DesignCrowd

Design crowd is a website in which people and companies from all over the world come to look for designers to create websites, logos, business cards etc. As part of my course i had to log in to design crowd, find a briefing that i liked and create and submit my idea of how i think the logo or webpage (depending on the brief) should look like.

This is the brief for a small company who came up with a new product for helping to detect the risk of breast cancer among women, the new devie is called HALO and wish to rename there company HALO healthcare and want a new logo to be made to represent this.

So i loaded up photoshop and started creating my design, for my design i thought with the company being called HALO health care i would start by create a halo using circles and the 'skew' tool to shape them in the correct way. (as shown below)

Once i made my halo, i then decided on a font that i think looked suitable for this type of company. I then changed the colour of the text to pink as that is the colour that represents breast cancer so is appropriate as well as blending in well with the yellow halo.

I then saved my work and then uploaded it onto design crowd and submitted it to the client and awaited for feedback.


Time Adaptation:

When i am planning on working on some designs from design crowd, i will search for 1 or 2 projects that interest me, then i will change my daily plans to fit around having the extra time in for working on the projects. For example if on a normal day i wake up at 10 o'clock, and watch TV for an hour or two and then decided to go out  either with friends, shopping, or to the gym for example. But if i have chosen some projects i want to work on then i will wake up slightly earlier and work on the projects for a few hours before having a brake, by watching TV for an hour, doing a little more work and then going shopping, this way i can fit all my usually activities into my day and still fit in time for work. If i did not change my schedule for work then i wouldn't get very much done.

Unit 39

Digital Assest Management (DAM) consists of the management of different tasks and decisions, using computer hardware and software to aid in this process. There are two sub-catergories of DAM, these are; Media assets management (MAM) and the more recent concept of Enterprise Content Management (ECM). Media asses management addresses audio, visual and other media content. ECM however tends to focus more on the lines of storing files online. Storing files online is a great way to access your files from any computer that has an internet connection. Most people don't even realise that they do this already, through the use of any emailing site such as hotmail, they store your messages online so you can reach them anywhere. Another example of this system is through an online programme called skydive, which is run through hotmail and some other emailing sites, this programme allows you to store up to 5GB of work for free on this sky drive so these files can be accessed any time you log into your hotmail account. For my design work i use a programme called 'Drop Box' it is a website based on web storage, you only get 2.25GB but you can choose to upgrade your account for a small fee and receive even more room, but if like me you use hotmail as well you have 5GB from that as well so overall you have 7.25GB of storage free. 

In digital imaging systems, colour management is the controlled conversion of colour through various types of media outputs, such as printers, monitors, TV's, digital cameras etc. what this means is that if you take a video using a digital camera, and you want to play it through a TV screen or a computer monitor, then colour management is there to make sure that the colour matches through each device. Most operating systems these days come with these colour management systems already implemented in them. A cross-platform view of colour management is the use of an ICC-compatible colour management system (ICC staring for the International Colour Consortium). The ICC colour management system does not just apply to videos, it also applies to still images, though this is just a more basic form of the system. There are two different types of colour profiles, Embedding and Working spaces. Image formats themselves such as JPEG, PNG, TIFF, PDF, SVG and EPS may already contain embedded colour profiles but they're not required to do this by the image format. The ICC was designed to bring developers and manufactures together. The ICC standards permits the exchange of colour spaces and output device characteristics in the form of meta data. The other type of colour profile is working spaces. Working spaces such as sRGB, Adobe RGB and ProPhoto. These are colour spaces that facilitate good results while editing. An example of this is, pixels with the equal usage of RGB should appear neutral. Using a large or a gamut working space will lead to posterization and using a small working space will lead to clipping. Since a lot of computers use different operating systems there are obviously going to be different ranges of colour management systems across each operating system. In 1993 the Mac OS provided a colour management through a programme called Colour Sync, and in 1997 windows started using the ICC colour management system in the operating systems. When Windows released Windows Vista, the brought out there new colour management system called Windows colour system. In 2005 the majority of web browsers ignored the use of these colour management systems except for Safari 2.0 and Firefox 3. Firefox 3 came with this system but had it disables as a default setting but could be turned on at any time, but in Firefox 3.5 they decided to have it enabled as a default. IE9 (Internet Explorer 9) is the first Microsoft browser to partly support ICC profiles. The only problem is that it doesn't render images correctly according to the windows ICC settings. All it does is converts non sRGB images to the sRGB profile so it doesn't really provide any colour management at all. The most recent popular web browser to be released is Google Chrome, but this does not use any colour management system.

unit 35

Images can use two different types of colour model palettes, RGB (red, green, blue) and CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, key which stands for black). RGB is used mailing for uploading photos to the internet so it is a good idea to make sure that when creating an image in photoshop for example that you use RG  colour mode. Although RGB is mainly used for internet use, it is also used for coloured television and digital cameras. CMYK is generally used for printing as it has a wider range of colours so tends to look better and higher quality when printing images, this helps when showing a client some work so it looks as good as possible. CMYK uses a four step printing process, when printing an image, it will print the image four times, one in each colour, the colour from these prints then mixes together to create the desired colours. Some design software such as photoshop will have a swatch tool, this will allows the user to match the colour from the design to what it will be when printed.  Most image files can be quite large, so to reduce the size of the file then it is best to save the file as a JPEG or PNG file (these reduce the amount of megabits required).  The problem with compressing an image is that it reduces the overall size of the image which some websites may require you do but you risk ruining the quality of the image, this is especially noticeable when you make an image larger as it becomes pixalated. This is because since there are less megabites, they have to stretch to make the image larger so the pixels in each megabyte has to spread all the data out further making it appear more square, and lines don't appear as smooth as they should be. A good example of this is old fashioned computer games such pac-man, in the original versions instead of being a circle the curve is made up of little squares instead of a smooth curve. One more factor when printing off work is the DPI setting, DPI stands for dots per inch, (dots being pixels). 200 DPI is the recommended minimum setting for a good quality image. Finally we must talk about the copyright issues of photography. There are five points that I will list so that you understand the copyright laws.

1. Who owns the copyright on photographs?
The photographer owns the copyright on any photo that they have taken unless they work for a company and they take a picture for them on their behalf then the company that the photographer works for will own the copyright to that particular photo. The other way that the photographer wouldn't own the copyright would be if they sold their work to another party, then that particular party would own the copyright of that photo. No matter what, if it is any other case then the photographer who took that photo will own the copyright to it.
2. Copyright registration.
You're probably thinking why register? Well this is a simple answer. If someone else or another party tries to steal your work and you want to sue them for copyright, if you have registered then you have the proof to show that its your work. You can also submit loads of photos and only pay a single fee so if you want your work protected then it's really worth it.
3. Using the work of others
No matter what work you want to use that belongs to someone else, be it a font style, an image or a piece of writing you should obtain permission from the owner to use it. You should also be prepared to pay a fee of some sorts because its very unlikely that a copyright owner will let you use their work for free when they have put all the effort into doing it. A copyright owner can refuse to let you use their work for any reason, no matter how silly it may be. It's their work and if they don't want you using it then that's final.
4. Marking your work.
If you're a photographer and you submit work to a company and then people call that company and ask to use a certain photograph and it isn't makers then they won't know what to tell that person calling up as they won't know who has submitted it. You should also place a copyright notice on your work so that people know its copyrighted. Doing this will help to deter infringement. If you are uploading a image to the web and you wish to copyright it then you should just edit it in Photoshop and place a copyright notice on it.
5. Model release forms
An individual has certain rights to control how their image is used. This varies from country to country depending on laws. The general rule is to protect from defamatory or to use the image as something offensive.

Unit 24 -Part II

I am sending a quote to a client over design crowd, this will be an account of any expenditures i will have when working on a project such as, travel, accommodation, food/drink, electricity and internet etc. Since this is a live task i will actually be submitting a quote to a real client. The following screenshots are how to submit a quote:

Here is what i wrote for my quote:Hi, my name Shaun and i am an apprentice web and graphic designer currently training with Distinctive Publishing and Training based in Newcastle. During my time as a designer i have found that my designs tend to focus more towards the more modern and colourful styles. Once i set my mind to a task i won't stop until i have finished the project or done as much as i can in certain amount of time and i am always looking for new techniques and ideas to improve my work. The reason i am quoting this much is i will have to pay for the correct software needed to help create this design properly as well as for electricity, and internet, this is important so i can keep in touch and find out specific details about how you want the design to look etc. 

Unit 24 - Part I

i have been asked to create an accounts sheet in excel so that i can keep track of any expenses I've had when creating work. it is important for freelancers to keep some record of the money they have earned and spent so that they know roughly how much each job is costing them and therefore how much pay is considered to be appropriate and profitable.
this is my spreadsheet:

Unit 27

Adobe Flash is used to create small 2D animations and video files (usually as .swf or 'swif' files) using a number of different shapes, tools and tweens placed on a number of different frames using a timeline. Adobe flash is a fairly basic software package but can produce great results depending on your skill level with the programme. One of the main uses for flash animations are to create small animations for websites. a good example of this in use is a website called www.wix.com, on this site you can create a 'mini site' in an incredibly easy and quick way. I have used this website before to create a mini site to attach to my Facebook page around my website. www.facebook.com/pages/Game-Rag3/. The only problem with having a mini site created solely by flash is that can sometimes be rather slow to load up, depending on the size and length of the animation. I also have a small flash file animation on the top of my weskit where the title flies in from the top along with a small image coming in from the side, you can see this at www.gamerag3.x10.mx. For my flash header on my website it was a very simple creation process, all i had to do was to add the images of my title, logo and the small image i use and place them in the correct starting location, add some more frames on the timeline and on the last frame right click on one of my images and select 'create motion tween' then simply move the image to where i want it to end up, then just repeat this process for my other images. Always be sure that when you create a flash animation for a client that you always keep the same style the client is using on there website (for example) so that match in well, and that the file is saved as something both you and the client can easily recognise and is also in the correct format which for flash files is normally .swf

Unit 25

Text editing programmes are as the name suggests, designed to edit text files. Alot of people tend to get confused what is meant by a text editor and a word processor. A text editor is used to edit 'plain text files', a plain text file is something which is represented and edited by showing all of the characters as they are present in the file. Plain text files are often used for programming and configuration rather than as documentation E.G. detailed instructions and user guides. In the past they were used for this. A word processor is a piece of software that is used to control the characters by enabling different formatting functions such as bold, underline, italic etc. These and other common formatting symbols were once only used with desktop publishing software but now they are used in the simplest word processor. Most word processing software can be used to edit a plain text file but only if the document is saved in the correct format, if you just save it how it is using the word processor it wont be saved as a plain text file. The most common text editors used today are notepad which is a default programme for anyone using the Windows operating system, and WordPad which you normally get with most microsoft packages, although there are a few programmes that can be used as both word processors and plain text editors.

When writing work on a computer especially for important pieces of work or work that is going online it is very important to make sure you proof read your work. Most computers and word processors these days have a built in spell checker and will either automatically correct any small spelling mistakes or underline the work in red if it does not recognise the word you are trying to spell. The main problem with this is that most computers used in the UK have the language settings as American, and not English. This causes small problems as some word may sound the same in each language but are spelt slightly different, eg, the word 'colour' is spelt 'color' in American and therefore will not show up as a spelling mistake or it will automatically change the spelling of colour to the American way of spelling it. Also if you design a company name for example and it uses a strange way of spelling a word or is a word that does not exist the computer will always show it as a spelling mistake unless you add into the computers dictionary. So when writing up work make sure that your computers language is set to English and that you check your own work after your finished just be on the safe side, by reading it out loud so you can easily notice any mistakes as you go. Another function of most word processors is there ability to check for any mistakes in grammar, such as accidental second presses of the space bar, or a missing apostrophe, these grammatical errors will usually be underlined with a green line. Making sure to prof read your work is important becuase if it doesnt make sense then anyone who reads it will not understand and may not want to work with you in the future due to these kinds of errors.


Media ethics covers a long range of different topics, such as broadcast media and journalism, film, theatre, and internet. First of all there are different types of ethics for journalism, such as manipulation of the media, the news can either be manipulated or manipulating, and manipulation can then be split into voluntary and involuntary.  Public interest as the name states focuses on subjects that the general population are interested in, usually high interest stories about current news on wars over the world etc. Privacy is also an important topic when it comes to journalism  as it normally ends up conflicting with the right of free speech. This is due to some journalists finding out secrets about people or celebrities that they may not want the public finding out about or finding out about just yet, but journalists will publish them anyway. The conflict here is that it is a breach of there privacy but the journalist can say they have the right of free speech to say what they want.
There also a different set of ethics based around entertainment media, the most commonly known area of these ethics are those based around the depiction of sex, nudity, violence, and strong language. One way in which the media sector tries and prevents these topics effecting people in a negative way is to give things like games and movies and age restriction limit. The rating system goes from U which means it is suitable for people of all age up to 18+ these ratings and restrictions help media sectors avoid any hassle from parents or families claiming that there content is not suitable for there children etc, but these restrictions stop them viewing anything that is deemed to mature for children. Both advertising and entertainment media make heavy use of stereotypes. Stereotypes may negatively affect people's perceptions of themselves or promote socially undesirable behaviour. Finally we will move onto media and democracy. In democratic countries, a special relationship exists between media and government. Although the freedom of the media may be constitutionally enshrined and have precise legal definition and enforcement, the exercise of that freedom by individual journalists is a matter of personal choice and ethics.

Unit 24

When becoming a free lance designer you must be able to try and advertise yourself and your services to try and find work. A cheap and easy way to do this to sign up for any freelance designing sites you can find such as 'designcrowd.com' as well as creating a logo for your self and place on a business card, and then hand them out either through doors, or other design companies. A business card is just a small piece of card with your logo on it and some of your contact information on the back, so if anyone needs some design work done, they can just look at your business card and get in touch with you. A great way to show people what kind of work you can do is by creating a portfolio, this is normally done in the form of a small website containg information about you and your past experience as a desginer as well as some example of your work, possible with links to more of your work or as proof of work that other clients are using today.

You should distribute these postcards and business cards in a strategic way. Start off with all the people on your database who have heard of you before then maybe they will give them to other people. Once you have done that start distributing them to people on your email addresses and so on and so forth. Don't just hand them all out in bulk at once. Finally you should be very persistent. If you don't get many replies the first time you send out business cards and everything then don't give up! Keep at it and people will eventually come to you and see that you are someone who doesn't give up, as someone who will go that extra mile to reach your goal. A key component when creating your portfolio is to think about what type of clients you want to attract, if you prefer designs that are more modern and sleek looking for example, then you will want your portfolio to show this, weather it be through your choice of font, background designs or your logo, or maybe all of these ideas. Ofcourse with any kind of design you create there will always be differnent opinions, some may really like your work, and other may not, as a designer you have to learn how to accept other people opinions and feedback and use it to help you create ne designs that meet there needs as well which will only help you improve as a designer as opposed to taking the feedback negatively and not taking any thing from it.

Now you need to realise how to deal with feedback. Don't get upset if someone doesn't like all the work you have done, people are different and are entitled to their own opinions. some people will like your work and others won't at the end of the day its no big deal. There are 12 ways to manage feedback and I will go through these now for you.

Also as a freelance desinger you need to be able to manage your own contracts and keep records of anywork you have been paid to do. This way you know exactly how much you  are spending on average to get each job done and how much profit you are making in the process. Most clients will make up a brief when looking for a designer, explainging what they want done, any colour schemes or ideas they might have in mind as well as explaining the time limit for each project and how they are willing to pay. It is always a good idea to have multiple contractors, that way you will have a good amount of work coming in and therefore more money making opportunity. By building a good reputation and a good working relationship with a contractor/client they will generally return to you in the future with work because they know they get what they want when working with you.

Continued Development:

I have really enjoyed my time on this course learning how to become a graphics designer, and i would like to continue to learn and develop my skills and possibly get a job as a designer in the future. I would like to have either a full time job at a design company and work my way up somewhere higher up in the company or have a job doing something else and doing free lance design work in my spare time, this way i can earn some extra money on the side of what i get already and still develop my skills through design work.
At the moment i am still just a beginner learning all the neat little tricks with deign software like inkscape and photoshop, although i think i have made some quite nice designs and have some really good ideas in my head i still don't think know enough yet to start designing properly yet, but i think if i keep designing in my spare time and practice with new techniques and tools i will slowly get better and better.
To reach my goal of becoming a full time designer i think i will have to do what i was just talking about and keep designing in my spare time and keep practicing till i think i am ready to try and get a job doing design work and then i can keep practicing as I'm working.

Unit 07

The creative industries refers to different types of activities which generally tend to fall into different categories based on certain types of knowledge and information. Creative workers are counted by what they do and what their enterprise produces. For example if someone was in the game designer they would be belong to the gaming sector, and someone who played an instrument would be classified as a musician. The whole purpose of this is to count the number of firms and the number of workers at one location. It also identifies places with high creative activity. However this does not only include people who work for that sector creatively, a security guard who works for a computer company can still be classed as being in the IT sector even though there job doesn't really involve any use of a computer or other computer related hardware etc. There is often a bit of slight confusion between what is deemed a creative industry and what is deemed a cultural industry. The Cultural side of industry tends to focus more on cultural tourism and heritage, museums and libraries, sports and outdoor activities.

The project life cycle is a few steps a company will go through when creating products in the most effective way possible. There are four separate phases of this cycle; Initiation, Planning, Execution and control, and Closure or exit phase. Industries use the cycle to effectively brake up the creation process to make it easier to plan out how it is going to be made and how it should be at each stage. With having 4 separate phases it also makes it easier to determine which phase any errors occurred, if there are any. For most industries these four phases will be different because they are all out to create different products so the phases of creations will all vary depending on the type of industry. The four steps are like this;

1. Initiation
This is the beginning of the project. This is where the project manager is appointed and has to select his team members based on their skills and experience. the most basic tools used during initiation are a project charter, a business plan, the project framework, the business case justification and the milestone reviews.
2. Planning
The second phase should include a detailed identification and assignment of each task until the end of the project. It should also include a risk analysis and a definition of a criteria for the successful completion of each deliverable. The governance process is defined, stake holders identified and reporting frequency and channels agreed. The most common tools or methodologies used in the planning stage are Business Plan and Milestones Reviews.
3. Execution and Controlling
The most important issue in this phase is to ensure project activities are properly executed and controlled. During the execution phase, the planned solution is implemented to solve the problem specified in the project's requirements. In product and system development, a design resulting in a specific set of product requirements is created. This convergence is measured by prototypes, testing, and reviews. As the execution phase progresses, groups across the organization become more deeply involved in planning for the final testing, production, and support. The most common tools or methodologies used in the execution phase are an update of risk analysis and score cards, in addition to business Plan and milestones reviews.
4. Closure or Exit
In this last stage, the project manager must ensure that the project is brought to itsproper completion. The closure phase is characterized by a written formal project review report containing the following components: a formal acceptance of the final product by the client, Weighted Critical Measurements (matching the initial requirements specified by the client with the final delivered product), rewarding the team, a list of lessons learned, releasing project resources, and a formal project closure notification to higher management. No special tool or methodology is needed during the closure phase.

To run a successful business it needs to have certain qualities. A business needs a reputation. A business with a good reputation will generally attract more and newer customers providing of course it is a good reputation. A good reputation makes people think there must be a reason why they have such a reputation, either through good customer service, good quality work of products etc, and these ideas make people want to choose that company over other companies that they haven't heard of or without a reputation. Just because a company does not have a reputation does not mean it is a bad company, it just means that they might not have been around long enough or had enough reviews to gain a reputation. Another thing a business needs is advertising. Advertising is key part of any company, without advertising very few people will find out about your company, and even if people to find out about it, they will generally turn towards similar companies that they have heard of before and have seen advertised. If you don't make profit then the business will go bust and be bankrupt. To stay with in the profit boundaries you need to make sure that after you have sold your products or service, that you have made enough money to pay for new materials etc as well as having enough to pay for the cost of production such as electricity bills and any staff that are required to make the products or for the service. A good business should always have a good future plan, on ways they can develop existing products and ways they can possibly expand in to new products. Any hardware company is a good example of this as advances in technology are happening so quickly these days because every company is trying to stay one step ahead of the other bringing out new and more advanced pieces of equipment or updating older equipment.

When developing new projects for a company it is vital that you and the people you are working with work together so you can get the best out of everyones skills and ideas and implement them into the project. The reason for this is that if you do not get along with some of the people in the group they might not accept your ideas just for the fact they do not like you, even though this is highly unprofessional it can happen. A project team can be split into multiple sections. First of there are the creators, the 'plant' and 'resource' investigators. The 'plant' will normally be in the person in charge of handing out the project briefs and base ideas and will wait for any ideas to sprout from these initial ideas. Once an idea has been selected it is up to the resource investigator to find out what materials and equipment they will need to create the design. Next comes the leaders of the group, also usually split into two. One of them will be in charge of co-ordinating the rest of the team to make sure they all have there set roles and stick to them, the other leader will always be on the look out on ways to improve the process and help speed the process up or help with any tasks that they can do while the rest of the team works on other things. Next there are the implementers, one of them will be the one will handle any worries or problems the group comes across and will try to find a way to resolve them while the other will try find a way to split tasks up to make them easier for the group to do. Finally we come to the last stage, There will be a monitor/evaluator, who has to be fairly strict on how he thinks the quality of the product is at each stage and determine weather it is good enough or not and then evaluate it and see if there are any changes or improvements that could be made.  

Unit 05

Effective communication is essential when talking to people around the workplace. When talking to people you work, don't be afraid to say what you think and give more than just a yes or no answer as in the end your opinions may just pay off and it helps you stand out as an individual. Be yourself and that way people will see you as an individual, as someone who isn't afraid to voice their opinion. An essential part effective communication is eye contact, make sure your looking at the person your talking to as if you look anywhere else, they may think you are being ignorant, or distracted. You must make your speaking clear and effective. It is also important that when you are being spoken to that you listen and don't drift off because what you are hearing could be very beneficial to you. Even if it doesn't always make full sense that doesn't mean that you can't ask the person what they mean, that way they can break it down so that you understand fully what they are going on about.

If you are trying to ask for something of your boss or superior, or even just another co-worker try not be too selfish in what you ask for, try and find out what it is good for other people as well and not just yourself. When asking for these kind of changes be sure to do so in the correct way, coming on too strongly may seem aggressive, but you may not get what you want if your too nice, try and assert confidence and explain why these changes will benefit you and others, and maybe by extension, them.

While you are working with other people try your best to get along with as many of them as you can, this way you can try and avoid getting angry and stressed out at work, as not everyone is nice and easy to get along with but you can't really change who you are or who you work with so find a way to make the best of it. What you should do with situations like these is figure out ways to avoid it. Don't come across as someone who is easy to wind up or get angry. Steer clear of situations where you know you will get angry and upset. You should avoid getting stressed out by work to. Manage your day and night so that you have time to do work and time to chill out. Don't get held back with doing work, make sure that you hit all the deadline dates and make sure that your work is at its highest standard possible.


Workplace relationships are very important, not just with those you work with but others you work for as well, even if it is customers or freelancers, all relationships are important. You aren't going to get along with everyone you meet, but you should always try act professional while talking to or working with them to avoid causing anymore problems, simply by being polite you can try and resolve the issue slowly over time. When problems at the workplace do occur,  instead of just pinning the blame on somebody, try and talk to others and find out ways to improve the situation instead of letting it continue and get worse as time goes on. Just keep in mind that the better you treat others, the better they will treat you in return. This also goes for new employees, some of them will be confident and might try get themselves involved in the group but other may be too shy, just try and be friendly to them and try to get them involved with the group. The added benefit to this is that once they do settle in they will always be grateful to you for helping them out and will be more willing to try and help you out when they can. Group work can be tricky to do, when doing group work, make sure to let everyones opinion be heard and don't reject someones idea straight away, if you have to turn someones ideas down make sure you tell them why, with proper reasoning and not just because you don't like it.

Unit 03

Having a omputer is one of the most important pieces of hardware you need in the creative media sector, weather you are a graphical designer or a web developer. Graphical designers can also use hardware like scanners and printers to help with there work but web developers dont really use these as everything the design or create is based on the internet instead of hand drawn sketches for example. A web developer would probably prefer to use programes such as photoshop or inkscape.The best way for either of these to communicate with clients would be through a mobile phone or through email.

When creating ideas and designs for others to use and/or publishing them online, there is always a risk of people stealing or copying your ideas and claiming them as there own, which is known as copyright. If you create an image for example and get copyrighted to your name, it beomes illegal for anyone to use that image without first receiveing your permission or without paying for permission or the actual rights to the image. This does not just go for images but anything you ever create yourself such as logo's, music, even names for a company or slogans and more. Some websites allow to download and use some ideas people have created with out payment for 'free' or 'free for personnal use'. The difference between the two is that 'free' means you can download it and do whatever you like with it, but 'free for personnal use' means you can use it but if you used for a piece of work that was going on the internet for example then you cannot use it without getting the creators permission first.

unit 02

You can communicate to people in multiple ways. I will explain all these ways.

Telephone is one way of communicating with people this is appropriate if you need to communicate with someone very quickly to get their response straight away. It is also useful compared to email because you can determine the persons personality when speaking to them on the phone. E-mail is good if you need to send an image or document. If you haven't got time to contact the person you can send them an E-mail. A great thing about an E-mail is that it's free. Skype is a good way to communicate with someone. This is good because its free and you can see the person face to face while you are talking to them, even though you are meeting up in person. It is good if you have a meeting with multiple people to discuss ideas as a group, share your ideas and come up with something good in the end.

To communicate ideas effectively you should talk to the person face to face. This is the most effective because you can feel their emotion and you an share your ideas in person and see the way people will react to your ideas with gestures and the facial expressions that they show you.

All feedback is constructive but its how you give it. If an idea is bad or you don't think it sounds that good, then tell the person that but tell them it by saying what you think is good about the idea and what you think is bad about the idea. Show them way of improving the idea, don't just be negative and say everything about the idea is bad, and don't have a negative attitude about it, even though it may not always make perfect sense but when someone says something stupid, it may open up room for a new idea from someone else.

Unit 04

The culture in the workplace will be different no matter where you go. For example someone working in Africa will behave differently to someone working in the UK. The people in Africa may be very religious compared to the people working in the UK. Laws are different depending where you work too. For example someone working in a very religious country couldn't design anything or say anything bad about their GOD or they would end up arrested where as in the UK we can express our own opinion as long as won't don't try to offend anyone who believes differently.

Challenging behaviour in the workplace is something that someone does which can hurt or humiliate the company or employees or both in some cases from not following the ERR (employment rights and responsibilities) These are the rules that apply to both the employer and the employee.

If there was a fire in the building you would have to leave in an orderly manner and assemble at the designated assembly point. If one of the computers wasn't working you would need to inform the boss of the company or your supervisor. You need to make sure that all wires and tidy and out of the way so that people can't trip up over them.

There is a difference between employers and employees. The employer is who hires the employees. both jobs can be stressful but I personally think that an employers job is harder than the employees. This is because the employer must make sure everything is in working order, that the employees are getting paid on time and they must be organised with their paper work which can be very stressful where as an employee only does the work the employer has set for them.

Unit 01

There are two different types of work force, there are workers and there are employees. A worker is usually defined by an individual working under a variety of different contracts. An employee is also a worker but have different employee rights and responsibilities than most workers.


As a worker you are entitled to core employment rights, including the right to:
receive the National Minimum Wage
protection against unlawful deduction from wages
a minimum period of paid holiday (annual leave)
minimum length of rest breaks
not work more than 48 hours on average per week or to opt out of this right if you choose
protection against unlawful discrimination (including less favourable treatment on the grounds of part-time status)
protection for 'whistleblowing' (reporting wrongdoing in the workplace)


You may also be entitled to:
Statutory Maternity, Paternity or Adoption Pay
Statutory Sick Pay


However, you should check your entitlement to these because they depend on a number of different things, including how much you earn.


The key requirements for establishing 'worker' status are that you:
have to perform work or services personally and cannot send a substitute or sub-contract the work
are not undertaking the work as part of your own business (eg if the 'employer' is actually one of your clients)

Employees:
Being under the 'employee' status is to be part of the most common type of worker in the workplace. All employees are workers, but as an employee you have a wider range of employment rights and responsibilities to and from your employer. For example, you will need to give a minimum notice period if you wish to leave your job.
Employees work under an employment contract (also known as a contract of service). These contracts will normally a piece of paper stating all the employees rights and responsibilities, before signing it both the employee and the employer must agree on the stated terms and then sign the contract.


As an employee, you rights include all of the rights workers have, plus the right to:
a minimum statement of employment terms:

• Statutory Sick Pay 
• minimum notice periods if your employment will be ending (eg if your employer is dismissing you) 
• not be unfairly dismissed 
• maternity, paternity and adoption leave and pay 
• request flexible working 
• time off for emergencies 
• Statutory Redundancy Pay 

Some of these rights require a minimum length of continuous service with your employer before you qualify for them.


Some employees may also have enhanced entitlements, over and above their statutory rights. These would be part of your employment contract's terms and conditions. For example, your employer could decide to give you more generous notice periods or sick pay.

Self-employed:

• Employment legislation does not generally cover self-employed people because you are, in effect, your own boss.
• You will benefit from protection for your health and safety and, in some cases, protection against discrimination.
• Your rights and responsibilities would be set out by the terms of the contract you have with your client.

Self-employed people are usually identified by the fact that they are in business for themselves and provide a service to multiple clients. Self-employed people are generally more independent than workers. They have far greater control over how and when to deliver the service and who delivers it. They will usually be better able to protect their own commercial interests, although they will bear any financial risk from the business they operate.


If you are self-employed, you must:

• register with HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) 
• submit an annual tax return 
• account for your own tax and National Insurance payments

Unit 06

Health and safety in the workplace is extremely important, as this does not just effect you but everyone else who works there, it only takes one small problem to go wrong for serious and possibly life threatening injuries to occur. These small things could be something as stupid sounding as just making sure all trailing wires are tucked to the side, underneath carpeting etc, and not out in the middle of walk ways with proper cable tidying tubes. Other safety tips are leaving proper signs out such as slippery surface if some one spilled something on a smooth surface etc.

When you start work in a new place, if the owners do not already do this, then try and familiarise yourself with your surroundings, and try and find out where things are, such as fire exits and extinguishers just incase of emergency. It is also important to learn where any kind of medical equipment is such as first aid kits. As well as emergency equipment it is also good to know how to prevent these problems, the most common problems that occur in an office are; trailing wires, electrical fires caused from either spilling drinks on electrical equipment or overloading sockets and plugs.

It is not just physical components that can cause health and safety issues, it can also be things such as the temperature and size of the room and/or workspace, as well as time related issues. Depending on the type of workspace will depend on what temperature is acceptable to work in, for example an average office space will need to be heated to at least 16°C for people to work comfortably in, but it will be 13°C if the job requires a lot of physical work, also if the office has insulated walls then the company that owns the office is legally obligated to provide some form of cooling system, such as air conditioning units or coolants, and fans for hot days if needed. Another issue is about the size of the workspace, If an employee is particularly tall he may not be as comfortable sitting in a chair that was designed for the average sized person, it is the job of the company to provide a comfortable work environment for any of its employees. One other factor is based on time, All employees who work over a certain amount of time a day are entitled to a break at some part of the day; an employee who works up to six hours a day is entitled to at least 20 minutes of an uninterrupted break, and is also entitled to a minimum of 11 hours rest before he next has to start work.

Free lance designer

I am starting my work as a free lance designer after receiving training from distinctive publishing's training department through a creative and digital media apprenticeship. I will be using a website called 'DesignCrowd' to help me find paying work as it is a design network where people looking for designers to create logo's, banners, websites etc can go and find someone to design these for them.

The first thing i needed to do when using this network is to create an account using the register button in the top right corner:

As you can see when you register with design crowd you have the choice to register as a designer or as a customer looking for designers. Once i made my account i started looking through the different briefs till i found an idea i would like to work on:

This is a brief for a company called GenerationVegas which is a non profit organisation in Las Vegas. The brief describes a little about the company and what they do, as well as what they want from there logo and how they want it to represent them. The briefing also shows how many designs have been submitted so far, how many days left you have to submit a design and how much they are paying the designer for who's idea they choose as well as any participation payments being issued.

After reading the briefing i worked on creating my first design for the logo using photoshop, this is the idea i came up with:

I went back onto the briefing page and clicked on 'Submit a design' which asks you to describe why you like this design and why you think it is suitable as well as which fonts you used, if they were standard fonts or downloaded or your own fonts, and i added into my description that i can change the colour scheme  if they would prefer it another way.




















Another website similar to Designcrowd.com  that has lists of jobs available for free lance designers is "http://www.freelancer.com/jobs/Logo-Design/"

Monday 20th February- Friday 25th February

This week i have been working on my portfolio, trying to get the basic layout sorted out and some of the CSS for the text. For some reason when i preview my website it started half way down the page  and i can't get my pictures to align properly. I have also been creating a twitter, flickr and facebook account for my website. For the facebook page I used a website called wix.com which lets me create mini version of my website and show it on my facebook page.

CMS - 19th January 2012

Today Ben got me to do a small test to see what i have learnt through out the course and went through the answers with me.After that he used me as his 'guinea pig' to test his notes on how to create a CMS (content management system). A CMS is a system that stores all of your source files used to create a webpage online so you can access them from any location and allows for much easier editing. The advantage of this is for those who dont understand how to edit a webpage using HTML, it makes it easier for them to make the changes they want without having to get a designer to keep changing the code each time etc. I did this by downloading a program called 'concrete5', once i had done this i installed filezilla on one of the new computers. I also had to login into my hosting site (x10 web host) and create a new database which allows me to store all my source files on.  I unzipped the concrete5 folder onto the desktop and opened the public HMTL folder on filezilla and created a new directory which i called CMS and dragged all the concrete5 files into this directory which contains roughly 3000 folders.

Digital Communication

Digital Communication


Cross Browser compatibility:
Cross browser compatibility is very important when setting up an online website as it allows your site to be accessed and read properly by people on any browser. The reason for this is because there are so many different web browsers out there and they all translate information differently so the information on your website appears differently in each browser, so making sure your site is compatible on all browser is necessary to make sure your site can be accessed and appear in the correct format by as many people as possible. The five main browsers are; Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari, and Opera, cross browser compatibility allows all of these browsers to successfully read your site making it accessible to anyone using any of these browsers.

Use of content:
The content i used is all related to my website and all based on sharing new and upcoming information. Since i chose to do a gaming website all my content is gaming related and across multiple platforms such as Xbox/360, PS3, PC etc so that all types of gamers can find something that relates to them. Another reason i chose this content is because it is all up to date information and news so that the readers are not looking at information from last year or a few months ago etc. Here is an example of some of the different platform content i used:

The halo anniversary section of my website is purely based upon xbox360 users as halo is only available on the xbox. So although users who prefer other platforms have no reason to read this article there is still other articles on the page for them to look at such as:

The most noticeable part of the site when you first load it up is the video i have at the top of the page which is more focused on PC gamers as it is on the latest expansion for the most popular online multiplayer game for PC World of Warcraft.

The background image i thought was a reasonably good choice as it looks good, it fills the page and has an easy colour scheme to work with as it doesn't hurt to look at and easy to find a colour text that works on both green and white as well as fitting in well with the gaming theme as it is a character from a popular online game.

How successful my site was:
I think my website is a fairly good success for a first attempt as most of the images and text are in their correct places, although my design is different to my actually site, it is  good thing as it has been updates with new information and content that has been released since i first created my design as well as a few factors that i could not do on dreamweaver or caused problems for other aspects of my site when they were there such as my hyperlinks, i originally planned to have them as the logos from each website but now I have them as text because the images were too big to fit in the navigation bar without messing up the alignment of my text/image boxes.

As you can see from the design (left hand side) what i originally planned my website to look like, but on the actual site (right hand side) you can see what it actually looks like now. The red outlines on the design image are highlighted areas that i have changed during the creation of my site. You can also see that not everything is in its correct place but i am still currently working on fixing these small errors to make my website looks as professional as possible.

Style sheets and hyperlinks:

I used style sheets and hyperlinks on my website to make it as easy as possible to move around the site and to edit the text and style etc. I used stele sheets to alter the text i used for my main main content writing as it it different to the text i use for my navigation bar, the reason for this is that in dream weave if you change the text through the page properties section it makes those changes for all of the text on that page but a style sheet allows you to choose which boxes you want to contain that specific style sheet. For my style sheet is changed my text to white with an Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif font, as well as adding in a small margin to keep the writing slightly more centred and not right up against the edges of the box as i think this helps it looks more professional and less squashed up, through this style sheet i have also styled my hyperlinks through the use of <a> tags. Here is a screenshot of the style sheet i used to do this:

I used hyperlinks on my website so that people could easily transfer from my site to other similar gaming sites. I originally planned on using images with hyperlink attachments to do this but it was difficult to do this and keep the rest of the alignments of text and image boxes in the correct place so i switched to plain text.

The image on the left is what my hyperlinks look like now, the image on the right is how i originally planned my hyperlinks to look like. Although i think the hyperlinks look better with logos (from picture on the right) it was a necessary change to keep my site looking professional. I did this by highlighting the text in my navigation bar and in the link sections of the properties bar i entered the URL of the relevant website, from that point on anytime someone clicks that bit of text it will re-direct the user to the linked website.

Software Used:

The two main pieces of software i used when creating my website are; Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Dreamweaver. The reason i chose these two pieces of software is because they are both fairly simple to use and allow me to do everything i wanted to for my website. I used  photoshop for the designing process as i think it is by far the best piece of software to use as it has a lot of tools for me to create, edit and manipulate my plan as well as it being easy to move things around and experiment with different layouts to a way i think it best suites my audience. Photoshop was also a great way for me to create and edit logos and images for use on my site such as images linking to articles or background images as well as editing text to suit my needs.

I used dreamweaver as it is a fairly basic web development software which is great for me as this is my first website  and doesn't take a gear deal to learn on how to create a simple website design through the use of tables, columns and rows. Although saying that dreamweaver gets a little more tricky when you have to start writing in code to edit text, headings, boxes etc.  There were also a few small pieces of software on the internet i used to download and install new fonts so that i can style my site to suit my audience.

Tests to run in future:

When creating a website there are a few small tests you can do to make sure that your website and your coding are all correct and that areas such as cross platform compatibility are successful or not. 

Once you have your basic layout of your website and have your images loaded in, you can select a tool called 'preview in safari' or which ever your default browser is, this allows you to see what your site would look like after it has been transferred onto the web. this gives you a good idea of certain things you may have to move around or edit it is also a good way to check if your code is working correctly. there is also another options to preview your website in a 'Device Central' this allows you to view your website through a mobile device such as a mobile phone or an i-pad etc. A good way to test all of your code is correct is the website called 'The W3C Markup Validation Service' which is a free online service which scans though all your written code and searched for errors, once it has done this it will then show you what the errors are and what they think the code is meant to look like, so from then you can copy and paste there version of the code and use it to replace yours and then check if the new code then fixes some problems you had, if not you can just place your code back in its place.

How we transferred the information: 

To transfer the information across to the internet we first had to sign up to an online site called x10 web hosting, by doing this it gave us free domain space on the internet which we can access and store our websites onto. Once we have our domain space we then need to download an 'FTP' (file transfer protocol) client, for our sites we used a client called 'filezilla'. By using this FTP client we can transfer out website and all the files that we used such as images, style sheets etc across into our domain space. Once we have everything stored in our domain space all that left us to do is to open up the URL which leads to our domain space were all our files will be waiting for us.

Final thoughts:

My final thoughts are that i think my website is quite nice for a first time, but i think with more practice and more time i could really improve on my work and especially on my coding skills. I don't like how my actually site doesn't look quite like my design but that was partially dew to limitations of the software not having the tools to display certain areas how i wanted them to but overall i am rather pleased with my first website.