Tuesday 15 January 2008

More Skills

Skills of the Week
This week I have learned a lot of new skill’s. One of which was an old skill but it has only just hit me how I should use it all the time and not just in certain parts of my life. This skill is called screenshots! I use this skill every day however I have only just learned the joy of using it to proof my work. This has lead me into doing a screenshot for almost everything I do for proof. So for this week it has been used for Page Maker and Dreamweaver there is a lot more programs that I need to do it for however so that I can proof I can use the programs. However it is also good for practical work for my sketchbook.

Today I have also started putting inspiration into my sketch book I have a lot more of it to print off, the last post I made was about glue and how ineffective it is at the sticking job so I have opted for cello tape and staples. There is one problem with doing all this though and that is that yet again another sketchbook will be used.

The Other new skill I have learned this week is how to use Dreamweaver, this is a skill that I have been looking forward to, however it is easier than I thought it would be. For the last few nights I have been looking into tutorials on how to work Dreamweaver and other Adobe products better, I will of cause be posting the good links I found after this post in case people also want to get better in software.

This week has also been a happy time for me as I am beginning to learn more about my creative skills. By this I mean that I am learning more about my own personal skills, before I couldn’t see anything wrong with certain types of text ect. But these last few weeks I have learned a lot about my self and the kind of things I don’t like. One that I hate know is centre text, to me it makes the writing look horrible and hard to read. Another worse text I have seen is jagged text going diagonally up a page, this was the hardest text I have found to read I will also upload a picture of this to show you what I mean. I think this means that my mind is made up on whether I am a designer or artist.

Key Points

Colour (I will be using a lot more colour in my sketch book to make it look brighter and more cheerful)

Inspiration (All my inspirational work should be in my sketchbook by the end of the week)

Dreamweaver (Following up lectures on this will improve my work later on)

Page Maker (Just improving my application skills)

Sketchbook (Checking lecture notes in my sketchbook to make sure I understand everything fully before doing an assignment)

5 comments:

Shaun Bellis said...

Hey Martyn

I always enjoy reading your journals. They are always open and honest.

I am pleased that you are enjoying your progression through the course.

Screenshots are an invaluable tool and prove particularly useful when printing CSS based sites; as you may have already discovered, the CSS often is discarded when printing. This gives a totally different site to the one you wanted to print.

When collecting 'inspirational work' for the sketch book(s) it is important to remember to annotate each item as otherwise, it is of only limited use to you both inspirationally and to meet the grade when it comes to the A1 assignment.

Have you given any consideration to using InDesign as opposed to Page Maker. I have personally found that it is much more versatile and much easier to use [the creation of tables is one such advantage].

--
Thanks

Shaun Bellis

Webomatic said...

Hi Saun

Yes screen shots are the best for prooving your work got a lot of them this week just from playing around with software.

Also yes i annotate everything in my sketchbook like screen shots and inspiration, as it helps others understand what im seing.

Page Maker is easier for me as it's the software i have used most. I will move on to Indesign later but at the moment i am concentrating on the software i no best so that i dont get confused.

Thanks, Martyn

Andrew said...

I'm glad to see you've really grasped the usefulness of the sketchbook, it's something I'm yet to really take hold of.. though I can see the turn around for me at the moment. You seem to use it quite well, mixing screenshots and inspirational work with annotations, lecture notes and othe research; I think I need to take a leaf out of your book. (not literally, thats stealing)

It's good that your researching Dreamweaver and posting up your results to help other people in the class, little stuff like that goes along way and you know people will appreciate a helping hand.

Victoria Fisher said...

This week I have also learnt it’s useful to take screenshots when learning how to use software, but screenshots need to be annotated, so that when you go back to look at the screenshots you have notes to understand the screen shot better.

For Dreamweaver I took a screenshot of the software and labelled all the buttons, menus and toolbars, so that if I have to talk about how I did something I can explain using the proper names for buttons, menus and toolbars. I had to research the different names but there are some good tutorials that tell you the names and explain what the buttons, menus and toolbars are used for.

John Browne said...

Glad to hear that you find the the new software application (Dreamweaver) easy to use. I may have mentioned to you a few times that it is an easy application to use and get used to.

Bringing up the past are we???

As a fellow student on your previous course, I must have taken in thousands of screen shots to back up my work. Especially since I had the extra 2 years there before you entered.

The new term is looking bright in your direction. Not just your sketchbook with the new addition of brighter colours. But this blog entry has by far been ive read of your's in terms of SPG.

Keep up the good work Martyn and you will be some tough competition to go up against in the not so very distant future.