Chapter 10 from Service Learning

Graphic Presentation (extra credit) with Santanu Majumdar

Following a doctors appointment, I was able to make it back to campus just in time to catch some of this gentleman's presentation. Well, despite rushing back to campus in an effort to gain extra credit, something must be said for the level of interest I held watching the different slides of the power point, all the while to the tone of an interesting narrator.

He spoke on how he became a graphic designer through a bunch of schooling in India and because he aspired to achieve higher levels of classwork, they made him learn English, something he noted that he hated very much in the beginning. However, at this point has benefited him greatly in the fact that he has extended his communication skills rather than resisting change. Anything from store design, to street and subways signs, all the way to Maya and game/interactive design; he has done it all and the great part is he tried to issue the point that anyone is capable of these things. Of course, in his shadow the chances of such seem low, though that was not the intention.

As far as design cues, I learned somethings in regard to how things should be placed and oriented for maximum appeal and durability to the target audience. For instance, one design that he conjured dealt with a door with vertical pencils as the doorhandles. Perhaps on a normal basis that would be easy, but he explained that the wood on the one end would be suscpetible to rotting if the eraser side did not face up and that you write with a pencil oriented lead towards the paper. Things like that made the presentation an a success and as my eyes wandered around the room, generally everyone was interested.

Chapter 9 from Service Learning..

Best part from this chapter was the overall idea of getting feedback from the people generally consisting of our target audience. By initiating contact with these people, we can create a great connection and source of constructive criticism by the very people who will be reading our brochure. Prior to discussing that part in class, I had never really thought of that aspect of things to be honest. However, after reading the chapter and learning about using better descriptors and some other elements to add in, our group can approve on effectiveness.

Chapter 7 from Service Learning

I think the part of the chapter that relates most to our group is the sections dealing with spacing, graphics, and templates. We are using publisher to create a brochure, however by using these pre-made templates, a shifting of text and graphics has occurred and trying to get around formatting errors can be an ultra pain. Besides those small items, the grammar mechanics and overall design concept are good. We need to collect a little more information from our client to ascertain some text placement etc. A proper font versus color arrangement should be settled upon to draw out the readers attention. Pat originally gave us a color set to work with, though applying that to the current context requires further discussion. (The detailed grids section could help a little with our current arrangement predicament.) Lastly, deciding on what specific graphics should be used is pertinent to success with the client.

Progress Report

So right now we're trying to get out progress report together in an effort to finally send it off to Mt. Zion for their review. I was of a mind that a progress report would be quite easy and concise, allowing us to draft it momentarily even in professional format. But after reading chapter we had to go back and re-write the entire thing from scratch, amazing what reading can do for you(sarcasm?).

Anyhow, things are coming along slowly but surely now.. Everyone is so busy will this class and the others and the homework just keeps flowing in a steady stream.

Chapter 8 from Service-Learning

This chapter was probably my favorite amongst the rest as it provided some really detailed explanations on what you are supposed to have in a progress report. Through reading I realized just how different the actual format of progress reports are from what my group and I originally had in mind. I suppose we did not foresee these sorts of things as specific as they generally are.
The familiar purpose, audience and content are here though, and the intro body and conclusion are pretty much the same deal, just the design of the document itself was different. There was a section that focused on cutting out long phrases and using words with synonymous meanings to keep the report more concise, this was a big help when I re-read some of our earlier work.

Chapter 6 from Service Learning

This chapter seemed to be aimed specifically at me, obviously I am the group manager. While that does not necessarily alleviate all responsibility from the other team members, what it does entail is that I am supposed to be on top of things. Certainly this is something that can be difficult to accomplish while going to class full time and working, especially considering the amount of homework and other activities involved. None the less I am upping my abilities as much as possible without burning out. As stated in the last blog we have assigned positions in order to make the process that much smoother and communicate readily, had it not been for bad luck and busy schedules our foothold would have been much better. Taking cues from the chapter we like to treat everyone in our group as equal, project manager, comm. manager, design manager, none of it means you are above the person beside you and this allows us to have a clear/ creative outlook on our project.