Published March 14, 2008 by

Oh come now

reviewtollbooth.jpgSo much as to state that I have been busy and have only just hit my Google Reader after an absence of days and days. This is what uni has is stock for me. Because like it or not (and sometimes it is not), I do actually like the thing. I like my friends, on the whole I like my tutors and lecturers, I like the quirky people there that make me laugh, I like running into people I haven’t seen since first semester of the first year and still being able to say hello, I like that it’s forcing me to do things I don’t always want to do and showing me things that intrigue me, making me having good ideas when there are none and generally filling my head with all kinds of absurdities.

In a few weeks time I have to submit an essay on how designers are moving towards designing for environmental sustainability. This is not exciting in that the three set texts (one of which I must use), are all on very long wait lists at our somewhat pathetic uni-library. The topic itself, however is, and the websites I am finding in my punitive research is even more exciting. Truly.

After hours and days and weeks of stress related to lack of ideas and poor communication on behalf of our fine tutor, I have finally come up with a package design idea that is satisfying the requirements and is profound enough (or something) to be acceptable. Now I have to research and research and research and pull off some clever theoretical engineering. Clues to what I’m getting up to might run along the lines of me needing to visit the Colgate website.

Web is presented by two slightly hilarious and highly decent communicators, I have to haul together some kind of plan in the form of a workbook to show what kind of website I’m making for myself, then make it. This should be relatively easy and fun. Gosh it helps to know CSS. It freaked me out the other day when they started taking us through table based layout. OLD SCHOOL. EXACTLY WHAT I WANT TO UNLEARN. Turns out next week we’re doing the ‘real deal’.

The amusing thing about table based layout is that in my early web-design experiments when I was about 12, I actually worked out the theory of it myself. I seriously wondered why the world wasn’t setting things up with ‘invisible’ tables and thought I was the only one out there doing so… later I worked out they already were. I was an intuitive genius.

Typography for Publication (see earlier layout duplication) turns out that we get an extra week for something I thought was due earlier. After, we launch into a fairly free form: design a 6 page/3-double spread publication with words and images of our own choice. Words taken from an article, images supplied by self, not by stock. Total freedom in assignments is good but also too lenient to allow for perpetual comfort.

image from the book The Phantom Tollbooth, which you should read because it’s fun. I haven’t read it in years.

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Published February 28, 2008 by

Thursdays at Uni

concept_enviro_web.JPGYou should read Tuesdays with Morrie. Which has nothing to do with anything but I thought I’d just say so anyway….

It’s been an interesting day. I amazingly have classes all day with my friend Kellie – of which I am very pleased about.

Currently Thursdays mean Package Design, a lecture then a tute. It’s totally different to anything I’ve done before. Our brief is based on a fair dinkum real package design competition, we are still looking at last years brief as the new one hasn’t quite made it out. Bizarre. I’m a little strapped for ideas. Basically we have to create packaging for an existing product that is: economically, environmentally and socially sustainable. So… know any products that are packaged badly then eh?

The lecturer is quite unusual… in that he doesn’t really endear himself in the usual way (if there is one?). Slagging off other uni’s??? I frankly wasn’t that impressed. I believe that you can have perfectly healthy competition without being rude and elbow-like. He clearly doesn’t. I also don’t care if I’m not mean enough for the corporate design world, that’s not who I want to be.

The afternoon bought Interactive Design for Web Technologies. Quite the contrast. It’s being tandem-taught by two guys and seriously, it was the best and clearest (as well as slightly entertaining) taught tech-related class that I’ve ever come across. And I’ve had a few now. Today did bring very basic html but I’m sure forcing me to go over the basics can’t do too much harm.

As it so happens, our first assignment is to create a html/css based portfolio of our work. Damn. Check what I’ve been doing lately (unofficial launch). Here we go again. No happy little blog platform to lean on now. Gosh I love WordPress.

I am slightly dreading the second half of the semester as all prior interactions with Flash have never been pretty… I’d love to be able to use it, I seriously would, but oh to get my head around the thing. Animation and I aren’t the best of friends.

Or perhaps it is just my lack of patience?

image from here… yes I’m getting better at this!

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Published February 23, 2008 by

Timesnables and goodness

grumpy.jpgQuite a different day.

I thought Swinburne (my charming university) had totally destroyed it before it began. This morning bought an email letting me know – two days before the official term goes back – that one of my classes had been moved and that the one I originally chose simply now no longer exists.

My timetable up until now has and always has been very carefully orchestrated to maximise work time, homework time, spare time and to minimise days spent traveling. That is, I try and squash my full time load into two days preferably, this time I had it down quite satisfactorily to three.

As things are, my beautifully structured Thursday now has a gaping 3hr gap in the middle (of me stuck at uni) and my Monday has a 1hr lecture scar in my mid afternoon. I was ropeable and so close to writing a cranky email back asking them to pay me for the extra half day’s work that I lose. Class options for the change became: Monday or Monday. Thank you for the endless choice.

In honor of Analise (Boy I hope you see this): Monday Monday Monday, I say damn your mood swings.

This now (best case scenario) means that I go to work on Monday and leave at midday’ish to make my lecture. Go to work Tuesday. Do an online class on Wednesday mornings, now cue ‘homework afternoon’. Go to uni on Thursdays have a 1hr lecture have a three hour gap have a three hour tute. Go to uni on Fridays freaking early and have solid classes for 4 or so hours then I am free for the weekend.

As I don’t live exactly close to uni this is less than desirable. I often wonder if my attitude (which sucks by the way) would change if I lived across the road. Probably not.

Dear Rebecca, in truth you have a sweetly small full-time study load.

Anyway, my day turned happy by me going off and doing something quite different by hanging out with my sister-in-law Anita and her two bridesmaids-to-be for dress shopping. No I am not going to be a bridesmaid and it was still a fairly painful memory to re-engage in, because it was pretty painfully similar to my unsuccessful hunt, but I had a lot of fun. I got along well with Julie and Tash and it was great to finally spend some proper time with Anita.

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