Nuprata Design

Second Day Training at UNSW Foundation

May 9, 2013 § Leave a Comment

Very tiring day.

Started from 9am, again in the computer lab together with Juliet, we reviewed yesterday’s training with the aim to fine tune the Student Guide Book. After that she showed me how the student’s blog works in the Blackboard system. In return I share how UIC Design Student’s blog are done.

After (very) short coffee break, we then were joined by Diane, Ruth, and Bu Rani in the lab. As scheduled in the agenda, Ruth gave presentation on how UNSW planned to run the Design subject, from semester 1 (Bu Rani part) to the new semester 2 (Bu Rani and a bit of me). There were lots more things to digest than yesterday, it was quite difficult to digest all of the information. It took lots of effort to concentrate and participate in the discussion.

Ruth present her ideas of the new curriculum

UNSW Foundation, Sydney, Assessing Works

Discussion for how to better asses student works

I joined the 1:30pm Juliet’s class. It was consultation time, and although the student were already told that they would have a guest from Indonesia, none of the shows up. Before the class begun, I tried to get permission to record how the class progress, also if it is possible to record the building facilities. It turned out the are bureaucracy process (forms to be filled and signs) before one can actually record anything there (less difficult than if we want a wifi access). I did asked about permission to record since yesterday, probably Juliet / Diane forgot about it – they are very-very busy person.

Eventough none were in the room, we check all of the students work eventually and I assist Julie in assesing the works and what could be improve. It was interesting to see such level of works from students – some are very well done. I’m also glad that 2 of the best ones are from Indonesia.

After that we conclude that day – they gave the all the necessary files to run the semester 2. They do say that the current material for the Semester 2 is still in progress, so they expect us to actively contact them for sharing ideas and development.

First Day Training at UNSW Foundation

May 9, 2013 § Leave a Comment

The UNSW Foundation is located around 10 minutes walk from the Addison Hotel, just across the UNSW main campus area. The interior of the building is a modern one with great interior design and layout.

Entrance to UNSW

Stairs that connect all the 3 levels

Chris Hamill greet us and lead us to each of our trainer. I met Juliet on the lift and she lead me straight away to the training room which is actually one of the lab (Room G16). The computer lab that they use here consist of 20 of the latest desktop PC (Win based) and they run the latest Adobe CS6 (same like the UNSW). Juliet told me that they slowly upgrading their system, and this lab is one of the first that got upgraded.

Based from the training agenda which Chris gave to each of us, my training today will start at 9 and finish around 4pm. We will have one coffee break and one lunch break.

The Computer Lab, all loaded with the latest Adobe CS.

In UNSW Foundation, they called the subject as Design Computing and it will begin in Semester 2. This is a new subject and it is the task of Juliet to plan the program and trained me on behalf of Uniprep.

The main activity of the training is dissecting and discussing the material in the Student Book, which will be given on Semester 2 of the Computing Studies. The materials is based around learning how to use Adobe Photoshop and Adobe InDesign, the content is actually a compilation of several textbooks created by Juliet herself.

The Photoshop material consist of Digital Image Basics, Overview & Introduction, Painting, Selection-Filters-Pattern, Vector, Type, and Compositing Images as closure for the subject. The InDesign material consist of Overview and Introduction, Planning your Publication, Starting InDesign, Setting Up Publication, Text & Graphics, Understanding Images & Colour, About Transparency, Text & Typography, Working with Layers, and lastly Export and Printing. With such packed materials to work with, it was a surprise that we manage to actually finish the whole book. Juliet did skim some topic in order to make sure we could cover everything in the allocated time.

One of the main references they use to dev the syllabus

It was interesting to found that her way of structuring the materials is similar with my way of doing things. We both are glad that we actually on the same wavelength and had a lively discussion on how we could improve the Student Book before the Semester 2 begin.

I was introduced to Ruth – the head of the design program – just before the lunch break, and she share some of the best work of the design student. It is always great to see students that can be motivated and push themselves to the limit.

We close the session by discussing the two final projects. The first one is the moodboard creation project that is actually the basic for the final project. With the mood board project, the concern is on how we should weight the project in the context of Design Computing, since aesthetically its already part of the Design Studio subject but they execute them using the skills that they learn in the Design Computing class. Juliet recommended that me and bu Rani collaborate in a way, that we both could supervise the project – with bu Rani be the person in charge, since this project will be grade more on the aesthetic part.

For the final project, we discuss the specification of the brief and setting the grading criteria to be as fair as possible. Diane later joined our discussion and gave plenty of inputs on how to improve it.

Student Works from Semester 1

Last but not least, Ruth gave a sneak preview of the things that she want to share in tomorrow training, part of the moodboard project. She asked Juliet and me for some opinions and spent some times discussing some of the interesting works that they have. Before I left, Juliet told me that I would help her in the tomorrow’s class, since it is part of the training.

NOTES

Juliet asked me about the facilities that Uniprep has. I told her that for this design class they plan to have it in UIC Design lab. She recommended using Mac for the sake of making life simpler, and request that we have the latest Adobe CS6 installed.
Diane asked what kind of system that Uniprep use for academic activity. She told me that they have moved from Blackboard to Moodle – an open source one – and recommended Uniprep to use that system. This relate with the ability to have a controlled environment for students to create a blog to record their progress with the study.

Toy Paper Creation

August 30, 2012 § Leave a Comment

As someone who spent most of my time in front of computer doing thing digitally fast, I always look forward for an activity that can slow me down – a time honouring activity.

So, when a colleague invite me to this short class that offer Papercrafting training, I took the plunge in joining the class. And boy do I have fun there.

I created a character called “Oweru”, inspired by these owls that regularly appear on my son’s fav channel, BabyFirst TV. It has that wise yet roguish at the same time.

Tees Design: STAB – Progress

August 15, 2012 § Leave a Comment

I used to be active in a local choir group, doing lots of singing for the local church or wedding events. Singing It’s good stress reliever and it actually can help anyone to be more perceptive of others. Since I got married, I took a (long) leave from the choir, but I really want to help the group in a way other than singing. With my design skills, I believe I can help them in the area of promotion, and designing simple yet catchy tees could be one of it.

My concept is to highlight the each unique “sound” of Sopran, Alto, Tenor, and Bass typographically – using only the lead character (S-A-T-B). Planning to do simple design with minimal colour, with a bubble (applied randomly) to give contrast the overall characters feel. The bubble might be filled with mostly anything, from the choir group or any choir related quotes.

I start the design using pencil sketches, then vectorise the ideas in Adobe Illustrator, including the mock up. For the typefaces, I’m using free fonts provided by Fontfabric, the superb Intro & Static. For the tees mock-up, I’m using the kits created by Design by Humans. Below are my mock-up for the tees design, and planning to print this soon after the holiday.

Great Places to Learn Web Design: a Graphic Designer Perspective

August 9, 2012 § 1 Comment

I found that the materials on the following sites are very informative and actually easy to digest for those who wants to learn Web Design stuff, especially if your main trade is in the printing side of design. I’m a print graphic designer myself who’s currently in a position where learning Web Design is part of my survival – so no option other than learn all of this nift coding skills if I want to make a living.

I’ve chosen these following sites based on these criteria: easy to navigate, easy-to-learn content materials, engaging activities, and measurable results. Last but not least – just like a good game – high replayability.

So here they are, from the fundamental to a bit more advanced one:

W3School. A must visit site to learn web design stuff from HTML, CSS, to PHP. Free of cost, great material, easy to follow tutorial, and the content is always up to date with current technology since it is maintained by W3C, the organisation that is responsible for the web standard today.
W3Schools
Tizag.Similar to W3School (free of cost) yet a bit less conservative in presenting the material – it’s kinda casual. A good site for beginner to learn many things website, and I think some of the activities here is a bit better than W3C, like the CSS sections. Interestingly, although less crowded than W3S, I found that the later site is easier to navigate than this.
Tizag Tutorials
Codeacademy. This site is very different with the previous two, since in here you can learn anything related to coding, hence the name Codeacademy. For web design, they have materials on Web Fundamentals (Web Page, CSS, Javascript) which is nicely presented. One innovation that I really like in this site is the progress status, which will appear once we sign in using either Twitter, Facebook, or Google account. We’ll earn badges for completion of a module, which then we can share (or brag) the badges to our colleagues, showing on how far we have advanced in learning whatever materials in there. Oh, and its a free site too
Codecademy

I hope those links could help you print graphic designer to build great sites – from layout to coding!

Melody of Grace Project

July 30, 2012 § Leave a Comment

This was an old project that I did to assist good friend Annz . The client (church activist, husband & wife) wanted to create a promotional kits for a musical recital that was held in Usmar Ismail Hall. The recital was a form of give thanks and praise by the client and family, as the husband was just cured from a long battle with cancer. It was also an event to raise donation for Children Yellow Ribbon Foundation – a children focused cancer organization, part of Yayasan Cinta Anak Bangsa (YCAB)

Plenty of hot chocolates and coffe during the design process

Eventually, in around 4 weeks, we made the event logo and its printed applications (proposal book, invitations, event guide book, series of poster, ticket, id card, banners), and designed cover for a CD that contain personally curated songs.

Thanks to Annz for the great pics of the final artworks!

Tweets
- Spechless. Striking Japanese art created solely in Microsoft Excel prsm.tc/53bq4W via @prismatic posted 2 days ago
- I love @Prismatic's new iPhone app. Sign up for a newsfeed based on your interests: getprismatic.com posted 2 days ago
- Well-put and very informative, great read especially for people in creative industries redlemonclub.com/featured/creat… posted 2 days ago
Follow @nupratadesign

Follow “Nuprata Design”