Website Ideas

I have been working on design ideas for my website,

hoping to have this up and running either before I break up for summer,

or early third year.

Here are a few home page images I have been playing about with.

I prefer the second design,

but I don't think that will be the design I go with,

I will work with this design and expand on it, try work away where I can use photography with it.

Logo

I have had my logo designed for just under a year now,

not to sure why I have never got round to putting it on here,

but here it is now.

I narrowed it down to three,

but then finally chose which one I wanted to use.

Personal Business Card & Creative C.V

Past few weeks along with my Studio Work I have been working on my Business Card & Creative C.V.

Business Card should be done within' the next few weeks,

along with my Creative C.V, but I imagine this will take abit longer.

Hoping to have them done before we break up for summer holiday.

They will be posted up here soon as they are finished.

E-Mail Feedback

After e-mailing the companies, 8 in all,

I got 3 responses,

from Smiling Wolf, Liquid Studios and Stuart Baker from Teabag Studios.

All the agencies more or less said the same thing;

They said they where impressed with the portfolio work I sent out to them,

mentions they like the layout, style and simplicity of my work.

Currently I still e-mail Stuart Baker,

and have kept in touch about design and about my work etc,

so hoping something could come out of this.

Liquid Studios,

Have offered me a placement for this upcoming summer,

not clarified date and how long for,

that will be given to me as soon as they know.

Smiling Wolf,

I have also be offered a placement at Smiling Wolf, in Liverpool.

They offered me a day there during the easter holidays but I wasn't able to attend,

so instead they said they will see me in the summer, and will let me know dates as soon as possible.

So it is all looking good so far,

but I will be e-mailing more companies after the major project to get feedback and anything else possible.

E-Mailing Agencies

We where given a deadline to get a written e-mail prepared to send of to agencies with a brief description of what we wanted and a electronic portfolio which we had to put together.

I e-mailed to:

- Smiling Wolf, Liverpool

- Liquid Studios, Liverpool

- Teabag Design, Leeds

& a few free lance designers.

I will be continuing to e-mail through out the summer, with more work to show them.

The e-mail I sent out goes as follows;

Hey [Name of Company],

I am a Graphic Design student from Liverpool, currently in my second year of a (BA Hons) Graphic Design course attending Leeds College of Art,

I enjoy browsing through the work you and your companies work produce,

its the type of work that catches my eye, and I get inspiration from it.

We have been advised to get ourselves out there, and send our favorite design companies examples of our work.

Attached is a PDF of a electronic portfolio I have put together.

If you could spare a few minutes of your time to have a look at my work, and give me any possible feedback,

I would be very grateful.

Thank You

Andrew Makin

OUGD202 Self Evaluation - Design For Digital

For this module, OUGD202, Design for Digital,

using animation programmes, for videos and idents,

never really had my name on the cards.

The module started getting tutorials, using the programme Adobe After Effects.

I was finding bits and bobs hard to understand more than others,

so they were the bits i focused on working on to get used to the programme.

But no matter how much help I got, how many notes I wrote, I could just never get them into my head,

something would always go wrong or something wouldn't go as I planned.

which leads us onto "Silent Movies".

Silent Movies, 4x 5seconds.

My whole intentions was to keep them simple, using just the basic skills we where shown in the tutorials. They where nothing special, but I was happy with the out comes.

I kept to a Black, White and Orange colour pallet.

Looking at others in the class, theres were hundred times better, but some have the skills to use them programmes, others don't.

Top 10, 30-50 Second Opening Credits.

Having two options, one long animation, or 5 shorter ones,

I chose the one long one, and focused on "Top Ten Haircuts"

My final resolution was pretty weak, if am going to be honest.

I did try, but I could just couldn't get it to run as smooth as the story boards I developed.

I think the timing was pretty poor, the first 7 numbers take up to long, I could have improved on that.

I feel the storyboards and layouts were a strong idea, and could work pretty well,

but I just lacked the After Effects Skills.

DVD Menu,

I left mine pretty late, and had to redo the menu numerous times,

so I decided to just have it plane and simple, hence the black and white layout.

With a last minute check, I feel this could also be better,

the menu would work perfect on a PC screen and mouse, but abit harder to use for a DVD Menu.

On the whole, I don't feel I have done very well during this module,

it was never gonna go in my favour a brief like we were given, I tried hard, but all the experimentation I done just didn't work out for me and my resolutions.

My resolutions were weak, and I would be first to raise my hand and admit that,

but as for my ideas and storyboards I feel they were strong.

The idea was there, the resolution just wasn't.

So in the future, if a client comes to me wanting some work along these lines,

I would happily get the ideas and storyboards together,

but beyond that point, I think I would pass the rest on to someone else to produce the resolution.

If I was to do this brief again, and do anything different,

would be spend alot more time on After Effects, Experiment more with it.

Give myself more time for my resolutions, so if I ain't happy with them, I could improve them or add to them, or even restart them.

Progress Tutorial

Strengths I have developed during Level 05.

Confidence,

During this second year I have found that I have gained a lot more confidence than I had during Level 04,

Around my fellow students,

speaking about my work to others,

presenting my work to other,

also explaining my ideas.

Attitude,

My attitude towards the course have changed this year,

I knew I had to come into it with a confidence boost,

knowing it was going to be a hard work, a lot more of a challenge compared to last year.

Time

Using my time better,

Using the studio space, and the amount of time a day in there and options around us.

Time Management, planning my work, doing it with a few spare days/hours to edit what needs doing.

Weakness I Have developed during Level 05.

To be fare I can't think of many weaknesses,

I feel compared to last year i have improved,

I had jumpy start with a few incidents, but minus that I feel I have just got stronger and gained more than lost.

I suppose I could mention my folder hand in during the first module,

with lack

My first hand in wasn't to great,

Lack of money and printing made my folio look weak and unprofessional.