Tanyabrennan’s Weblog

In this weeks lecture we had guest speaker, David Joyce from Language. Language is a graphic design company which produces advertisements. They are located in Dublin and make designs for people in Ireland and also Europe! They also designed the ITB logo in 2002.

ITB asked language to design a unique style for a logo and also all its publications and Language took up this challege. They asked ITB students what they thought about the college, engaging students in the design process. Then in 2006 Language came up with a new design for an ITB logo, which is the one we currently have today.

The old ITB logo

Our new logo!

I think everybody will agree that the new logo is so much better than the old one. The colours are more modern and overall it’s just more visually appealing!

This week we had a guest speaker, Ruth McPartlin from Fluid Rock, from which she co-founded. Fluid Rock provide multi-media services to businesses.

Ruth started off her presentation with her background in Digital Media. She began by working for Motorola trying to get back tax collected. Then in the 1960’s she joined Knight Ridder and this was a large database storage company. Here she worked to provide colleges and business with a 90 disk database system. She then left Knight Rider to study and train in html and she did this is Oxford. After that Ruth came back to Ireland and joined the workforce in Arthouse which is now known as Filmhouse. During her time there her role was Project Manager. From there Ruth went on to found Fluid Rock with a few of her friends but which she said……. “friends are not the best team”.

Some of the projects Ruth was involved in:

• Lotto – technology
• Cultural Ireland
• AIB online bank
• Irish Times and My Home
• DIT and NDP

Lotto Project

Cultural Ireland project Ruth was invloved in

Irish Times project Ruth was invloved in

Ruth gave us some tips on what’s important in the Digital Media field. These included:

• Experience
• The team
• Recognising your strengths
• Hard Work
• Keeping up to date
• Taking Chances
• Niche Careers

Overall it was an interesting lecture. I liked the way Ruth worked hard for where she is today and everything wasnt just handed to her! I learned that taking chances may or may not work out to your advantage but to just go for it anyway if you have nothing to lose. It relates to Digital Media because it is digital media! Ruth’s company Fluid Rock provide multi-media services to businesses.

In this weeks module we had a guest lecturer. Maria Browne is the Careers Development Manager here at ITB. She gave us a lecture on interviews and interview techniques and how we should go about interviews. I found this lecture to be helpful because she gave us some tips about what employers look for when hiring.She also told us the most frequently asked questions at interviews and how we should deal with them.

Maria told us that when asked about your weaknesses we should turn them around to make them seem like strengths or positive things. For example saying “i’m a perfectionist” as it doesnt really sound like a weakness. The aim of this lecture was to prepare us for the mock interviews that we would be doing as part of our continuous assessment.

Maria gave us tips on what we should do before the interview…prepare!

Preperation:

• Strongly recommend to research the companyto get a brief idea of what they’re about.
• Speak to people who know about the company beforehand.
• Contact the Human Resources Department at the company, again to get an idea of what the company is about.
• Ask for a job description and specifications, so you know exactly what job you’re applying for.
• Note any qualifications and experience required
• Note particular qualities the employre is looking for
• Practice answering questions out loud

During the Interview

• First impressions are important so dress appropriately e.g a suit.
• When seated be aware and alert to the interviewer.
• Be receptive and have a good posture while seated.
• Speak clearly and slowly but not too slow!
• Listen closely to what the interviewer is saying
• Emphasise the positive skills you have
• Play down the negative and turn them into positives if you can.

I found this lecture to be helpful beacuse it gave me sample questions and what employers look for. This helped me because i had never done an interview before! It links in with our course because without a doubt we will all face having to do interviews in the future. I found it interesting that you would turn your weaknesses into positives. It’s something i’d never heard of been done before!

This week we had two guest speakers from the Irish Guide Dogs for the blind, Paddy and Denise. We were asked to do a project as part of our Creative Digital Media course to raise awareness for the guide dogs. Along with the two guest speakers was  one of the puppies in training who proved to be a typical puppy, running around and sniffing everything and also licking Manus’ shoes!

I found their lecture to be very informing and interesting. We learned some surprising facts, like how the complete costs of training a puppy is €38,000 even though the majority of the dogs retire by the age of ten! This is completely free for visually impaired people. This charity is a voluntary organistation but costs over €5.2 million a year to run. To the surprise of everyone only 15% of these funds comes from the government which means they heavily rely on public donations! People who have these dogs to help them in their daily lives almost completely rely on them to help them to do basic things like walking to the shop etc.  I also learned something which i did not know before, sadly not all dogs make it as guide dogs but many go on to become assistance dogs, which assist children with autism in their daily lives. Assistance dogs help children with autism be capable of doing almost anything like any other child. The children form a strong bond and friendship with these dogs also.
After the lecture the class split into smaller groups to discuss our project. After sometime the name “Team MEGA SNAKE” was thought of as our group name. In this group was Manus,  Carl, Adnan and myself. The aim of our project was to raise awareness about guide dogs. We decided to make a slideshow  of photos showingboth the guide dogs and assistance dogs in their daily lives and what their daily routine consists of.

Guide Dogs

This links in to Digital Media because we would be using cameras and video cameras to do our project and these are part of digital media. It impacted on me because i didnt realise how much money, effort and time goes into training a puppy and how much the organisation relies on public donations.

In this weeks lecture we had a guest speaker Edward Melvin, who is Project Manager for ICAN. He explained his background to us and has been managing projects for about 8 years now. Edward told us exactly what ICAN do in the Digital Media field.

ICAN is an advertising and communications agency. They work with their clients to help them make the right decisions online.  They aim to engage clients in the process and the target audience in the final result. A combination of skills are used to achieve this. These skills are:

• experience
• creativity
• teamwork
• planning

All of these make up a project.

ICAN offer a wide variety of services to their clients. These include:

• Online Strategy
• Web Design
• Advertising Campaigns
• Search Marketing
• Email Marketing
• Online PR
• Search Engine Optimisation
• Project and Campaign Management
• Multimedia Design

Website by ICAN

Another Example

Edward spoke to us about the different types of people working in ICAN. These are:

• 1 Managing Director
• 7 Creative Staff
• 7 Production
• 5 Client Services
• 3 Media
• 2 Search Marketing
• 1 Accounting

Edward explained to us why so many people now are moving to advertising online. Almost everybody nowadays have access to the internet and use it on a daily basis which is a huge advantage to advertisers who want them to see their ads! The clients get a good return on their investment in online advertising because so many people everyday will see their advert which gives them more recognition.

The concept of the idea is done in a number of stages:

• Core Proposition
• Storyboard
• Visual Design
• Mechanic
• Rationale
• Justification

These are all important in communicating a clear message.

Our third and last trip was to the science museum at Trinity College Dublin. The exhibition was called “LIGHTWAVE: DEFY THE DARKNESS”. We had a tour guide to show us around and he explained what everything was and how it worked.

One of the first things we saw was “THE ORB”.  It was made up of a flat disc which stood vertiaclly on a  motor and  the edges of the disc were lined with L.E.D’s. When the orb starts up it spins extremely fast, taking the shape of and representing a globe. The lights acitvate using exact maths and precise timing. I thought this was interesting although it did hurt my eyes after a while of focusing on it!

Moving on we saw a torch which made shapes depending on where the user directed it. The different shapes included stars, snowflakes and circles and only appeared in a selected area. We were taken to this room which was full of orange siren lights. They were all lined up in rows and reacted to any movement in the room and shone in the direction of it. I thought it was kind of cool!

Next we saw how electricity can be generated from using soil. Some sort of bacteria is put into the soil and somehow energy is created! We were also brought to an area which had a massive silver dome sort of thing. Inside LED’s were on the roof and a number of bean-bags were placed in the dome. The walls of the dome were lined with a silver foil.

Overall it wasn’t a bad exhibition. It was good to see different things people can invent. It linked in to Creative Digital Media and this module Working in Digiatl Media because those people had been creative with their imaginations and it could be something one of us do when we complete this course.

This was our second trip of the day. We went to the Hugh Lane Gallery. This gallery holds a collection of modern and contemporary Irish and International art.

This was an interesting trip as I found out that just a small violet canvas painting can sell for €15,000!!

This gallery is dedicated to its artists. One of these artists is Sean Scully and there is a room solely dedicated to him. The gallery consider him to be the most important abstract artist of his generation from the 1980’s to today. Sean Scully donated many of his pictures to the gallery and is greatly appreciated by them.

Sean Scully paintings

Francis Bacon is also a great artist featured in the gallery. This gallery holds his studio were he created all of his works. It allows the public to see all of the materials he used such as dulux paint, Rembrandt pastels and his many many paintbrushes. It is a very messy studio!

It's very untidy!

Walking around the gallery we met one of the security guards who protect the paintings and make sure nobody gets too close. He gave us a brief history of the place and the different things he sees and deals with everyday as part of his job. He told us of a woman who would come in every single day to look at the paintings. He said that she looked like she didn’t have a penny but she died and left the gallery €1 million, which was greatly appreciated by the gallery but also surprising. He also told us of the value of some paintings. One of them was a small canvas painting, just painted a light violet colour and nothing else. The shocking thing about it was that if you were to buy it it would cost you €15,000!! To me that is completelyridiculous but I suppose some people will buy anything. There was also a large multi-coloured painting which would sell for €1.5 million. What is even more surprising is that you would have to pay the large amount of money first and then wait 5 years to get the painting, why?…..i have no idea.

I liked this gallery because of the security guard which was very informative to us and also very funny. I would recommend art students to visit this place and I went there myself as part of an art trip in secondary school. It links in with Digiatl Media becuase the works we saw were done by creative people expressing themselves through art.

First of all we started of our day with an early class trip to the Bodies Exhibition in the Ambassador, Dublin city centre. Both groups of the Creative Digital Media class were there along with our two lecturers, Clodagh Lynch and Margaret Kinsella.

 It was a strange exhibition because it was a display of dead body parts. I thought most of it was disgusting and very weird especially the display of the bodies of unborn babies. They showed each stage of the foetus during pregnancy and how it develops every few weeks. I found that to be quite disturbing and something that would not be suitable for young children although there were many children at the exhibition.

However I thought the exhibition was very informing because it allowed the public to see all the different parts of the human body, all parts were also clearly labelled so you understood what you were looking at. A description about each body part was also given so I thought this was very interactive and educational especially if you were a secondary student or science student as it allowed you to see the body parts up close and in detail as opposed to just looking at a book.

Along with the foetus remains the exhibition displayed examples of body parts which had cancer. For example, in one case there was a healthy thyroid gland and beside it a thyroid gland with cancer. It was easy to tell the difference between them because of the colour and appearance of the gland. The gland was more shrivelled in appearance and dull in colour so I could see the damage the cancer did to the gland.

In one area was a case containing lungs with cancer due to smoking. It was easy to tell that the lungs were not at all healthy and the were very grey and dull in colour. Beside it was a glass case were people could and had dispose of their cigarettes. I thought this was good because it informed smokers of the effects smoking was doing to their bodies, especially lungs, and a chance to get rid of them and have a healthier life.

It linked in to our course because the creator of this exhibition was creative with what he did with the bodies and obviously had a passion for anatomy. It links because we are also creative with what we do on our course and we have a passion in what we are doing and want to make a career out of our passion, just like the Bodies Exhibition creator.

I learned that everybody has a passion for something, even if it is disturbing and weird. Overall I did not like this exhibition because it was too creepy and not something I would find interesting. However I would recommend it to science students because I think it would help them engage with their studies.