OUGD602: Cargo Collective

I began to edit the code on an existing theme for Cargo. What really annoys me about it is that you cannot see the existing HTML or edit it - you can only add more html. Which makes it hard for me to get rid of elements and see what is already there. 

Anyway, I started by changing colours, fonts and adding some content and links in there.

I made the caption bold and text regular

I stripped it right down to fit my design and made a container which creates two columns as there is a 50% width and floats left

I added a small caption to each bit of text and I've reached the design I came up with months ago on the top half-  just need to add the photos of underneath now.

I realised that I should add my name to the nav because when you are on my work page you won't be able to see it anywhere

This was harder said than done, since it wants everything on the nav to be a link, and I can't figure out how to add something within the nav container on the html since I can't see the existing html!!!

Here is some of the CSS that I added..

I had been editing the HTML and CSS on the main 'feed' page, and I actually realised that this meant all of the content I had added featured on all of the pages. Therefore,

 I decided to start again by creating a page for the home page, and setting the display options to start on that page.

I actually had some trouble creating two columns when I did this, and it took me a while to correct it. I had to create two separate css styles for the columns in the end, whereas previously I only used one.

I also realised just by changing the width % I could have the columns underneath each other if I want - I still haven't decided how much content to include on the home page.

Here is the HTML, showing the two container classes and how I've turned the email address into a link.

OUGD602: Networking - Dot York

I went to the Dot York conference this week, where there were 10 speakers speaking about a range of topics from design to development, and it was a really good experience.

There was a really good turn out, of about 300 people - I didn't realise it was going to be such a big event! Luckily as a student, you get free entry, and you have to pay £110 if not.

I actually enjoyed all of the talks, but the ones that stood out the most for me were Allison House and Phil. 

Allison just had this really positive and productive energy that was clear to see, and it was obvious how hard she works at what she does. She has worked at Treehouse, Codecademy and Dropbox!!! So has been part of some of the best design teams in the world which is pretty impressive, and she gave some good advice of how she got to that stage. 

She works two shifts a day - her day job, then 2nd shift which is a side project she wants to work on. She does this everyday, and is really strict with it. 

The second talk that I was most impressed with was Phil Hawksworth, as he was just such a confident, humorous and good speaker. What I noticed throughout his talk is that he had edited his slides and spoke about things to include what the previous speakers had said. To me, this showed what a great listener he is and how up to date and pro active he is as a professional. It kept us all engaged as well.

I met a woman called Maryam at the event, and she flew from New York to be here! We got talking, and I found out that she is a web designer for Victoria Secret in New York - dream job right there!! She was so lovely to speak to, and we went for dinner after the event and exchanged details. I was glad I went and met her as she was such a lovely person and had a lot of positive energy. I would love to work for Victoria Secret in their design department in New York one day... I love that company!! And design.. so combining the two would be a dream.

Here are my notes from some of the talks

Mr Joe - Design for Science

• Don't need to cram everything above the fold - but need to show evidence of that
• Have to advocate choices you've made to prove your thinking
• Using terms like 'I feel' allows someone to give opposing opinion - uses personal views rather than data so sets people up
• Don't confuse design with art. Design is about having an effect and doing something
• Subliminal advertising doesn't work
• Cognitive Lode
• Understanding psychology will make my approach stronger as I have the theory to back it up
• You'll always have an answer

Bonnie Colville-Hyde - Learning From Comics

• How do we make stuff people want to share
• We need to change the way we present deliverables as they are boring. Documentation is full of text if we don't engage decision makers, we fail
• People love stories. We can engage people with experiences
• Comics can provide a positive disrupter
• They get shared, and people are attracted to them - they have a novelty value
• Create helpful and productive discussions
• What makes a comic - single panels, pages, gutters, speech, machine voice, thought bubble, normal speech
• Eyebrows and mouths are very expressive
• Characters are important
• Alex Dukal - photoshop texture brushes
• Comci life - $30/40 programme to create this
• Planning is so important

Anna Debenham - Styleguides, Pattern Libraries and Code Standards

• Interface inventory - useful for existing sites
• Style tiles - in between moodboards/mockups
• A good tool for conversation at start of project to see what the client wants
• Element collages - ui elements

Allison House - Making it Happen

• Being around people who are better than you is key
• When someone produces more work than all their peers, hire them
• Name all of the elements that will be on the site, prioritise elements
• Done is better than perfect
• How to get in something like Dropbox etc - prolificness - do lots of work!! Doing more work means you can push off bad work from your site

Brendan Dawes - Paper, Plastic and Pixels

• Everyday reset to zero
• Look and read about other stuff not in industry for inspiration. Being challenged, curious and talking to people

OUGD602: Website Platforms

I've decided that although I would love to build my own website, right now I do not have the time to code something fully responsive, and I am not competent enough yet either.

So, I began to look at other options such as Cargo Collective and Wordpress. I applied for an account with Cargo since you cannot just sign up.
I have an account with Wordpress, and I tried to start customising it but I think you need to pay to be able to fully customise templates - which is £85 a year that I do not have right now. I also find it quite hard to use so I don't really want to use that if I can help it.

It is really important for me to have my own website since I specialise in web design, and so it would be really relevant for me.

I applied for Cargo Collective and got an account

I'm going to try and figure this out and hopefully I like it and can work it out to fit my own design.

OUGD602: Nice and Serious

So, Nice and Serious are my all time favourite studio and I have mentioned them before on my blog.
As they are based in London I never pursued them and I wouldn't be able to afford to live there. But, they posted this status yesterday and I had to contact them because to have an internship there would be a dream. My aunty lives in London, so hopefully I would be able to stay with her if I got it.

I emailed them saying this:

And got an automatic response back.

I didn't realise how many people would contact them! Hopefully they reply to me!

OUGD602: Portfolio Surgery with Andy

I had a portfolio review with Andy Lodge, and we discussed my work and what I wanted to do.

I showed him my dribbble, I said I was worried that I might not have enough digital work to say that I'm a web designer, but he said that it was good I had a range and showed I can do more than one thing. He also mentioned you don't usually see someone do screenprinting + hand rendered things as well as a lot of web work so that is good.

He also said that I need to take a holiday before I start full time work as I seem stressed and unenthusiastic when talking about my work. I was planning on going straight into a job, but I see his point. I do feel as though I should take a break as I worked entirely through both Summers at placements/pub and I have been feeling worn down lately when it comes to work. I have a couple of friends who both want to go on holiday so I might get a couple in after the show and while I still have my tenancy in this flat, somewhere in Europe.

OUGD602: Networking - MUSIC

I have been interested in the Manchester based agency Music for quite a while now, as their work is so creative. They are very ideas driven and create a range of things in different mediums, which is how I would like to work. I think they are special a they don't seem to follow the rules - even their website is just based around '10 things you should know about Music'. And they have a calendar which tells you facts about them, and their concepts sets them apart from other agencies. You can really tell they have a lot of enthusiasm for what they do, and it is inspiring to see.

Sarah Goldthorpe has been speaking to them, and they've arranged a portfolio review to be held at their agency for us to go and speak to them if we are interested. If you was interested, you needed to email them and let them know. I am very interested so dropped them a line.

They replied the same day which was really nice of them too

OUGD602 - Final PPP Presentation

Here is my final PPP presentation

Here is the video I showed during it


YCN Topdeck Website from Danielle Harrison on Vimeo.


Here are my notes

1st Year

At the beginning - before I came onto the course I was into using hand rendered techniques such as lino cutting, developing my own photos and paper cutting. 

Here are some of the letters I did for the Summer alphabet, which is the complete opposite of what I would do now. 

I was really interested in sustainable design, editorial, packaging and printmaking. 

Although I am still interested in most of this, none of it is a focus for me. 

The one thing that hasn’t changed throughout the three years is how much work I take on and commit myself to, which has made the past three years a huge challenge for me, but I feel I have made the most of it because of this. 

2nd Year

1st Placement

My focus shifted completely at the beginning of this year, and this is due to me spending the entire summer at a digital agency at home. I spent 3 months there learning how to code and it really opened my eyes to the world of web design. 

Although it wasn’t paid, and they weren’t very helpful and it was a very small team, it pushed me to teach myself a lot about HTML and CSS and I’m grateful for that opportunity as it got me interested in web. 

Networking

This is also the year that I started networking. I started going to events revolving around web design which I now go to all of the time and I have met a lot of friends through doing this.

Some of the people I have met lead to me getting a place at the Work in the Web workshop I attended this year. Going to these is one of the most valuable things I have done while being here as I’ve met some great people in the industry and sometimes we meet up outside of the events as well, so they are more friends than just contacts.

I feel this was the best way for me to get talking to people in the industry as my biggest weakness is emails - I just don’t like them as I find it hard to word things and I get really worried about what to say. This is something that I still struggle with! 

Work

In 2nd year I spent a focused on figuring out more what I wanted to do, so I practised more web design, tried to do more illustration and branding and tested out packaging since this is what I wanted to do when I started. Although there isn’t anything I would put in portfolio from this year, it was valuable for me to learn what I did and didn’t want to do and helped me realise where I wanted to go. 

I designed and built a few websites as I wanted to get better at that, and although I don’t like what I produced, I am better because of the practice now. (igloo)

I wanted to try packaging again to see if I liked it at all anymore and produced this bacon packaging for a competition. This was a strange one as I think it is the worst work I have done since being on the course, yet it won the competition I entered it in (Starpack awards). But, it made me realise my focus has shifted entirely away from packaging.

The one project that I like from this year was a collaborative one, which I did with Sarah, and we are really proud of what we achieved with BEAR

Placements

Over that Summer I worked at Numiko and 26 and gave me a lot of insight to the type of company I want to work at and what it is like to work in industry.

Being at 26 made me realise I could do more work during 9-5 than if I had spent the entire day trying to do it and not being that focused which I spent most of the first two years doing. I was so much happier working within this time frame and a lot more productive. 

I feel the first two years of my degree I almost worked too much, and didn’t spent enough time relaxing and doing the things that I wanted. I didn’t realise that I could manage my time better and do both, and didn’t have to feel guilty when I wasn’t doing my work.

3rd Year

Approach to Working

So this year I have taken a different approach to the way that I work. Since I had time to do the things I love over Summer, as well as have a full time placement for four months, I decided making time do still do all of these things was a very doable thing.

I’ve finally realised there is more to life than graphic design - health & fitness, food, family, friends, nail varnish, sex and the city

and I make sure that I make time for most of these on a daily basis

Since doing this I have been more productive than ever with work and I am a lot happier with the work I am producing

I still haven’t mastered time management, in fact I have turned into a Procrastibaker now and there are still days when I am not productive but I am definitely getting there with the work/life balance

I am interested in gluten free, sugar free and vegan baking, and these are some of the things that I have made

That’s enough about my life this year, in terms of work

I wanted to focus this year on work that represents my skill set, the kind of work I want to produce, and the sectors that I am interested in and care about for my portfolio

Pieces that represent this:

Primate Project - web design

I created a fictional brand called The Primate Project where the aim was to adopt monkeys and donate to them to help preserve their habitats and life. Although I’m not keen on the website I designed anymore, I think I will still include it in my portfolio as it shows off one of my interests - animal welfare. It’s always been important to me to do work that shows the kind of person I am and I’ve tried to push that more this year.

Flick - app design

Flick is an app I designed for the practical side of COP and COP in general has made me more aware of app design and I’m more comfortable doing this now I have done so much research on it and feel like it is one of my strongest areas of design. 

The app itself suggests movies for you to watch based on your mood and preferences using a card based interface. 

YCN - Web Design/Animation

I did the Topdeck brief for YCN this year - it’s a tour operator providing trips around the world, and the brief was to replace brochures as the main form of communication and introduce the brand to a UK audience. 

This is my most substantial brief of the year, and I did digital, print and environmental work for it but the website was my favourite part of the project.

This is the animation I created for it, showing how a user would search for a trip on the website

Secret 7 - illustration

I entered Secret 7 this year, and I produced this design for Diana Ross & The Supremes which is from an era of music which I love anyway, so it was fun to produce something for that. I think it shows the style of illustration I like doing as well as one of genres I like to listen to.

My focus for the rest of the year is to create my own website, work on the last couple of projects I have going and try and secure a job that I want.

Future

Since I have spent the past two Summers working full time, I would like to take a little bit of time out, like a month or something and go on holiday as I’m so tired right now. 

I want to stay in Leeds as I love the city and have a lot of friends who live here

However, there isn’t any agencies that I really like here so I think I will end up in Manchester as theres a few that tickle my fancy there

These are Code ComputerLove which I have an upcoming placement at, MUSIC which I’m going to the portfolio review they are holding and LOVE which do lots of different work.

Summarise

Focus on digital design but I do enjoy print and other areas

Getting better at the work/life balance is key for me - Balance is Key

I want to stay up North

Thanks for listening