Week 05 - 3D

Class Format

Todays class was about defining assumptions in order to inform the design process. A group exercise and discussion was followed by a practical based on our own work.

 

Group Exercise

Challenge Assumptions

1. One student presents 3D design concept to the class – 2 mins
2. Open discussion on challenging design concept assumptions – 3 mins 3. Repeat twice
3. All students blog your observations – 10 mins

Myself, Cherill and Queenie presented our recent 3D design concepts. I presented the design concept that I blogged about last week. The primary concern raised about it was in relation to safety and the exposed wiring, with particular regard regard to the moist environment that we all live in most of the time (wet season). Possible solutions presented included insulation and spray on latex compounds. Cherill presented the project her, Katelyn and I have been working in Collaboration being the bicycle helmet cover. We are pretty much all over that and the main issue raised was in relation to cost. The research and break down for that can be found here. Finally was Queenie presenting here design concept from Collaboration for an illustrated children's book. The most interesting point to come out of discusion about her project was to make the book bi-lingual as she is originally from Taiwan.

PRACTICAL – Design challenge / reflect & refine

Choose your most recent 3D design concept from all your current works. In your blog make a list of 2 assumptions about your design. Challenge both of these assumptions (100 words minimum). Suggest 2 refinements to solve these challenges (100 words minimum).

Here I will continue with my design concept for a steampunk monitor hack. I will be drawing my challenges and refinements directly from the group exercise above. My first assumption is that the design is safe - I have been pulling electronics apart for some time now and I know which bits to not touch, besides which the exposed wiring of concern is on the back of the unit. The second assumption is that it will function well as as a monitor extension.
How will the wet season affect the exposed circuitry and wiring. Will exposer to humidity impact the screens performance or be detrimental to the safety of the screen. Will this further complicate the cleaning of the screen.
Considering that the screen is reorientated physically will this complicate configuration. Given the relative age of the screen will it provide an acceptable optical match to the current screen.
In response to the first set of challenges. Further insulation with grommets or spray on latex compounds are the solution to humidity affecting the performance or safety of the screen. In actual use I find cleaning with a low powered vacuum to be an acceptable alternative for cleaning.
For the second set of challenges a good working knowledge of your system preferences will be the solution for the most part. Trial and error found that for some reason rotating the screen 180 degrees as opposed to 270 was easier on system preferences, so test the configuration before you screw it to the desk.

 

Research

Video

Insert video

Images

Andrea Petrachi's work came to me via an RSS feed from Design You Trust. You can probably see that it is his reuse of redundant technology which appeals to me. Also calling himself Himatic, he considers his work as, "...a symbol of our out-of-control desire to buy things" (from the website linked above).

Reflection

Comment

Week 05 - 2D

Class Format

Todays class was about forming and challenging assumptions. This took the form of of a series of group exercises and discussion followed by a practical application of the process covered to our own work. This process was to form a group of assumptions based on a given situation and then systematically challenge each of those assumptions. The aim here is to find alternative and creative ways to solve problems.

 

Group Exercise

Challenge Assumptions - Part 1

10 min QUIZ & open discussion

Q1. Relatives - A doctor in London had a brother in Manchester, who was a lawyer - but the lawyer in Manchester did not have a brother in London who was a doctor. Why? It was his sister.

Q2. Bottled Money - If you put a small coin piece in an empty bottle and replaced the cork, how would you get the coin out of the bottle without taking out the cork or breaking the bottle? Push the cork in.

Q3. The Restaurant Meal - Three women each have two daughters, and they all go into a restaurant for a meal. There are only seven vacant seats in the restaurant, but each has a seat for herself. How do they manage it? It's a grandmother/daughter thing.

Challenge Assumptions - Part 2

MIKE’S AUDITION (see handout)

1. What would be on your list of assumptions - if you were Mike?
   - The drive would take four hours.
   - He needed to sleep 2 hours.
   - It was too late to find an alternate route.
   - Late night traffic would be the same as morning traffic.
   - No sleep would affect his performance.
   - He can't change the time of the audition.
   - No other transport apart from car and bus.
2. Challenge each item in the list and find a solution to Mike’s problem.
   - Drive now and sleep when he gets there.

PRACTICAL – Design challenge / reflect & refine

Choose your most recent 2D design concept from all your current works. In your blog make a list of 2 assumptions about your design. Challenge both of these assumptions (100 words minimum). Suggest 2 refinements to solve these challenges (100 words minimum). Illustrate your thoughts with sketches / diagrams.

Recently I made an invite for my Nephews first birthday. I assumed that my Sister in Law would like my work. I also assumed that printing would not be a problem (with free and easy access to colour printing up to A4 on standard paper stock).

Perhaps Danielle (sister in law) does like what I have done to her only son. There could also be issues with the wording on the invite. Any of the colours I have used could be a problem. In short there could be a problem with the design.

The printing may hit a brick wall in that my printer access could die. The colours may not print correctly. There may be a last minute formatting change (this actually happened) in that my printer could decide that two to a page would be a more economical use of resources than a full page print, however this was not an easy task from where she sat and unintentional cropping occurred.
Solutions to these problems in the first instance include the correct organisation of my resources - properly organised these can be referenced (that's what you told me to write on it) or revisited and edited. Properly organising and grouping layers within the files will also prevent design edits from being an issue. In the second instance have a back up printer is the first solution. With my actually happened problem, I had the relevant file and it was not problem to format it in such a way that it could be easily printed. For the colour issue, output in the relevant colour format (CMYK). To summarise a well organised creative process backed up with some preparation for the unexpected will solve most problems. Here is the final design, which incidentally was created with a combination of Photoshop and Illustrator...

Research

Video

While again not probably technically a video this does tie thematically with this week class. I found this on Giff Constable's site, who from his blurb about himself sounds like the business acumen you need in your corner for a new start up.

 

Images

This bit of fun came to me via Design Taxi. The early advertising artworks of Dr. Suess was originally sourced here and it looks like he was fairly prolific. Like many of us, I grew up with the work of Dr. Suess, so it would be remiss of me not to include him here as one of my influences.

Reflection

Firstly, blogger tip #078 for the punters. If you are reading this you may have noticed a discrete little arrow pointing up in the bottom, right hand side of your browser window - don't be shy, go ahead and click it. Welcome back! I like it a lot and it is very handy should you want to read my post more than once? (nah, gammin!). Anyway I found this little gadget along with a whole bunch of blogger hacks here. Be aware that most of these require a little code monkeying, but depending on the author the instructions are easy to follow and for the most part it is all copy/paste. Just remember if you are on a Mac to replace instructions to press Ctrl+F with Command+F (the Safari 'find' shortcut, also found under the edit menu).
The process of forming and challenging assumptions is useful the critical analysis of design choices. It is another the tools used to build a critical discourse within the design process. Developing and maintaining these skills are crucial to fostering a healthy and productive design practice.

Week 04 - 3D

Class Format

Unfortunately as stated in my 2D entry also, I was absent for this weeks class. The class followed the usual format with a group exercise and practical exploration. The aim of the class was to further develop a critical discourse about design choices from within a collaborative environment.

Group Exercise

Experimentation: Exploring & Challenging

Each group member choose the best of their designs from last week’s practical. The group votes on the 3 best designs. Using the idea of experimentation the whole group discusses and researches how each chosen design concept could be explored and challenged. The Scribe for each group documents findings for 3 designs under these headings;
Considering my absence from todays class and what I felt was a relative thinness to last weeks weeks idea creation I will be focusing instead on a recent thing I built. A more accurate description would be of a thing I deconstructed and rebuilt differently. The thing is a 15 inch computer monitor and my intention was to give it a sense of the Steampunk aesthetic through the process of its strip down and reconfiguring from a horizontal to a vertical aspect. I appreciate the main focus of this exercise is to complete the reflections below in a group and as such I will be using my class peer proxy for this week. I will also be focusing our reflections on the one design project outlined above.

• Design Exploration.
  - Could the design be more 'steampunk'? For example more brass colour or more redundant apparatus.
  - Does the design intention work in its surroundings? Standing next to a shiny new iMac for example.
  - Would the design benefit from expansion? Two linked screens would add complexity and further lend itself to the intended aesthetic. Also considerable are differing dimensions and orientations.
• Design Challenges.
  - Safety? Exposed wiring, circuitry, etc.
  - Practicality? Design functionality.
  - Adaptability? Further repurposing of the hardware.

To the right is one of the monitors before I started hacking it. John Douglas acquired about fifty of the monitors with the (still in the works) intention of creating an artwork from them. He came across these through the I.T. company he works for during an office refit. Headed toward the skip bin he actually saved the company money by taking them away for the token sum of $100 (you have to keep the accountant happy and this type of thing happens more often than you would think). John Douglas has an obsession with redundant tech. Below is front and rear views of the monitor after my hack. There is another view in this post.

PRACTICAL – Design Exploration

Choose your favourite concept from all your current 3D designs. Use any tools you wish. Put the results and a paragraph of description in your Blog. Through a combo of research and creative thinking explore the possibilities of concept experimentation, variation and evaluation. List these items clearly, draft examples and explain your thinking.
Continuing from the above 'Experimentation' I will be focusing the steampunk monitor reconfiguration.

• Two Experiments
  - Rework the design to make more 'steampunk'.
  - Expand on the design for added functionality.
• Pros & Cons
  - Screen extension, inexpensive (they cost around $2 each for the reasons detailed above), following that expendable, versatile.
  - Safety issues, functionality issue (in that it is screwed to the desk).
• Choosing & Refusing
  - This was in all honesty a fast and dirty solution to the design problem posed. This was to take a redundant screen and inexpensively repurpose it to extend the screen of my shiny new Mac while giving it elements of a steampunk aesthetic. Further work (time) and extension via added redundant tech (money) would improve functionality, safety and the intended aesthetic. Although this would detract from two of my primary goals which was to create this with minimal expenditure and investment of time.

 

Research

Video

This came from the same place as the optical illusion in my 2D post. Here 2 dimensional forms give the illusion of a 3 dimensional space.

Images

Here is a more elaborate work in progress.

Here is a very elaborate and very polished example. While I'm on a roll, here is also an example of an OSX modification in the style of the steampunk aesthetic...

 

Reflection

First a quick tip for the punters. Lets say you downloaded an image some time ago and did not save the reference. Then you want to use that image somewhere like here where you must reference your source. You could try to remember the search terms you used and look for the image all over again, but there is a quicker way. Located in the search terms field of a google image search is a small camera icon, click that, upload the given image and google will find it for you.

I believe that it is essential for any creative endeavour to have built into its process an element of critical discourse. In the design field this will most often occur within a public forum. Gaining an understanding and participating in a version of it is a highly important component of this course. Specifically this week sought to demonstrate to us the importance of developing a process which would automatically, 'Challenge assumptions, reflect on ideas and refine approaches' (from the course outline). 

Week 04 - 2D

Class Format

Unfortunately I was absent for this weeks class, but I will forge ahead based on the PDF files relating to it. The class followed the usual format with a group exercise and practical exploration. The aim of the class was to further develop a critical discourse about design choices.

 

Group Exercise

Experimentation: Exploring & Challenging

Each group member choose the best of their designs from last week’s practical. The group votes on the 3 best designs. Using the idea of experimentation the whole group discusses and researches how each chosen design concept could be explored and challenged. The Scribe for each group documents findings for 3 designs under these headings;
As with my 3D entry, in light of my absence from this weeks class I will be using my class peer proxy for this exercise. I will be focusing my attention on last weeks design concept for a web portfolio based on irregular shapes (or at least not rectangular) as I believe this will provide the most interesting design challenge. I would prefer prefer to construct this with CSS and HTML with some Spry assets. The design also called for an interactive component. This will present its own challenge as it has been my experience that Flash can handle interactive content more effectively.

• Design Exploration
  - Shape considerations; within and overall.
  - Layout considerations; offset, counter balance, use of negative space.
  - The use of Fibonacci Spiral or 'Golden Ratio'.
  - Minimal aesthetic verses interactivity.
  - 
• Design Challenges
  - Will usability be affected by by an irregular layout.
  - Will animated gifs supply the required interactivity?
  - How will different browsers handle multiple AP Divs (floating)?
  -

PRACTICAL – Design Exploration

Choose your favourite design concept from all your current works. Use any tools you wish. Put the results and a paragraph of description in your Blog. Through a combo of research and creative thinking explore the possibilities of concept experimentation, variation and evaluation. List these items clearly, draft examples and explain your thinking.
Following from the above I will be concentrating on the design concept for my web portfolio. This exploration will concerned with the overall layout of the site.

• Two Experiments
  - Horizontally flip the design placing page content/image on the left side.
  - Vertically flip placing site title/logo at the bottom left.
• Pros & Cons
  - Using the Fibonacci Spiral provides an underlying visual balance.
  - Having an underlying structure provides a cohesive template for the entire site.
  - The flow of the page may challenge traditional (western) notions of how to read a page.
  - The design will necessarily employ multiple floating AP Div tags, this may have a less than desirable result in other browsers and mobile platforms (however this can also be tested or planned for).
• Choosing & Refusing
  - This is most certainly a work in progress. For me defining an underlying structure is a far more important consideration than the logistics required to deploy that structure. The basic layout here is strong, versatile and adaptive. The technicalities of delivering this are within the realm of my capabilities, while they will most certainly test them.

 

Research

Video

While disconcerting this is also pretty cool. It is really difficult to write this post as this gif is making me nauseous, I imagine that it is doing the same thing to you as you attempt to read this text. The original can be found here by an artist who simply calls himself davidope. Entering html mode made it easier to edit this post as all I had in front of me was raw html and no strobing graphic. I am including this here to show the strength of 2 dimensional representations when playing tricks on the mind. Now quickly scroll away before you throw up.

 

Images

I found this work via an RSS feed from Design You Trust, although this particular image can be found here. My first rule with Photoshop is regard images where you can see that Photoshop has been used as not using Photoshop properly. Work like this, however, pushes the image out the other side. You can still see that there is a photograph in there but it has begun to take on a painterly quality. I have another kind of respect for artists who can do this with Photoshop. As is the case with all of the links to artwork I find, I like to follow the link rabbit hole to find the original artist. This one was longer than usual and finally led me to Federico Bebber, who at the time of writing this has one of the cooler placeholder pages I have seen.

 

Reflection

Wow - I can't believe a data loss event got me again! This time a power outage at home with unsaved changes while editing a post. This is by no means an excuse as I will get the work done regardless, just a word of warning. Blogger auto saves a draft when you begin a post, when you edit a post it DOES NOT.

Week 03 - 2D

Class Format

After a review of last week the class consisted of a group exercise and a practical. A fair amount of group discussion occurred while evaluating the results of the group exercise.

 

Group Exercise

Creative Thinking - Combine Ideas

1. Choose at random two words from the lists below.
2. 
When you've selected two words, think about the words. Get clear in your mind what each represents.

3. In a Word doc., do a rough mind map of each word and figure out what each means and represents to you.
4. Combine ideas. Think about how the one thing relates or could relate to the other.
5. 
Each person creates TWO 2D Design OPTIONS based on the chosen word combo.

Our groups 2 words are 'Cherry' and 'Skull'. Associated words with 'Cherry' : Red, Ripe, Sweet, Succulent. Associated words with 'Skull' : Death, White, Decay,

These drawings were completed in class with illustrator. The first one is obvious - I have shaped and coloured a pair of skulls like cherries. With the second drawing I took the idea of decay and applied it to the cherry. The purpose of this exercise was to recognise the value of random input in the creative process. It also demonstrated a system by which this input could be evaluated and collated via the collaborative process.

 

Practical

Draft a range of 3 excellent design concepts for your exhibition portfolio. Use any tools you wish. Put the results and a paragraph of description in your blog. Invent 2 different options for each of the 3 designs. Describe how each of these options differ in OR any 3 criteria of your own choosing – list these criteria clearly.

• Shape
  - Square, round or other. Top navigation, Side navigation of floating.
• Media
  - CSS, Spry media or Flash.
• Style
  - Minimal, Dynamically Interactive.

I chose to look at the design options for my online portfolio. Beginning with a sketch my initial design concepts were concerned with the layout for the navigation menu. These were Top, Side and Floating (an icon follows the mouse pointer revealing the menu when clicked). Shape parameters varied where the overall layout could be described as square, rounded or irregular. Media varied where the code could be executed in Spry, Flash or regular HTML and CSS. Style varied where the content could present itself as minimal or interactive. This exercise demonstrated a process by which individual design concepts could expanded upon through a criteria based interrogation.

 

Research

Video

After completing the creative thinking exercise we all had a look at each others results. Some interest was generated in the class in regard to how I had completed the drawings above in Illustrator in the allotted time. This youtube video gives away the secret to the seemingly magical trickery. My tips for using youtube tutorials include; be specific - tailor your searches to a specific task or program, follow - when you find a specific publisher that appeals to you subscribe to their feed & keep them - download videos you find useful keep them as a reference. There are add-ons for the various browsers which offer the the ability to download videos from youtube, although I have had mixed success with these. I prefer to open the activity window in Safari (common/option/A), locate the largest file (usually the file before the one ending with 'crossdomain.xml'), press option and double click. The video is put in your designated downloads file as 'videoplayback', rename it something appropriate and add the extension '.flv'. The video will now play in VLC or is ready for conversion to your preferred format.

Images

The 'Rational Alphabet' by Gustaf Lord came to me via an RSS feed from Design Taxi. A simple, clever and completely unusable font. From his website, 'By combining every two letters into one the number of letters used in total will drop by half. This will decrease paper usage, ink and toner as well. 
The only downside of using this font is that some unreadability will occur...'. At first I liked Gustaf's website, the index page is clean, well laid out and has a muted palette. Then I had a look around and two things really bugged me; the placement of large text saying, 'Oh, dear Lord!' at the bottom of every other page and his usage lurid pastels in the background of those pages. In his defence the colour choices are not completely incongruous as the tones may be found in the projects they are behind. Below is a swatch of the offending pastels, the first one being from the index page.

 

Reflection

I took from this weeks lesson an appreciation of the ideals of expansion and retraction in relation to idea generation (not bad, I got 4 '...tion' words into that sentence!). The process of ideation followed an expansion route through random input, elaboration and collective discussion with the first exercise. Then a broadly formed idea was concentrated through the application of defining parameters in the practical. When forming ideas the human brain is a remarkable apparatus as both of these approaches and more occur simultaneously and with little or no interruption to conscious thought. This occurs in the part of the mind I think of as preconscious, in line with Freudian psychoanalysis. These ideas then pop into the conscious mind through what many consider to be miraculous inspiration (reference to 'The Ancient Model of Inspiration' here). At this juncture I briefly considered a lengthy diatribe on the ridiculous nature of this notion, but reconsidered in light of the requirements of this body of text (...I will have my rant one day though, oh yes I will). Todays exercise and practical was about using conscious interpretations of preconscious processes to move ideation forward. Developing these techniques is important for any creative who has faced any kind of 'block' and especially so for the designer who usually faces more restrictive timeline requirements as our work is inherently collaborative. 

Week 03 - 3D

Class Format

After a review of last week the class consisted of a group exercise and a practical. A fair amount of group discussion occurred while evaluating the results of the group exercise (apart from this the PDF relating to this portion of the class received only cursory reference which I will address more thoroughly in 'Reflection' below).

 

Group Exercise

Creative Thinking Exercise

In small groups and based on the concept of REDUCE, brainstorm one design concept for an eco- friendly form of personal transport. Brand your design with a catchy name. Enter sketches and notes directly into your blog.

What positive thing can I say about this exercise in the allocated five minutes. The purpose of this exercise was to elaborate on the term 'reduce' as it relates to transportation. The intention was to inform ideation through collaboration. The result is a pair of shoes with springs on the bottom called 'Less-Steps', Cherill had some ideas as well.

 

Practical - Design Options

Individually draft a range of 3 excellent design options for your group’s eco- friendly form of personal transport. Brand your 3 design options with a catchy name. Use any tools you wish. Put the results and a paragraph of description in your blog. Describe how each of these options differ in the criteria below OR any 3 criteria of your own choosing – list these criteria clearly.


• Function
  - make walking easier
• 
Materials
  - shoes, springs
• 
Style
  - whimsical

See picture above.

 

Research

Video

This was shot and edited with an iPhone. It really has no relation to this weeks topic except to show that I am experimenting with different sources for video entry. On the technical side the video was created with two applications, Reeldirector & Action Movie FX. As with most video production this one minute was distilled from about half an hour of footage. Being the first time I had combined the use of the two applications editing time was around six hours. Rendering various edits consumed about a third of this time. At about 90 MB upload took about twenty minutes on my connection. After reviewing it looks like Blogger has automatically compressed the video for web optimisation. Co-star is my wife Lisa-Marie.

 

Images

I discovered  Jean-Paul Bourdier via an RSS feed from My Modern Met. I am including this here because I see elements of Bourdier's work as challenging notions of 3 dimensional space. I also appreciate his use of the human form and the counter balance created between camouflage and contrast. I also have a bit of a thing for rangas with silver skin.

 

Reflection

A quick note about my blogger experience first as I experienced some data loss recently. When you create a post the buttons to the right of the post title are; Post, Save, Preview & Close - auto save is automatically enabled with the inclusion of the save button. When you go back in to edit a post these buttons become; Update, Revert to draft, Preview & Close - there is no auto save. So if you (as I did) close a tab which is not in front with changes that you have not applied the 'Update' button to you may lose those illustrious words of wisdom. This it seems is system specific as I just tried to duplicate my error at home and pop up told me I had unsaved changes on the page (the data loss occurred on campus, I also just updated Safari which may or may not have something to do with it). The thing that irks me about Blogger is that when you hit the update button it takes you back to the post list, what if I just wanted to save my progress and continue editing?
On the cursory reference to the 3D element of the class, you may have noticed that the 'Exercise' and 'Practical' sections of this post were a little thin when compared with the post for 2D. The reason for this is quite simple, I like writing this blog while in class - particularly those sections. Half the work is done for the entire post via copy and paste (as was suggested from the beginning of semester). When a separate (?) PDF for 3D is summarised in the remaining minutes of class this can not happen. At best we have time to copy/paste the template for the post and the questions posed by the exercise/practical with no actual content. There are two solutions to this problem. The first is to cut off presentation of the 2D PDF at its delimiting time prescribed within it at 10.45. This may however have adverse effects on delivery of the prescribed content. The second is to follow Maeda's second law of simplicity, by blurring the distinction between 2 & 3D conflate the PDF for both into one. Thereby streamlining delivery for both the lecturer and the student.

Week 02 - 2D

Class Format

Todays class consisted of gathering, evaluating and collating information as a group exercise. We also looked at design choices with regard to customisation of this blog. The focus was on working collectively and collaboration.

 

Group Exercise

Access Sources of Information

The class divided into two groups which then collected a list in general information sources. The purpose of the exercise was to also gather sources specific to our own practice and interests. Following is a list of the gathered general sources and a couple of links specific to the individuals in our group.

• You can visit a librabry to look at magazines, books – Michelle Turner is the creative arts library specialist at CDU
• Forums and discussion boards
• Industry specific websites
• Local Galleries
• Communicating with other artisit and using web sites like:
• Youtube.
• Whitepapers.
• Eyemagazine.
• International Journal of Design.
• Graphis. - Cherill.
• The design files. - Queenie.
• Design You Trust. - Me.
• My Modern Met. - Me.
• Kat Vond. - Andre.

The goal of this exercise was to gain an appreciation of evaluating and collating resources. In my own practice this organisation occurs at two levels, as the information comes in and where it ends up. My RSS feeds for example are catorgorised as design, art, technology, science and news. I think of this as a top level organisation of information. Resources are then collated in specific groups and types. For example collected video tutorials are sub catorgorised according to the program they are related to, likewise with document tutorials. Other resources like brushes, patterns, samples and articles are similarly sub categorised.

 

Practical - Design Choices

Create a background design for your blog. Use any tools you wish. Put the results and a paragraph of description in blog. Address these 3 points of difference in both designs;


• Shape
  - Cover the top half of the browser window.
• Media
  - Photographic
• Style
  - Realistic, static (does not scroll with the content)

This was is one of the first things I did when I set up this blog. The image is one of mine  and I like the way my cropping and placement situated the lightening bolt beneath my about image. Of course this is more clearly revealed when the user scrolls the content up. The other thing I did straight away was alter the eppearance of links in all of their states (inactive, hover and visited). I found an issue when trying to make my image cover the entire top half of the browser window from the blogger template window - it just does not seem possible. At least not wide enough to cover the enormous monitors in front of us. 2560 pixels across seems to be outside the limit of the underlying template. Custom CSS can be written into the template, which I would assume falls inline and thus over-rides any external style sheet. But, I am yet to crack that little bit of code which is placing a 930 width pixel limit on the on the entire 'content' or 'body' tags. Again with the assuming, I would say the limit would situated with one of these tags. Anyhow, from a design perspective I have gone for a grey palette, keeping the format neutral and emphasising the content. A dull white text is perhaps not the best choice for for large bodies of text on a black background in terms readability and possible eye strain. Cue the sardonic giggle.

 

Research

Video

 

Here is a video about customising your blogger layout. The audio is horrible and difficult to understand. The customisation is limited to the blogger template editor and as such did not solve my problem detailed above. The author is using some nice screen capture software, which honestly is about the only positive thing I can say about this video. Do not watch '...and everything'.

 

Images

 

Here and here are some examples of bloggers who have the same problem as me. A problem which I have elected to ignore for the time being. Not many people expand their web browser to the full width of their screen and less have 27 inch screens in front of them. Besides which the blogs look as I intended on my machine at home - a 21.5 inch iMac.

 

Reflection

The focus for this semester is biased toward collaboration which is taking the form of group exercises at the moment. Further to this, the term 'collaboration' may be sub-categorised as how information sources are gathered, assessed and organised. Assessment requires evidence of this occurring both collectively and individually.
Working with templates I have always found frustrating as there always seem to be hidden limitations lurking beneath the surface. Part of my motivation for undertaking this course was to fine tune my web development skills as I do not want to rely on the use of templates. Designing for the web brings the control freak out in me.