Final Project Thoughts

I've just started thinking about the Final Project really and do some research. All three of us on this course are collaborating and have come up with a project that we can all hopefully work on together! The project is FOI (Fragment of Imagination) who is a school band and the singer (Bethany) is Gavin's daughter!! They are really good so we want to do them justice.

We need to write a brief so Patrick can check that it will be good enough to satisfy the brief fully. So I've asked Bethany who the band's influences are. I've added links to all the bands websites and you know what... I really like them! Especially Paramore who I'd never heard of before! I've heard some of the songs - I recognised them when I played them on the website. I'm a big fan of Evanescence anyway and I also like the others. I'd never heard of 30 Seconds from Mars but from what I heard they sound good too. This has made me quite excited about this project and I want to come up with some really good work for them!

I want to use Flash which I have used before but could do with developing my skills somewhat. Also it will be very interesting trying to come up with something accessible as a lot of these hip and trendy websites are so hard to use!

Stepping Stones Presentation

The presentation with the client was very laid back as I know David and Shell well from when my son used to go to the nursery. But this was good because they knew I would be honest with them rather than some companies who may use hard sell techniques to get the business but don't back it up!

I am a little worried however due to the sheer amount of information that is apparently out of date on the current website as it means I'll have to wait for the text from them. With the deadline for this project looming in a couple of months (and Christmas inbetween!) this leaves me feeling a little nervous. I'll have to make sure the website's all built and ready so I can put a bit of pressure on them!

I'm feeling much more focused now and ready to crack on with some work. I really believe in my business and want to succeed at this.

There may be opportunities for upselling with the nursery too. I will suggest producing stationery based around the new corporate identity, starter packs and visitor brochure

PDP 6 Presentation

I presented to the group where I'm up to so far with my PDP 6 project. It went very well so I was delighted. I took Gavin's advice from my last presentation and took bulleted notes of the information on my blogs. Because of this my delivery was much more concise and meant I didn't get sidetracked too much. I also felt a lot more confident which was great!

The others all seemed really impressed with my company branding - especially the HNC/HND students! This was amazing for me as I always felt like I had so much to learn. They were asking me lots of questions which I could answer and could answer confidently! It was a very good experience.

Patrick was pleased too as he thought we may be falling behind as he hasn't watched over us this year like he did last year. I do feel as if I know where I'm going now and what I need to do to complete the first two projects. I'm well on with the other project (PP 6) , I just hope that the customer gets organised enough to get everything to me on time!

Designs almost there

I'm finally happy with two designs for my client Stepping Stones and just need to decide how the other pages will look before presenting them. I'm so pleased with how they've turned out. If anything I think design three would look nice with rounded corners like design one!

It's given me a boost this, as I always thought my downfall was the design and I've never been over confident about it. Building a website is different as I feel very confident, especially now that I've learnt a good solid way of building them. But now I'm proud of myself as I've come up with some designs which are as good as if not better than the best of his competition! Hopefully I'll speed up too and be able to design websites at this standard a lot faster!

I'm quite chuffed actually!

I'm really pleased with how the Personal Project is going. After feeling like the designs were really amateur I think they're looking much nicer now. I don't want them to be too advanced as they need to be fairly simple to appeal to the target market and not be too different to the competition. But overall it's good, and I'm happy!!

Personal Development Plan 6 Progress

This is going ok too. I need to do more to the Action plan, update my cv and look on websites that the brief recommended. Also to do is interviews (I've done two more - just need to write them up). I need to update my financial information too and upload the extra corporate id stuff I've had printed. All in all it's going well.

I'll update on the marketing activities I'm doing too as that's all relevant to this project

Personal Project 6 Progress

I'm really pleased with how this project's going so far. I think the initial designs all have potential to be really good. I think they need pepping up a bit so they look more professional and easy enough to build before I present them to the client. I'll do a bit more research into other websites I like, not just childcare websites as the examples on the whole are really poor. I want to introduce a bit of Web 2.0 style which makes elements look more 3d therefore a lot nicer and more modern. A bit of work to do still then!

Full steam ahead?

I'm finding it quite hard to get motivated with the personal development project as I know where I'm going and what I want. The main thing that will help me move forward now is marketing and also getting comfortable with the design process. I still prefer the building of websites once the design's complete because I can just sit and get on with it! Designing is hard because I need to research a lot and I need to wait until I get inspired. I find that quite annoying in some ways. But I presume it's like a muscle that needs exercising - the more I do it the easier it'll become!

I'm a real company!

I'm so excited because I now have some business cards and leaflets! It shows that I am a real company and I mean business (excuse the pun!). They look really good. I've just ordered some letterheads and compliment slips too so I can send out some personalised letters with a leaflet to potential clients.

I am also attending a Christmas shopping evening at my son's school. I am going to draw a picture of someone there so people can see what I do - and also have some Inspired Card & Gift stuff there for sale. Hopefully I'll get some sales on the night to spur us on!