In todays lecture we had a meeting with the lecturer about how we have found the course, what we like what we don’t like etc. The lecturer also gave us some advice on help in the future.

The lecturer first asked me what I was enjoying about the course and I answered truthfully, the overall design aspects and elements that we are asked to come up with, not particularly the platforms that we have to create but specifically the activity of coming up and deciding on colour schemes, typefaces, brand names, logo marks, layouts etc. The design and branding are points that I probably struggle with the most but are still the most enjoyable.

I also found the history lectures incredibly interesting, I found that learning about the history of the topics we are currently looking at really fascinating and intriguing. I particularly liked the Art History lessons, learning about different artists from different time periods and their way of work. I believe that knowing the history and important people that have allowed us to be where we are now is just as important as knowing about the current state.

Something that I have found more difficult and less enjoyable within the course is creating the digital layout for projects, I struggled with the scaling and hierarchy of the typefaces, the positioning of headings and important information, and layouts of different boxes that will contain information. The lecturer also explained he could see this throughout my work which I appreciated, he suggested I used a tool over the summer to help with this. This application is called Brief Box. Brief Box is a tool that I’m summary gives you a brief for an aspect of the brand such as logo for example, and with this brief you have to create your own design reflecting the brief. I had never heard of this before but am so excited to try this out over summer and really think this will help with what I am struggling with.

I had explained to my lecturer that I am struggling with the travel page of my dashboard and couldn’t find a map to document my travels. I had firstly started to just use the pen tool and trace over the map of Ireland in which the lecturer told me not to do so. He suggested a few applications that would help, starting with scribble map , which I found helpful. Snazzy maps was another application that I found a lot easier to use. I initially took a screen grab of the whole map but this wasn’t working so I screen grabbed a few different areas then stuck them together.

After this, a former IXD student came in to help us with any problems we were having with figma. This came at the perfect time as I was actually stuck on how to make different sections of a pie chart appear bigger or highlighted when clicked. Hannah explained how to do this really well and I understood immediately. I had to create a component and then create multiple variants in order for this action to be allowed. After she explained this she asked me to do it and I got it straight away. This was extremely helpful and insightful to understand more about Figma.

Overall, I am really glad we had this class, I feel like all of the questions that I have been struggling with are answered and I now know exactly how to get over these struggles. I am also more confident that next year I will have improved in my abilities as I will be practising on Brief Box. I will also be documenting these practises for future me to look back on. Having a successful former student in was also very reassuring and encouraging.