Thursday, March 29, 2007

The results are in!!!

I feel that I have managed to get quite a lot done this week and I feel quite confident that I am well on track as we are to begin our Easter break.

As I arrived on Wednesday morning I was soon told to check the board as the results for our “A5 Builder” assignment had been put up. Even though I was quite confident in my work for this assignment I was also wary of the fact that I have slipped up previously by making silly little mistakes. This was something which I was determined not to do this time and I was very happy with the fact that I had achieved a Merit grade. After experiencing many problems with my website for this assignment and having to start all over again with several weeks to go I am pleased that I have been able to achieve such a good grade.

After speaking to Steve in our group feedback session on Thursday he explained to us how he the assignments are graded. He told us that we get the good marks by completing the learning outcomes for each assignment and not by reading the plain English descriptions. This is something which I am definitely going to have to be more aware of for upcoming assignments and also the SketchBlog assignment which is being handed in soon.

I have been able to get quite a lot done this week and after giving a presentation to the group on Wednesday of our logo’s and receiving feedback I was quickly able to create my finished design. I felt that the opportunity to get feedback from everybody at once was very beneficial as you began to get different opinions and suggestions on how things could be improved. I feel that this is much more efficient than if I were to go round everybody individually with designs from my sketchbook as I think that you are able to display things much easier on screen.

I was also able to finish my screen design for the website along with the site structure diagram which now leaves me with gathering the content and building the site over the Easter break. Ideally I would like to return to college being able to focus my attention on the design for the CD that I have chosen.

I spent the majority of Thursday researching into several elements of the assignment and looking at some examples of other people’s style guides, I feel that this was a good experience as it allowed me to see the good and bad features of each individual guide which I can hopefully take into account for my guide. I then focused on trying to create the CSS for my new site as this is something which I struggled on last time. I did this by creating a test sheet and then creating a style sheet to apply to that sheet to see if everything was working correctly. I feel that this is a good way to do things as it eliminates any chance me getting it messed up half way through as I did last time. This is definitely something that I will try to do when I build future websites.

At the end of Thursday I didn’t even realise that the results for our “A6 Revert to Type” had been put up on the board until I saw several people standing around the sheet. I was extremely nervous about this assignment as I felt that I really did make quite a mess with the final timed assignment. Because of this I was both delighted and surprised that I had achieved a Merit! I am very pleased that after several referrals earlier in the course I am now beginning to get better grades which I must try to maintain. Bearing in mind that the work goes up another notch next year I know that it will take much more to achieve Merit and Distinction grades next year but it is something that I am definitely striving for!

3 comments:

Craig Burgess said...

Cracking results there Ben, well done.

I thought that the "mass crit" - so to speak - was really useful too, and I definitely think it should be something we do more often for things like this. What do you think?

J.Milsom said...

Well done on your grade Ben, and I agree Craig, it was very usefull, and gave people a chance to study them, and give there feedback.

Marc Pugh said...

The mass crit was really helpful. It also gave everyone the joy of seeing everyone elses work, and their progress.