Over the past two weeks I’ve been working on my Mayan themed playing cards. I’ve looked up lots of reference images and I’m pretty happy with the way they’ve turned out. I was initially sceptical about hand drawing them but once I put them through the image trace on illustrator they came out looking very nice.
Colouring them in on the computer was a bit awkward but I’m happy with the colour scheme that I chose in the end with the vibrant Golds, Reds and Blues.
As I discussed in my earlier blog HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language, and it is the authoring language that is used to create the documents used for webpages on the world wide web. Used to define structure and layout on a page as well as any special functions. HTML does this by using tags that have their own attributes (as discussed in my first and second blog)
Tim Berners-Lee was the primary author of HTML and the leader developer of the world wide web project, in 1976 Berners-Lee graduated as a physics major from the Oxford University. At Oxford he built his first computer using: a soldering iron, TTL gates, an M6800 processor and an old television! (Tim Berners-Lee 2016)
In this screenshot below you can see the Tim’s first browser editor which was developed in 1991-92, However the idea of hypertext language has been around for longer than that, Vannevar Bush first proposed the basics of hypertext shortly after the second world war in 1945.
Bellis M, Tim Berners-Lee, 2016, retrieved from http://inventors.about.com/od/bstartinventors/p/TimBernersLee.htm
In the past decade we’ve seen the death of flip and brick phones which were used purely for texting, phonecalls and games of snake and the birth of the smart phone. Since then the game has changed completely, the technology used to send men to the moon looks ancient compared to the mini computers which have become an extention to our personal identity.
If you look around a crowded area these days chances are you will spot a high amount of people staring at their phones, why wouldnt we though they have all the tools of modern life at your very fingertips. You can be receiving messages from your grandma and sending snapchats to your friend overseas all while uploading images to your instagram, and this can all be done while you’re stuck in a tree in the middle of the bush. This is just the world that we live in today, were always connected and able to share what is going out in an instant. But is this making us less social? is being able to post all of these events is actually making us less socially inclined to talk about them in person with friends?
Studies have shown that people actually are becoming more social and more interactive with others, but the style of that communication has changed so that we’re not meeting face-to-face as often as we used to. (Social Media and Interpersonal Information, 2013)
Keller M, 2013, Social Media and Interpersonal Information retrieved from http://www.socialworktoday.com/archive/051313p10.shtml
Social media is an effective tool for modern businesses, in a fast pace world its easy for your product or service to be drowned out by countless other businesses who are also competing for that top spot in the consumers mind. This is where a well made social media account on either Twitter, Facebook or Instagram can give your company/product the viewership needed to survive in the competitive world.
Users are receptive to your messages on social media, people who use these platforms view them as social networking platforms and not marketing machines, so as a result they are less inclined to view what you post to be actually be an advertisement and be more likely to listen to what you have to say. (The Content Factory, 2016)
Another great reason why using social media is great for companies is that if there is a problem with your product or service you would want to know that straight away, using social media platforms is a great way to get this feedback from your customer base instantly.
The Content Factory, 2016, retrieved from http://www.contentfac.com/9-reasons-social-media-marketing-should-top-your-to-do-list/
We all know that social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are great tools for staying in contact with loved ones and friends from around the world. We’ve reached a point in modern technology where we can share and collect data instantly between people across the planet, so how can businesses use these social platforms for their advantage?
“At this point in the game, not having an active social media presence is kind of like pulling out a flip phone at a business meeting and then not understanding why your boss keeps giving Brad all the new accounts.” (The Content Factory 2016)
Part of what makes things like Instagram and Twitter marketing so effective is the direct interaction you can have with your customer base — you can read their tweets, see their selfies and other posts to get insights into their daily lives, this information can be useful to tailor future products to these customers. What products are they buying and why? What kind of posts do they tend to share, and from what websites? These are the effective information gathering techniques for modern businesses.
The Content Factory, 2016, retrieved from http://www.contentfac.com/9-reasons-social-media-marketing-should-top-your-to-do-list/
When a browser is displaying a website it must combine its document information with the style guide, the information being the HTML code and the style guide being the CSS code, if HTML is the skeleton of a website then the CSS code is the skin. This pretty much means it is responsible for all of the visual aesthetics of the website compared to the underlying structure of the website which is in the HTML code. The Markup document uses element to define the websites structure, these tags are strings beginning with < and ending with >. An element can also be used as a container and contain other elements in-between their beginning and ending tag. (How CSS works 2016)
So once you learn a few tags and how to position elements on the browser with the HTML & CSS code it becomes fairly easy to be able to design your own website that functions.
How CSS works (2016). Mozilla Developer Network. Retrieved from https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Guide/CSS/Getting_Started/How_CSS_works
When we first began MDU119 we were told we were going to be making our own website, having to write all of the HTML and CSS code ourselves. HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language and is the most used and well known language in the web design industry. When learning to make a website HTML coding is probably the first thing you will learn, it is known as the skeleton of the website and CSS coding is referred as the skin of the website.
So how does HTML coding work though? HTML code is made up of multiple elements that are enclosed in tags, these elements are the backbone of any HTML document (HTML Element Reference 2016). You’ll see these elements in the source code for all web pages. So elements comprise of the content for a webpage and are placed between an opening tag <html> and a closing tag </html>
HTML Element Reference. (2016). Mozilla Developer Network. Retrieved from https://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Web/HTML/Element
How can I use social media platforms to kick start my career as a graphic designer? Well there are a number of ways to get your voice and pieces of media seen across the world and hopefully by possible employers.
I personally use instagram to upload my artworks which usually are just small sketches that i have done in a notebook. I’ve found the platform of instagram to be a fairly good tool for getting my stuff out there. A lot of my friends tell me they have seen my work online and when you hear that its a big boost to create and share more.
My parents run a small Tie Dye Shirt company and often are at markets on the weekend, they have a Facebook page and often use that to let people know which markets they are going to be at. It’s also a great area for people to not only see their products but also get in direct contact with us through the same page.
So as a graphic designer in the modern age my online presence is more important than ever, unless i somehow get my work in an exhibit or have it displayed somewhere public there is literally no way i can get my work to reach a larger audience.
We all want to be included right? I never thought that certain art forms and other types of media could actually exclude certain groups of people, but it does make sense. A deaf person cannot watch a film without the inclusion of closed captions, and if they were to go to a music festival the only way they would be able to appreciate the music is by standing way up the front and feeling the bass pulsate through their body.
A person who is colourblind can walk around a museum and appreciate art yet they aren’t able to fully appreciate the entire spectrum of colour in each of those artworks, that’s why often in video games they include colourblind options.
But I think sometimes a disadvantage can be an advantage. I have a friend who is colourblind and actually studies at Audio at SAE, now im no scientist but i think that maybe his exceptional musical ear could have been heightened by one of his other senses being lowered. Im most likely completely wrong in this fact but I just found it interesting that someone who says he doesnt even think about colours finds music and audio to be so important to his life.
I always found interviews to be quite daunting, the first few jobs I had were through family businesses and pretty casual work so it took me a while to actually have an interview. A while back a friend of mine told me he could get me a job at Ray White Concierge which would involve me talking on the phones setting up whether they needed a market report or if they were interested in selling their house etc.
I went to the interview very nervous in my button up shirt and long pants trying to look professional with this feeling that I was going to say something stupid and cost myself the job. I thought I would be asked something i didnt know about but in the end it was a pretty casual interview and they didnt ask me all the deep philosophical life questions i was prepared for. I did end up getting the job but sitting on phones all day was not the life for me, and also people can be quite rude and confused.
I feel like an interview with a graphic design firm or any other sort of visual media industry would be a lot less daunting as examples of your past work will often do the talking for you, besides that you can talk about your favourite medium of work and which programs you’re most comfortable with.
Douglas Faragher 