Inspiration Music: Mr Scruff - Ninja Tuna

I bought this album yesterday after only hearing the song "Music Takes Me Up" on YouTube and I thought it was hilarious.

Very occasionally, I'll invest in some music that I've only ever heard one song of in hope that the rest of the album will be as to the same high quality.

I was pleaseantly surprised that this album is actually quite so good! I found it in the dance section at HMV, but as I'm listening to it, most of the songs actually make me smile while I'm sitting here typing.

Music Takes Me Up is track two, and is actually longer than the single version which is great! The video features dancing singing fruit, and the main singer is a singing lemon! For some reason, I found this rather amusing and proceeded to show all my friends!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ojl2KLCGT4I

The rest of the album is fairly upbeat and sound quite experimental, it's almost drum and base, but it's got quite a latin salsa vibe going on with some cool base lines and a scratch from the DJ through out.

Overall, it's a great album to put you in that "classy London" mood or excellent music for a more upmarket style party where people may network in the background. Or a fashion show come to think of it!

Quite a diverse album and some great sounds!
8/10

Code me a calendar

Here's a screenshot of the code I've written to make an onscrean calendar, however, it doesn't work exactly!

So far, I've managed to get it to print out January, then put the days from 1-31 beneath it and then it's listed all the other months, without dates.

Not exactly what I wanted but I think I'm gonna get there eventually!

If I was going on the cruise this weekend, I'd have liked to have spent some time over next week sorting it out.

Why Markeaton?

Other than the photo speaking for itself, why did I choose Markeaton Park for my interactive space project?

Well Markeaton Park is the place where I spent a lot of my younger years growing up. It was the park we used to go to and every time I go back I get a strong sense of memories of people I've been with and things we've done there.

Having all those fond memories has fueled me on to create a website that's accessible to children and adults so that both age groups can get the most out of the park. I want to create an environment that is useable by people with partial sight, who are deaf and those with learning dissabilities. As well, of course, as for people who are able in all those factors.

I'm going to be going back to Markeaton over the next few weeks to take photographs and pick up some information about the coming events over the winter season, so I can create this website suitable for the project.

Building :: Structure :: Environment

Here are two scans of some paper based work I've just completed.

The wire frame shows the vision I have for the website, it's layed out in the style I would like to create for it, however, as expected, the design may change as I become more confident with Javascript and Dreamweaver.

The brain storm shows my ideas and how I'm going to research around the actual practice of making the website.

I've thought about different target audience's and their requirements, along with various different accessbility options I have for using javascript, such as changing the font size, using voice over and enlarging photographs.

Brand Spanking New CV Design

This 4-page design is my brand new CV.

I think it speaks for itself. Bright, vibrant and informative. What else could you need?

3 Sites with User Content

1. DenDen
This website offers users a forum to share their views and opinions about the music industry, focusing mainly on the Spice Girls, this forum has been the central location for the latest goings on and rumours for the band for the last 7 or 8 years.
The site has strict copyright rules and so therefore a lot of it is fan made content where a fan has found a rare piece of music, video or created a remix or video to share within the community.
There's a lot of support and loyalty on the site which is reflected through sharing the content with each other. Overall, quite a nice site to keep in the know and get frustrated by all the rumours.

2. Mod The Sims
A great social networking and sharing site where users can upload their own Sims objects and skins to the server and other users can download and add it to their games.
Users are able to search for specific items to add to their game or they can submit their own. It's also a place for people to chat and share their own stories of the game and get help and advice.
The site design is quite bad, with adverts overcrowding the website and various design aspects such as the very square like features make the website look flat and unbalanced.

3. Share My Lyrics
This site is soley based around lyrics and poetry. Users can sign up to the website and submit their lyrics for other users to read and rate at their leasure. It's an interesting alternative to making a music video or writing an actual song as the user only needs the access to the internet and some creative flow. Useful for people who need some inspiration when writing music or just want to get their stuff seen. The website looks quite simple to use and fairly colourful. There is also a forum for users to log in and talk about collaborations, writing songs and getting noticed. An interesting concept, however I'm unsure as to how successful this site can get due to its text based nature.

PRIDE: Sketch Book Design

The same concept as the designs I made for Lucy, this design is to get an idea of what the new NTU Pride website could look like.

It's very similar to the final one I made as I liked the design quite a lot and it works.

LUCY: Sketch Book Design

All designers should have a "working space" where they can experiment with ideas and designs to truely get their best potential for the project their about to embark on.

These are 3 of my 6 sketches I drew while designing for Lucy's website.

They show a variety of different designs. They're done for my reference so if they don't make 100% sense, then that's why, they're working documents.

GFSN Winter Tournament Logo Design

I was approached by an friend to create a logo for his football club who are having a gay winter football tournament.

I created a very basic outline for a website and this is one of the logos I made to go along side it. He wanted something that incorporated football, winter and the gay scene.

Burger Van Man Design

Through one of my business cards, I was called by a man who wanted me to make a website for his burger van on the A60.

I got to work straight away and came up with a design that I thought was Unisex, fresh, inviting and simplistic all rolled into one.

The man, dubbed Steve, said he would email me regarding his requirements but never got back in touch and considering the pending work load at Uni, I thought it would be best to let him to the chaseing as I have 3 other non-uni projects to work. It's all about time management. :-)

Whiteboard: Map of the Internet

This horrendous quality photo is what is left of the whiteboard we made for our internet map.

If you click the picture, you can almost make everything out. The ones at the top are what we found the most popular as of October 2009 and the ones at the bottom are the least popular. The ones at the very very bottom are sites that used to be very popular but are now no longer used as much.

Joel Schafer: 'I'm into minimalistic clean design' January 15, 2008

http://www.designinterviews.com/interviews/599

Love it, love it, love it!
Joel Schafer has pretty much captured my vision when it comes to design. Just like Joel, I love the simplistic but effective design. Using just a couple of colours and adapting space is one of the best ways to design as it keeps things minimal and the information and data you need is right infront of you where you need it.

Even though Joel's interview was short and to the point, I liked that. He told you what you wanted to know but kept you wanting more, which is another great design aspect.. keep the user coming back for more!

Dan Saffer: 'Interaction design is an applied art' August 13, 2008

http://www.designinterviews.com/interviews/interaction-design-is-an-applied-art

Reading this interview with Dan Saffer was really interesting to see how someone who works as an Interactive Designer thinks and uses his time.

What I thought was just as interesting is how similar Dan Saffer is to myself. I found myself agreeing with almost everything he said. On comments I hadn't thought about on my own, I read what he had to say and found myself understanding and wanting to know more about what he had to say. For example,

"What are the core elements of an interaction that web designers measure during the creating process?

Usefulness, usability, and desirability. If your design fills a need in people's lives, works well, and looks beautiful, you've got design gold. There are lots of secondary characteristics that fall under these headings, like efficiency and balance and trustworthiness and a whole host of other traits, most of which can only be fuzzily measured but are important nonetheless."

This was really interesting for me as its gives you 3 main aspects to try and work towards when designing for interaction and general application of creative skill. Usefulness, usability and desirability are the essence of design within the industry and can be applied to almost any interactive content. Even on something such as an electric hand dryer. Usefulness as the user has wet hands and doesn't need to press the button. Usability is simple as the user only has to place their hands under the dry and desirability is there too as it's novel and makes us feel ever so slightly more technically advanced, life's simple pleasures comes to mind.

I also found Dan Saffer quite inspiring in terms of his principles he follows in his work,

'The Way you know is not The Way.' –Tao Te Ching

'A body in motion tends to stay in motion.' Newton's First Law

'If it was easy, then everyone would do it.'

Reading these three really struck a cord with me. Recently in my personal life the first of the three has been quite a prominent feature and something I will have to work on to change, so it was refreshing to see it written by someone else completely unrelated. Also, I think that all 3 of the statements are very true. At the end of the day, if you're working hard and pushing yourself continually with the ability to critically analyse yourself, you're going to go far and develop as a designer and that's why were at University, to learn, change and advance.