Jaz Design

We started our “Self Promotion” unit today. I’ve had this book about a year and a half but don’t think I ever managed to read it all properly. It’s on the reading list for this unit, and with working full time being imminent I read it over the weekend and found it to be very useful.

I will say that I skipped the chapters on setting up your own studio as I don’t plan to do this just now. I did read the interviews at the end however.

That was one of the things I quite liked about this book, the useful information with the real world experiences and then an interesting interview with a working graphic designer. I thought the format worked quite well.

Things like how to present your portfolio in an interview – simple things you’d expect to be common sense – for example showing it to the interviewer, not yourself, I think are incredibly useful.

If you’re about to go out into the real world, I think you’ll definitely find useful things in this.

4/5

I had a lovely Christmas, I spent Christmas eve and Christmas morning with the mister and his family, which was great and I really enjoyed myself. We spent Christmas eve snuggled up watching telly, drinking Champagne, and then woke up uncharacteristicly early Christmas morning to open our presents.

We’d decided to do a “serious” present, a “silly” present and a bunch of stockingy presents for each other. I’d bought him Mass Effect (Xbox 360), the Muse poster from the gigs we went to in June, a Screaming Flying Monkey and a lot of chocolate and sweeties

He’d accepted my suggestion of jewellery, and got me the beautiful set shown here. I picked butterflies because of the Muse song “Butterflies and Hurricanes” which is my favourite song of all time, it’s pretty special. He also got me Lego Star Wars II (PS2) (which I haven’t had chance to play yet), a make and display Play-Doh parrot which is awesome, and lots of sweeties.

My Mum got me a subscription to Adbusters magazine which is awesome because I won’t be able to read it at the library once I finish uni , I got money, a new duvet and set, lots of chocolate and sweeties, a nail varnish set, Sleepy Hollow, Design Without Boundaries: Visual Communication in Transition and I’m sure I’m forgetting some stuff.

As an aside, watch Toy Story, it’s awesome. I’m Woody, howdy howdy howdy.

I know, this still needs updating, the template needs finishing, the front page needs finishing, everything and anything is up in the air. There’s not a lot I can do at the moment I’m afraid – lacking reliable internet and what not. Once I set up EasyPHP and what not on this newly formatted mashup of a PC I might get chance to sort things out.

On a more excitable note, I start my second summer of work at 3-Wise Internet Solutions (who are also my host, <3) tomorrow. On top of that, I have three, maybe four, units still to finish for university due to my illness at the end of the first semester, my dissertation research, self elected research and other general course reading to do. That’s a lot, but that’s ok, because it’s all positive. I also have my own personal photography and internet projects in mind. My head’s a bit full at the moment, I’m sure you can imagine.

I took my Mister to his home for the weekend, gave myself a bit of a break during that time, to play Guitar Hero, spend time with him and generally do not much. It was gooood. It all had to end tonight though, ready for tomorry Oh, and yeah, it was some sort of five day weekend, haha.

My Mister took me to see the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie last week, I’ve always thought the storylines were silly, but the movies are certainly entertaining. Worth the look.

This Wednesday my Mister and I attended the Future of Web Design conference in Kensington, Londinium. I’d never been to anything like this before so I wasn’t sure what to expect. I found the experience really enjoyable, it was really interesting to be with so many people interested in that kind of thing, and the talks, whilst often things I knew or common sense, still helped bring my mind back to what I should be doing, and what the web’s about.

That said, I’m a student, I’ve worked in industry not even two years. From what I’ve read on other blogs the professionals weren’t as keen on the day as I was, but I do think that had a lot to do with the level of experience – I’m sure a lot of them have been to a lot of conferences. As it was there weren’t many students there at all, just our small crowd from Pompey and maybe one or two others. Definitely a professional day. I did enjoy it and I did find it interesting. I’m glad uni suggested it, and I think the experience was well worth the (hefty) 60 pounds…
I have some not so great photos I’ll probably stick on my flickr next time I’m at home.

These are some of my notes from the day. Made as coherent as possible, I was very tired that day :S

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Bruce Mau wrote this in 1998, and I always find it an interesting and inspirational read.

I don’t agree with all of it, but I do like what he’s saying.