Throughout the first semester I have been learning about the principles of design and typography. I have gained a lot of knowledge and understanding of the value of good typography and design principles. I have put the skills into practice and designed a string of typographical design solutions to precise briefs we have been given.

Overall I have been pleased with the resulting designs I have produced this semester, but I have noticed a negative trend. I take a lot longer to work through research and design ideas than some of my contemporaries on the course. I know from talking to Industry Professionals that I will have to speed up my processes to become commercially employable. This is not of major concern to me as I know this speed will come with time and experience.

I feel a need to gain more inspiration following the first semester; I have started creating vectors in my own time and playing with textures on various software packages. I look at typefaces on adverts, art and even small things like how menus are designed in restaurants. I’m feeling a lot more creative than when I started the course, my designer eye might be coming out, without sounding too pretentious. I need to continue collecting physical and mental images to draw inspiration from.

From all the classroom and self taught learning I have done in the first semester, I think I am more of a reflector than I first thought. When I first looked at the Honey and Mumford test I felt that I was a bit of everything, which was reflected in the results of the questionnaire. I still think I don’t solely fit into one style of learning but I think the bulk of my learning is best described by the reflector style of learning. Which I think plays a part in why I may take longer to research and design briefs as I like to think on topics over a longer period of time.

The group as a whole has bonded really well I this semester. It’s very easy to get on with everyone in the group and throughout the first semester I think we have all got to know each other’s personalities. It definitely makes learning easier if we are all on the same page so to speak, but also it’s a good base for when we begin to do group work.
Moving on to the second semester I think I need to put everything I have learnt up to now into practice, keep using the skills and knowledge I have learnt and use them in conjunction with what I am going to learn in the future. In the past I found this easy but as I have got older it actually is harder to learn new skills and acquire knowledge so I’m looking forward to the challenge.

Moving forward, I have made 4 targets to help me achieve my goals.

• I wish to cover all the relevant points I first read about in the skilset.org document. This comprehensive list of skills and knowledge is a very useful tool to measure myself against, with hopes that I can cover all the points covered in the document by the end of the course.
• I want to be comfortable with the idea of being employed as a professional, at the moment I do not have the skills or knowledge and so would not feel comfortable in the role at the moment. I would have to measure this by simply how confident and comfortable I feel about myself, my skills and my knowledge at the end of the course.
• I was happy with receiving a Merit for my first grade. I hope to match the grade and hopefully improve on it if at all possible.
• I want to gain some commercial experience before leaving the course. Obviously a commercial placement would be ideal, but if this is not possible I would hope to at least shadow an industry professional at work. At the moment I have an idea of what it takes to be employable, but seeing it first hand is a very important experience I hope to achieve.

Other topics I need to address include Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and Hyper Text Mark-up Language HTML. I think these are the type of skills I need to acquire by being an activist and actually working through exercises alongside studying. Knowledge of cross browser issues was another area highlighted as a weakness, which I imagine will be something that I may be able to study myself.

There were some skills that I felt I already have, such as public speaking and presentations. People usually shy away from experiences like these but I am actually looking forward to any presentation we need to do as I really want to keep using the skill. I am hoping it is not a case of use it or lose it as I have not done any presenting in a while and may be a little bit rusty.

The goal of all this would be to become a well-rounded Web Designer, employable and successful. After all, I wouldn’t be on the course if I didn’t want a career afterwards. The problem being that I can’t settle with just passing the course and having an average career, I want much more than that. My long term goal would be to gain as much experience, knowledge and skills as I can in order to enable me to run my own company, either self-employed or managing staff.  Of course this is not achievable in the short term, a 5 year goal would be to be a successful Designer employed within a company.

Becoming employable will be determined by many factors, including the aforementioned well-rounded Web Designer, but also by connections I can make within the digital sector, the quality of the portfolio I hope to produce and of course a little bit of luck never goes amiss either. So many factors can affect my employability but I am only going to worry about the ones I have control over and hope that genuine hard work and persistence will do the rest.

With regards to goals I am going to set for myself, I think the first should be to use my self-study time to learn about different browsers. I am currently unaware of cross browser issues and also the solutions. I think a good way to tackle this would be to do some reading, research a few issues and maybe try and experience some differences between the browsers.

I am also going to set myself a target of understanding CSS and (X)HTML. In the first instance it makes sense to try and gain a very basic knowledge of how things work and then work up from there. I am hoping to get stuck into this goal in the new year when we start to learn coding. It is difficult to say when I know this goal will be complete as the topics they cover are so vast that it will be an ongoing learning goal throughout the course.

I want to know a lot more about Marketing and branding, the processes involved and their impact on design. This is an interesting subject to me as I have been talking to several Designers that are not specific to the web and their experiences of designing sound fascinating.

My final goal is more of a personal thing which was not discussed in my previous post; I want to be able to create art/imagery using various software. I know this is not neseceraly a weakness that needs addressing per se, but I want to be a well-rounded designer and so I need to be able to create imagery onscreen like I can on paper or canvas.

In summary these are my 4 goals for the future:

●Cross browser issues

●Knowledge of CSS and X(HTML)

●Marketing and branding

●Art/imagery creation using various software.

Rutledge has summarised his thoughts in an article called The Employable Web Designer. Reading the article I am sure that I have some of the skills already, possibly all the ones that are classed as transferable skills, which I obtained through various careers. I am already a confident public speaker and I do have a basic understanding of the human disposition. I have a decent vocabulary and I am comfortable with my written skills but I think these are the type of skills that you need to continually work on and improve. I have previous experience of management and so understand the difficulties of project management and I also know I have an artistic flare.

With regards to skills and knowledge I do not have at present, unfortunately I think this is a more comprehensive list. I feel that in some areas I am already learning and moving forward towards that goal of becoming employable. Through the course material and self-study I am learning about typography, communicating my ideas and also artistic fundamentals such as Proximity, Alignment, Repetition and Contrast (PARC). I am learning about design ideas and presentation, wireframes, mood-boards and what their importance is when presenting ideas.

I feel I have a lot to learn about accessibility, usability, affordance and the ethics that follow these topics. Also the knowledge I’ll need to use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and HyperText Markup Language (HTML). I will need to know about marketing, branding, form interaction, the different browsers for testing and operating systems.

The skillset description of necessary skills and knowledge covers the areas that Rutledge covered but justifies deeper thinking about specific skills and knowledge. For instance where Rutledge states that it is important to understand usability, skillset goes further and says understanding user interactions and gives an example of expanding menus.

With a void in both knowledge and skills it is helpful to know about learning preferences and styles. Understanding how you learn as an individual will undoubtedly make learning both easier and more time efficient. According to the Honey and Mumford learning styles questionnaire I show no strong preference for any particular learning style. I had moderate preferences for both Activist and Reflector, which have opposite learning styles.

I decided to try another test called the VARK test to see if that would tell me anything more about my learning style. The result was referred to as multimodal, which means I learn a multitude of ways and have no strong preference for any one learning style; this corroborates the Honey and Mumford result of no strong preference.

A true reflection of how I learn is to be flexible; I would more often than not adopt a learning style dependant on the format of what is being taught. For instance I know I can learn from lectures, note taking and reflecting on the notes but I would change my learning styles if say I was trying to teach myself more about a software package, I would adopt a more trial and error method in a more active style of learning.

So where I am now is quite a daunting question when I think about it. I do have skills that I can utilise, I am already learning key skills and knowledge and so I can say I’m heading in the right direction. I have a lot to learn over a wide range of topics but I know I am a flexible learner and I am determined. I think that maybe one skill that is not really mentioned anywhere in any of the documentation I have read. Being driven and given 110% to everything is a good skill to have in any career. I know I am a hard worker, which I think is half the battle and I know I am going to be able to do this.

Growing up I had a natural flair for science, or so my teacher told me. During the obligatory College meeting with the Careers Advisor, he suggested a science based degree. Looking back I think I just went with his suggestion. I loved science, that’s why I was good at it but I can’t say I wanted to be a scientist.

Mum and Dad were so happy when I told them I was going to University, I loved that feeling of making them proud and I think it’s what motivated me to do well. I graduated with a 1st in Molecular Biology and continued on to have a career in Genetics. I loved being the best at something, impressing everyone around me.

I remember vividly how I felt when I told my parents I was quitting, it was such a hard thing to say to them. It felt like I was letting them down, I was embarrassed, scared what they would say and I felt physically sick. It turned out it was quite a short conversation, they were fine about it all and were very supportive; I just wish I had told them sooner.

From this point on I had a string of jobs that never really interested me to be honest, they just paid the bills. I went travelling on my own around Australia in hopes that I would “find myself”, turns out I didn’t but I had one hell of an amazing journey.

I loved science because it was logical, problem solving, complex and challenging. But I also loved art, sketching, painting, basically everything that was the opposite of science. That’s why I never figured out what I wanted to do, my interests were so varied and on the opposite ends of the scale.

Web Design only cropped up on my radar about a year ago. I was casually shopping in Leeds with my sister. I dragged her in to Octopus, a shop that sells beautiful, funky, colourful things that you don’t really need. At the till my sister asked if they had a website as she didn’t come into Leeds often, surprisingly they didn’t. I jokingly said I would love to design a website for them, if I only knew how. This was rather like a “light bulb over my head” moment.

I now know what I want to do finally, which is such a good feeling. It’s scary being at the bottom of a very big hill, having a lot to learn. But to answer the question “Why am I here” my answer has to be; because I want to be.