exactly what they wanted and this also sped up the overall process. I have more work lined up from the same people for some point in the near future, and also I am always looking to do web design work for people as well as developing my current skills.

If i were to do the project again, I can’t think of anything I would change; the whole process went smoothly and easily, and the clients knew exactly what they wanted which helped me immensely.

 

The Powerpoint I Presented about my Work Experience

Final Assignment on “Expressive Image”

For the final assignment we had to do research as well as a final expressive image. We were supposed to take inspiration from other works, first of all we were supposed to look at certain artists such as Phillip Gurrey, Erik Johansson and Alexa Meade.

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PhillipGurrey

First of all I looked at Phillip Gurrey‘s work and I noticed the style it was done in. Personally i’m not a fan and I do think although some of his work is good, s0me of it is the “modern” style of art, which is something I find a bit riddiculous really, where people use something simple and very easy to make for “artistic effect”, for example one of Phillips works is a picture of a black wall with a white streak down it. This kind of “art” is not my idea of something to value. The pictures of people that Phillip did are artistic, but are quite abstract and again, not my kind of taste.

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ErikJohansson

Another artist I looked at is Erik Johansson, and I much preferred his work. I see it as much more artistic and uses image manipulation to create impossible situations. This is much more my thing, and I did think his work looks great, and is very creative. I think that Eriks style is very different to Phillips, as his is more of a image manipulation exercise than an artistic one, although it does have an eventual artistic effect. I think art like this is interesting and much more so than Gurrey’s work. The style it is done in is a sort of laid back, non serious way, for example the digger being used to play noughts and crosses is a child/immature like thing that someone would do.

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AlexaMeade

Another artist I looked at is Alexa Meade. I think in terms of the work, it is good and creative, and expressive in its own way, even though again, like Phillip Gurrey’s work, it is not to my taste. Alexa’s art is all people-based, some of them are featuring people in different situations, as if they are doing something, but some are just of people. But all seem to have a background meaning to them, as is also where her work is showcased on  her website, where everything has a short caption. In my opinion I think that her style is more about expressing emotion through art, which is my interpretation of her unique style.

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Final Image

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is what I did for my final piece.

Final Assignment on “Time”

Task 1: Pre-Production

For the Final Assignment on “Time” I spent a lot of time thinking about different ideas that I could use to depict time in a different way. I always wanted to use video as this is the best method of showing time. I did orignally plan to team up with someone also doing the course, but unfortunately I think that it would take too much time and planning and then also editing to produce something which will work visually. Our plan was to film both our different journey from different areas to college specifically. We planned on making a montage style video which showed the diferent journeys at the same time, and showing different views, but instead we have chosen to do individual tasks so that it is easier.

For my actual assignment I planned on making a similar idea video, except just for myself. I did this by  mounting a camera in my car for my journey to and from college. It shows the distance I have to travel and the different changes of scenery I drive through every day. For this I would need a camera capable of shooting decent enough video, and be able to fit the file created on the memory card, and I already had both these things, so I just mounted the camera on the dashboard with tape and set it recording from set off to arrival. I did it on the way to college and the way back.

For editing my footage together I would need software capable of doing it. We have been shown a small amount on using Final Cut Pro, but I have chosen to use Sony Vegas as my video editor, as I think I will get better results using it, and I am familiar with the interface.

Task 2: Implementation

For the actual completion of the Time Assignment the final result was a video showing my route to and from college in time-lapse form.

Task 3: Technical Notebook

The first  and main thing to secure was a camera to film it all with. I already had a Compact Canon I could use, so there were no issues there. After then it was just a matter of securing it in a place on my car where it would be able to film the journey. After filming I simply connected the camera to my computer via USB and retrieved the video.

The next part was editing the footage. We had been shown a small amount of using Final Cut Pro for Mac, but since I have a Windows PC and cannot use Final Cut Pro very well, I decided to use Sony Vegas 10. I chose this as I am more familiar with it and I prefer the user interface. Also, in my opinion it is a much more flexible editor.

Another issue when I was filming was that at the end of the first half of the film, it started raining and water droplets are visible on the video, but I decided to still use the footage as I dont think it spoils it. Also, when putting together my video, I sped it up wrongly, and it meant I rendered a video for half an hour, and it was the same “first half” repeated 4 times. I realized why this was happening and managed to remedy it in the end.

Challenge 4: Creative Image

Task 1: Pre-Production

For this assignment we did some creative thinking as a group. We were given 2 words: “Stone” and “Camera”, which we were supposed to combine creatively somehow. We all thought of a good amount of ideas, the dominant one being a camera within  a stone or something similar, and this is what I personally chose.

Task 2: Implementation

I used Google to find a suitable photo of a rock/stone, and then searched for a photo of a lens for me to combine the 2 eventually. You can see below the simple process of what I did, and the end result below.

Click Image to Enlarge

Task 3: Evaluation

I think overall it could have been more creative and had more work put into it, but i think 2 boring subjects like “Camera” and “Stone” are a hard subject to create something from, and don’t exactly whip up interesting ideas. I think I could have been alot more creative on this task and maybe got into it a bit more, as when we were generating ideas I wasn’t really in a creative mood and I didn’t put as much effort in as I could have. I do think with a different combination of subjects I could have made something more interesting.

Update: Week 29

This week we continued doing work on all of our assignments, except on Wednesday, where we were shown an interesting video on the Power of Brands. It is a BBC documentary called Secrets of the Superbrands. It can be watched here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b011cr8h/Secrets_of_the_Superbrands_Technology/

And I would highly reccommend giving it a watch as it gives some interesting views on brands and the lengths that they go to.

Challenge 4: Common Photograph

This challenge was to take photographs of a specific area, our workspace at college, and present the images creatively. Everyone had different ways of doing this so there were mixed results. Some people just moved physical objects into the shot to make it different, others like myself used image editing to put together multiple images and manipulate the images aswell.

I decided to do this as the classroom and Mac computers are really rather dull, and the room and area lacks colour. So I thought i’d add it myself.

Click Image to Enlarge

This is the first idea I implemented. It simply involved copying and pasting the image on a new layer, making it fit the original layers screen, and repeating that. I thought this idea was still dull so I decided on photographing the area and editing them together.

Click Image to Enlarge

So for my second idea I took the various photos i’d taken, and arranged them on a black, blank canvas. I chopped the images up into segments, and changed the hue and brightness of different segments. I did this as I thought it added colour to the images and also it was something different to the normal thing to do.

Update: Week 28

This week we continued our work on our assignments.

Challenge 5: Filter Bubbles

On Tuesday we watched three videos. One of the videos by Eli Pariser was about the influence of googles various filters on the search results they provide. I personally think that it is an important issue, especially as the internet is evolving and Search engines are along with it, where nowadays you can see your results being filtered to show you more personal results every day.

For example, in the earlier days of Google, searching for something would give the exact same results as another person, where as nowadays the person sat next to you could get different results. This offers the question, what is being hidden from us without our knowledge?

https://ted.com/talks/view/id/1091

I think this is a serious issue, and I think is very dissappointing for something like this to be happening to us without our free choice. In todays times how do we know who we can trust? Especially with large, rich companies like Google controlling what everyday people see and read, are we choosing our opinions or is Google? Personally this worries me, though I continue to use Google as a search engine.

They can get away with this  because they have the majority of the world using their search engine every second of every day, which is something worth thinking about.

A better Google would be a more customizable one, where you can control what different variables do to effect what you see, and there should be more universal search results rather than localized and personalized ones.