Final Presentations for the Semester

I can't believe it's almost the end of the semester already... a couple of more projects and we can stick a fork in it, cuz it's done! :) One of my last projects is to give a one-hour presentation on two books I've read pertaining to the course over the past semester.

My first book is "Head First: HTML with CSS & XHTML" by Elizabeth & Eric Freeman. As far as tutorial books go, this one was almost painless. At first I arched my eyebrow at the word searches and crosswords at the end of each chapter, but, as the authors suggested, it is a great way to give your poor old brain a break after staring at code tutorials for page after page. The authors' writing style is nice and light, too which also helped quite a bit in getting through it. Out of 5, I rate this book at least a 4.5... which is really good for a tutorial book.

The second book I will be presenting is a more recent release titled "The Impulse Economy: Understanding Mobile Shoppers and What Makes Them Buy" by Gary Schwartz. I won't lie -- this book was about as dry as a popcorn fart. Even still, it had a few really good points to make regarding m-commerce and how it should be tackled by marketers and designers in the future... it just took the author over 220 pages to eventually make those few points.

The Impulse Economy is also chock-full of stats regarding m-commerce, the internet, phone usage, commerce trends, and shopping in general. I like statistics, so the book was great for that. The over-use of acronyms (which were not all covered in his mini-glossary of acronyms in the back of the book) was TORTUROUS however! It's as if the author wrote the book for computer technicians and huge marketing firms.

And, maybe I'm just being picky here, what is up with the typos, people?? The book was put out in 2011 and contains stats from the beginning of this year, so it was written, edited and published in less than 11 months. Do you think that maybe next time somebody could actually proof the thing before it gets printed? I don't mind the odd little typo here and there as long as you can figure out what the word was supposed to be, but some of the typos I found could not be resolved contextually at all... I hate having to just skip something I'm reading because I always think that it may have been important.

Truthfully, the only reason why I stuck with this book to do my presentation on was because I didn't have anything else I thought I could read end-to-end in less than a week.

30 Second "Call to Action" Video

It's been a very busy couple of weeks over here in the Interactive Multimedia program at Holland College. The class is almost done for the semester... it's pretty much all over but the cryin'! :)

We still had a couple of projects to pass in even though there were no class sessions. Yesterday was the deadline for our 30 second "Call to Action" videos. Basically, they were supposed to be either public awareness/call to action spots or a commercial for a charitable organization. I chose to do mine on the Attawapiskat crisis up in Northern Ontario.

I must have read at least twenty articles related to this small, James Bay community before delving into the actual editing. When I posted my video and an Attawapiskat petition link up on my "wall" in Facebook, I inadvertently opened up a political can of worms amongst my peeps... not what I was going for at all, but oh well. I was just hoping for a little feedback on my video, not a re-write of the Canadian Indian Act!

Honestly, I don't like being controversial or political, but I guess I can't avoid it my entire life. That having been said, I may post a couple of dozen kitten photos and videos on my wall just to get the political rantings pushed down my Facebook wall so I don't have to see it anymore!

Anyway, here's the video I made (again, I was helped out with a great piece of music by Kevin Macleod).

Some Really Cool Portfolio Websites

This week, April asked us to research some other designers and check out their portfolio websites. Not surprisingly, there were a number of really cool sites. Below are my three faves:

John Zmuda

The reason I love this site is for its simplicity. I love the overview of the designer's work space and his interface is beautiful.

Jason Reed

This site for John Reed is also a nice clean site. What makes it different for me is his illustrated self-portrait. A great way to "give a face to the name".

John Wright

John Wright's Photography site is an excellent Flash site. Although waiting for Flash sites to load is a pain in the kiester, the end-result is almost always worth it!

I checked out a wide number and variety of sites for this research project and I have to say that for a bunch of people who call themselves designers, there's an awful lot of garbage out there! I started my search from an older blog by Design Mag called 101 Awesome Portfolio Sites. Some of the sites they listed were really cool... but then when you navigated to the actual website, it had been changed. I understand. My own corporate identity has changed many times over the past several years, too. What bothered me were the websites that started off really cool, but then got changed to something totally sucky. Why oh why would they do that? Another example of the adage "If it ain't broke don't fix it"!

Another Video Edited By Yours Truly

Hello from the trenches of Interactive Multimedia!

It's almost another week down in the program, and I've managed to get another video project edited for A/V class. In this exercise we had to take some footage the class shot around Charlottetown in September and do some "creative editing" to it. I set my footage to a piece of music I found by Kevin Macleod who allows free use of his work as long as you credit him (which I have done!).

Although I like my end-result, I do have to say that working with a sound track in video production is really hard on the head! I've been listening to the same one minute clip of music for over 10 hours. I'm glad I chose not to use a piece of music I really liked because this project would have totally killed it for me!

Anyway, here's the video, in all its glory. ENJOY! :)

Video Editing is for the BIRDS!

Okay so I've been trying to "stay positive" when blogging, but every now and then even the most Polly-anna of us can crack...

I spent another 8 hours editing my video project for Thursday's class. I feel as if I've been pushing a very large rock up a very steep hill with my bare brain! But I got 'er done finally and loaded my baby up on to my Youtube channel for everybody to enjoy.

As with any project, this one had its share of challenges. Most of those challenges stemmed from my total lack of experience with the video camera and editing software. Also, I was not dealing with real actors. My solution: cover it all in cheese! Yesiree, everything tastes better with cheese! :)

In all, I am fairly pleased with how this video came out. Hopefully the next one won't cause so many eruptions of foul language from me as I sweat it out over the editing. New software and I are not easy friends... nope!

Some More Cool School Projects

April, our instructor here at the Interactive Multimedia Design program, has been keeping us well busy over the past little while. Last night was the first night in a while that I could just sit and watch TV with Sandy for the evening.

This week is a little "light" for deadlines, but we did have another website interface due yesterday. This one was the "urban" interface. The goal was to create an interface inspired by any and all things "urban". This was mine:

When I was a little, my family used to drive fairly regularly to Montreal to visit relatives. I was the only kid who wouldn't sleep in the car because I loved looking at all the lights as we drove into the city at night. It was like Christmas... only bigger! The billboards that flip sides, the traffic, the neon signs... fantastic! Every city was like Vegas when I was five.

Website Interfaces - The Fun Part of Web Design

On Mondays, as mentioned in my earlier post, we have Visual Design. We started off fairly easy: a couple of fun design projects to wet the whistle and get us "in the mood".

Now, we've been exploring creating website interfaces using a variety of jumping off points for inspiration. This week, we produced interfaces using a photograph for inspiration. Here's my photo:

and here's the website interface I produced from the photograph's colour pallette:

Last week, we created interfaces based on a font of our choice. The font I chose to use was Optima. I discovered Optima Black when I was in the graphic design course and particularly enjoyed making "totem poles" out of the vertical text. I just love the way the curved ends of this beefy font meet to make interesting negative spaces. Here's the interface so you can see what I mean:

Of course, designing a pretty site is all well and good, but actually getting the code to work is another story... maybe even another blog! :)

I'll be doing some more cool stuff and posting it here, so please stay tuned!

And the Days Are Flying By....

After being out sick almost all last week, I sure had a pile of projects when I got back! I'm all caught up now... finally!

I am enjoying all of my classes here at Interactive Multimedia. Mondays we have visual design. It's like a mini graphic design program with a web twist. This class in particular has already made me draw more than I have in the past few years.

Tuesdays are set aside for Project Management & Multimedia Presentation. This week, we all had to get up in front of the class and do a presentation on a designer of our choice. My designer was Marian Bantjes from British Columbia. Her stuff is absolutely fantastic. I encourage you to check out her extensive portfolio on her web site.

Wednesday is Web Design which I believe is my biggest challenge. We are just getting into Cascading Style Sheets. If I ever come up with anything decent for this class, I will be sure to post it... it may take a while though before that happens, just sayin'.

Thursday is Audio/Video. For today's class, I submitted my first edited movie which I also shot myself. This was the first time I had ever used a video camera. I was also the only actor, so between acting and running back and forth to the camera to switch focus/zoom settings and the record button, I was pretty sweaty by the end of it.

And then there's Flash Fridays... my favourite! :)

I had spent last winter going through a Flash tutorial book, so I'm a little ahead of some of the others in our class. I have to say though, nothing I did for the tutorial book was anything near as nice as what I've put out for this class so far. I'm attaching my first two Flash projects here so you can see them. Both projects were focussed on "nested animations". The second project also incorporated play and stop buttons (my first action script... I am so proud!).

Week One Down! Just Try & Hold Me Back!

Hey Again Peeps!

Our instructor April Condon outlined the goals & objectives of the course on Monday -- and we are going to cover a crazy amount of stuff! I swallowed my bile-ball of anxiety and got down to the first four projects of the year.

So far, I've produced 72 logo concept sketches, a simple five-page website, an office document, and a twenty-second flash animation. I also, as stated in my earlier posting, started up my first blog site which I'm getting more excited about now that it's a reality. I can't wait to start sharing myself with the world now!

At this point, things are going fairly smoothly. I'm slowly sifting through HTML syntax and incorporating my current corporate design into my school work. I think my biggest challenge this year will be learning Flash. Actually, I will correct that: my biggest challenge this year will be learning Flash without accompanying it with my usual sighing, moaning and audibly uttered death-threats against the software developers. You should have heard the commotion when I was learning Adobe Illustrator (Freehand, why did you have to shuffle off into the good night??) ... baby elephants are born into this world with less bellowing and foot-stomping!

The website I'm working on is my own, by the way. I hope to properly launch it soon. Then I'll update it with new tricks from my Interactive Multimedia bag as we go through the course.

And now for something to share... Cheesy Goodness!


Here's an advertisement for Ojai Valley Taxidermy. Not exactly what one would call a "high-production" piece, but entertaining nonetheless. This just cracks me up!

Ojai Valley Taxidermy

My First Blog

I've never had a blog before. I've been strictly a "speak when spoken to" kinda gal when it comes to anything internet. Maybe it's the commitment; maybe it's the pressure to always be entertaining or thought-provoking. Putting it out there online has been a hurdle that I hope to get over while taking my course. Last week, my instructor asked us all to start a blog, hence my sudden appearance here in the blogspot world. :)

Tomorrow is my first real day of school. I am taking Interactive Multimedia at Holland College. I can't wait to get cracking!!