Thursday 11 December 2008

Perfect planning prevents poor performance.

In general the last few weeks of the HND Interactive Media course have been very enjoyable for me… Not that I wasn’t enjoying it before! It’s just that I now feel like we’re moving more toward the design element of the course which to be totally honest is what I enjoy doing most. Oh and not to forget, we now have the results from our A2 (A Journey of 1000 Miles) referred assignments… Which I’m pleased to say I passed!

The bulk of the academic writing for A3 (Sounds Like a Plan) is almost at an end and feel that the run up to Christmas will enable us to really get creative with our design ideas. Likewise A4 (Typecast) has taken a design twist with the introduction of several mini assignments (with much shorter timescales). Having now worked on two mini assignments (Hokai paint label) and (Vodafone job ad) I’ve become all too aware that my time management skills leave little to be desired!

When you’re working to a 4-5 hour time scale you really do have to be precise with your time management planning, finding yourself quite easily lost in the moment and completely loosing track of time! Personally I think I need to be more stringent with the planning of these mini projects, for example allocating sufficient time for ideas generation, creation, tinker time and print.

Week twelve saw our first presentation of the course, which I have to say, could have gone a little better! Again I think the reason for the poor conduct boils down to the aspect of time management (or rather lack of it) within the group. I suppose I just feel that when you’re working within a team it’s important to be at your best, as it’s not just yourself you’re letting down!