Drew, Interactive Media Student.

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Summative Blog Entry

When I look back to September 2006 at my first blog entry it doesn't actually seem that long ago. I can still remember sitting in class writing the entry and bizarrely it was in the seat in which I now sit in class, right next to the door.

Although it seems not so long ago in terms of time when I think about how far I have come since I started the course it seems like such a wider expanse of time.

When I came to college I had been graduated with an Illustration degree for a year and had been unable to break into the design industry with this qualification. I understood back then that the range of skills required to get into the industry needed to be wider than those which I had obtained.

On applying for the course I saw it as an opportunity to gain those skills, I wanted to improve my skills as a graphic designer, learn web design and improve my typography skills.

I feel that at the end of the course now I have fulfilled these goals and have achieved more skills than this on top.

My understanding of what web design was going to be about was quite naive, I don't think at the outset of the course I appreciated how much there was to learn and the different ways in which web design could be approached. Even now I understand that I still have so much to learn and that I have the basic skills on which I now must develop a greater understanding.

One area that I have made a steady progression with is CSS, each time I implemented CSS I felt that I had mastered it only to find on the next project that I hadn't and needed to learn more. On completion of the course I am at the stage where I am happy with using CSS and feel my understanding of it is at a professional level.

I feel that I have achieved this level on a steady learning curve by regular implementation of it throughout the course.

At his point in time I am able to write much of this code without reference and I am pleased with this achievement.

Something that has been a constant battle for me on the course has been my time management. The reason I feel I have struggled with this is that I came from an educational institution where our time was not monitored and so I found it hard to adapt to this way of working and making strict regular breaks in work to make a record of what I had done. I am not sure if this is something I will ever be comfortable doing but I have definitely seen the benefit of the planning of my time.

These two issues are things that I raised with my blog entry from the beginning of the second year. A goal of mine for the second year of the course to achieve an average grade of a Merit, I identified that to do this I would need to improve my time planning.

Without having received all of My grades yet I am unsure whether I have met this goal but I do feel that since the first year I made a big improvement with my time planning and this could be seen in the quality of my work.

Another goal set for myself in the second year was to improve my understanding of CSS and as I have mentioned I feel that this has been achieved through regular emphasis on the learning if it.
I stated that at the end of the course I would be looking to enter a job in the industry immediately and my position on this has not altered. I wish to seek employment in a Graphic Design role as soon as I can and ideally it would be a role that required me to do both Print and Web design as I enjoy both.

I am now applying for Design Jobs within the West Yorkshire region and hope to find a job in the industry. My ultimate goal for the future would be to work my way up in a design company to the level of lead designer and having gained experience within a large design company I would one day consider running my own company.

At the moment I would not like to work freelance as I do not feel confident yet to do this without having first gained some industry experience. In addition I feel that working within somebody else’s company would teach me a lot about how I could run my own company.

At an overall look at what my objectives were on starting the course and where I am now I feel that this has been a success. I feel that I have achieved what I came here to do and feel confident that I will be able to work in the industry. I have been tested along the way but I am proud of my portfolio of work and the knowledge that I now possess about Interactive Media.

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