MR. DARCY

It is pouring outside! How cosy! I wish I could hide under my soft duvet, eat cookies, drink tea or a cup of hot chocolate and rewatch ‘Pride & Prejudice’ - but I have to start writing a report. We are currently doing our second project and it is to be hand in this Friday. It is going well with it. I am content with my group and we haven’t had any struggles yet. By the way my lecturer has seen my first project, evaluated it, and I have passed! Before I started at the academy I was curious about how they would grade us. Therefore I have attached my lecturer’s comments {last image} if some future Multimedia Design students are here and curious as well. This is how they evaluated my first project at my academy. Well, unfortunately that report won't write itself. Till we meet again Mr. Darcy.  

SHORT ACADEMY UPDATE

It has been exactly a month since I started at the academy and here is a short update about it. It is good to be back to reading books, learning substance, taking notes, using the brain and being creative. Our subjects are interesting and the one I find the most exiting right now must be ‘Design and Visualisation’. I guess it is because it is within this subject you can unfold your creativity. I like all of my lectors, well there is one whom I find just a tiny bit too dull for my taste. My classmates seem nice. I haven’t really been social because my focus and priority is to study, gain knowledge and learn to become skilful in this area. There are so many students in my class and I know it is a bad excuse and it is embarrassing having being there for a month now, but I still don’t know many of my classmate’s names! But they do really all seem like good people and I know they are very helpful too. So to sum it all up I’m very positive and happy about taking an AP degree in Multimedia Design and Communication at Copenhagen Business Academy.  

MEREDITH BELBIN

Do you know about the Belbin Team Inventory? It’s a personality test but not equivalent to those personality type tests such as the MBTI. The test examines the individual’s behaviour in a team environment. In class today we took the test. Before taking the test I guessed which team role profile I would end in. Below are taken from my class notes which shows my assumptions. 

>Action Oriented<                                    >People Oriented<                                 >Thought Oriented<

Shaper %%                                                    Coordinator %                                             Plant ++

Implementer +                                             Team Worker %+                           Monitor/Evaluator %     

Completer/Finisher ++               Resource Investigator/Networker %%                      Specialist %+

“%” is negative and “+” is positive. As you can see I guessed myself to end up in “Completer/finisher” and/or “Plant”. And my assumptions were correct! I scored 25 points in the profile as a Plant and 22 points as a Completer/Finisher. I got 0 points in Resource Investigator/Networker just what I thought. It’s fun to see where your strengths and weakness lie and to compare your results with your classmates. This test is said to be very helpful when building a team because you know which profiles are more cooperative with specific profiles. Below you can read a bit about the Plant profile {highest score} and the Networker profile {lowest score}. These definitions are borrowed from my test.

>Plant<
{Idea-developer/visionary}
Imaginative, creative and unorthodox.
May have difficulty to accept criticism and shut off and put himself outside the group.
Individualistic, dominant and sometimes overbearing.
Introverted person, but on an uncharacteristic and uninhibited style.
Looking completely new angles.
Goes own way - does not look at the relevance of the group and may insult if someone gets in the way.

>Networker<
{Network driver/creative dealer}
Outgoing and curious.
Social, enthusiastic and communicative.
Easily connect with others.
May forget to follow up on agreements.
Good at improvising and starting new things but may lose interest relatively quickly.
Sense of new relevant ideas.

Which profile are you?

NOTEPAD

We were introduced to HTML today and played with it in Notepad. I haven’t tried it before and I found it very interesting and fun {especially if you are making your own little Twin Peaks website!} Our first project is to make a portfolio in WordPress. In the portfolio we have to link to a page which we have made from scratch. This page will contain descriptions and pictures from our trip to Louisiana. So the plan for today is to pick some photographs I took in the museum, edit them in Photoshop and afterwards begin to make this {scratch} page. Later today my boyfriend will be making some time-lapse in town where I’ll accompany him. Have fun out there!

1ST SEMESTER BOOKS

I can’t really brag about the amount of pages in our study books for this semester. At least I’m not going to have a backache. All the books except ’20 Designprincipper’ are bought used so I have saved 338 kroners. Ka-ching! The books are:

*‘Digital Media Management’ by Louise Harder Fischer & Marie Oosterbaan

*’20 Designprincipper’ by Ian Wisler-Poulsen

*’29 Spørgsmål’ by Jan Krag Jacobsen

*’Usability’ by Ole Gregersen & Ian Wisler-Poulsen

LOUISIANA

It has been another exciting day in school - well actually - away from the classroom. Today’s field trip went to Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. Most of the art in this museum doesn’t appeal to me but I did find myself gazing at some oil paintings and figures made of bronze. The exhibition you can see there right now is YOKO ONO HALF-A-WIND SHOW. We weren’t there just for the sake of fun. We were given a photo task:

“Your task is to document a trip to an exhibition. You must take photos of you and your friends. “A student’s visit to Louisiana”. Your photo material shall act as raw material for a Photoshop course and workshops next week.”

I have taken exactly 600 pictures at the museum today. Here are some bits of them.    

AUTUMN FEVER

September is finally here! The beautiful autumn has replaced summer and I can’t wait to taste the rain, enjoy looking at the warm and deep colours around me and hoping, for just one single autumn day, for an Indian summer. September also means students going back to/starting school/university/academy. And I’m one of those lucky fellows. I started at Copenhagen Business Academy yesterday. The first day of school was okay. I’m not good at meeting new people because I’m really shy and awkward so I wasn’t really excited for yesterday. But as I said everything went okay. If I heard correctly we are 120 Multimedia Design and Communication students, 40 of them which are international students. My class is called ‘MulB’ {once again I’m a lucky ‘B’} and we are located at room C21, just next to the international students’ room, C22. I’m looking forward to meeting- and working together with them. As well with the Computer Science students.

Today was more exciting. We started the day with an introduction to graphic design. I’m feeling this will be one of my favourite subjects. Our lecturer talked roughly about colours, textures, typography, images, forms, the CRAP design principle, sizes, texts, patterns, the golden section/golden mean etc. I can’t wait to learn more of this. Afterwards we talked about the basic of the Internet. E.g. the different types of websites, screen resolutions, file sizes, bandwidths etc.. If you guys are interested in web design, coding, graphic design and so on, here are three websites our lecturer introduced us to today {click 'em}:

Smashing Magazine

Six Revisions

A List Apart

At last we talked about practical stuff such as Fronter, webmail, exams, internships etc. Fine day. Now I’m off to prepare dinner!

BANANA SEAT

I decided to go for a ride on my bicycle today. I know! Me? Ride a bike?! Those who know me, they know one of the things that can get me anxious and panicky is to ride a bike. For God’s sake, I cried my balls out when my dad forced me to ride my bike when I was younger. The last time I sat on my saddle, an old woman drove into me. With her car. That wasn’t fun at all. It happened in year 2011. Since then I haven’t touched my lowrider. You see, I just don’t cope well on traffic. But the past few days I suddenly wanted to ride my bike again. Today I did it! I decided to go for a ride to my new school so I could see how far it was from home. It wasn’t that bad. Maybe riding my bike to school should be my new thing. Maybe.