Category: <span>Uni</span>

Published April 18, 2008 by

The grapple

I have been feeling increasingly flat about this whole ‘study to be a designer’ thing today. I have a small inkling that it’s simply the homework blues but the homework blues can seep ever so slightly into, the crap-what-have-I-gotten-myself-into despair.

The other part of this inkling is that at the moment my idea of graphic design is too tightly tied with the fact that I can’t draw very well and it’s hard to find examples of designers that are the same and have this weird affinity with writing instead.

If you could find me an avenue where design and writing were intrinsictly linked, I would be a happy happy girl. Gosh I’m becoming reliant.

To brighten the room, let me share the web-based folio I made for my interactive web class. Although I ran out of time and never managed to work out how to get my fixed positioned site to sit centrally via CSS (How do you do that btw?), I’m relatively happy with it (except the slight off positioning of one of my links – damn, the things you realise later!). Curiously the site looks a billion times better on my lovely shiny new mac than it does on the PC I built it on – ahh screens.

Have a look.

I’ve been really impressed with the web tutors at Swinburne, although I’m mystified why they bothered teaching table based layout before they launched into CSS. The assignment could be created in either form. Why?!

My next self initiated task is to turn the static thing into a blog template to give myself the experience in creating templates from scratch.

This is the stuff I enjoy.

My question is, can I possibly get myself a job in the web-design/print-design/writing field with what I’m studying?

Yes you silly girl, you can, you just need to get over your loathing of package design and your mistrust of anal retentive development methods.

Create Design Life Uni

frustration web design

Published April 18, 2008 by

Homework makes me nervous

When studying design you don’t get exams, you get these things called Folios. Folios require workbooks, workbooks require a hell of a lot of work.

I can deal with research.

I can’t deal with the supposed ‘right’ way of working. I work, in that I get straight on the computer and play. I don’t do sketches, I don’t mindmap and all that other crap. I don’t work that way, however hard I try. It’s ‘more correct’ of course, to do sketches, it’s more industry happy etc… but you can’t if you can’t.

This makes the ‘develop the workbook’ time difficult, in that I often have to backfill (we all do) – create crappy little sketches etc so it appears as if this is how I develop things (simply so I pass etc). Backfilling makes me feel crap.

Some tutors get it. Your workbook is how you work. You’re allowed to show things as you do them. This is as it should be. But some tutors just don’t get it. They take marks off you because you write something by hand (to save re-printing/wasting paper) or you work your own way minus certain conventions and they go ape (In their heads – which reflects on your marks), it’s a workbook! It’s how I got there. I got there right? Think reasonably! Be nice.

Assignments make me nervous.

Design Uni

Published April 2, 2008 by

Today I like people but not trains, busses or wind

It took me three and a half hours to get home tonight. It usually takes an hour.

Melbourne has been subject to some angry winds and a dirty brown sky due to the very tail end of a cyclone coming from the west and some Port Phillip Bay winds. Such bad winds that they canceled uni classes (I was in for all of half an hour). Truly it was more dangerous at Glenferrie than Prahran where I am but hey. My train was late (power issues) slightly expected, then the other train finished it’s trip far too early due to trees down – I grabbed a bus in quite good time only to have it arrive at the secondary stop to find the door of the bus was stuck. They finally opened it, but made us change busses (again I succeeded onto getting on quite an early one). This bus took me to the station before mine which meant yet another bus – also thankfully right there and with working doors.

I went inside for about two minutes and then drove back in towards the city to pick up Geoff who would’ve been even more stuck than me. So after leaving uni at 2:00pm, I officially ‘got home’ at 7:00pm. By then the power was out. So we went to the supermarket (the nearby one was closed due to no electricity). Just as we pulled in the drive, the street lights came on. We cheered.

So my day was all up pretty sucky (which is why you’re getting a whingy ‘this is what happened’ post) except that I met three new people at uni, caught up with a girl I know a little bit from last year and became reaquainted with another two.

Today I like people but not trains, busses or wind. And I’d really prefer it in future if the sky stayed a normal colour.

Life News On The Train Uni

I hate Connex people tired trains Uni weather

Published April 2, 2008 by

Engineers without Borders

My response to an interview in Dumbo Feather on Design Hub (A uni thing that could be written as a blog comment and I did it pretty quickly):

Does Engineers without Borders Give a Damn?

I was blown away by the impact of Engineers without Borders. I’ve heard a little about them through a friend (Susannah) but didn’t quite realise the vision and the heart behind what they do. Engineers without Borders goes so much further in considering humanity over the immediate environmental or surface level social issue. They approach issues of poverty and need willingly with their skills. Engineers without Borders design for the community, there is an interview with designer Cameron Sinclair and he talks about providing a soccer balls before shelter to meet the social and emotional needs of the people before treating refugees as simply numbers in need of shelter. Engineers without Borders present their own soccer ball yet in their own expertise, sometimes this is shelter, sometimes water but with people in mind before environment. They work collaboratively with young and old to harness passion and wisdom. This goes further into creating systems that established to meet great needs that cannot be as strongly impacted by one. Yet engineers without Borders is the brainchild of one dissatisfied person, Danny Almago and there is something to be said for the impact that one can have on others. From initial failure to see where his aesthetic and technical background fit with ethical issues, Engineers without Borders now exists to include students in a holistic approach to work and life and the world.

Design Social Justice Uni

design article engineers without borders poverty social sustainability

Published March 31, 2008 by

Your ideas

For a uni thing I have to create a 3x double page spread on ANYTHING. Restrictions state that I need to use found text (not text that I’ve written) but I must create all my own imagery/photos.

Any suggestions as to what I should do it on? I’m open to everything.

Design Uni