Each year my local GAA club bring in 9 teams to play and host a provincial tournament. Being involved in the organising of this over the past two years I wanted to help improve the social presence of it within the large follower base. I made this page as an information source for all the happenings during the tournament and run it side by side with our twitter account. All general information for press & media was posted daily along with, videos, photos and competitions. It was made with the focus on being responsive, so it could be used at anytime by anyone. Finishing after a two month period with over 10,000 views just showed how frequently the page was used by the public.
This social media campaign that I started was a massive under taking as I was the only one that could present anything online out of everyone involved. This did not hold me back, having this page running along side our already existing club site which I administer, our Facebook and our twitter I was able to showcase the tournament to a wide audience. Match Programmes, banners and posters where being published online frequently across all platforms. I had to work closely with a photographer, journalist and Video analysts to make sure all information was being covered and sent to me as soon as possible to publish for our large audience. This was a tough task coupled with my university workload at the same time but with such good feedback and praise for the voluntary job I carried out made it all worth it.
In Year 2 of IMD at the beginning of semester 2 we were organised into groups for our group tasks. We must present all our work on a group portfolio so I put myself forward to create a workspace to house our work. This was not going towards any marks but I wanted to give myself a chance to develop my skills creatively and technically. Wire framing, mocking up pages and coding is exactly the sort of work I want to do, so this provided me with the opportunity to do so. I am becoming more fluent and confident at implementing responsive designs like this. My group provided great feedback on this site and are more than happy with how it turned out and will enjoy showcasing our group portfolio to the lecturers.
Last year having a long summer break between year 1 and year 2 in IMD it would have been a waste to do nothing, so I looked for some employment over this period to further my skills and attempt to widen my knowledge. I had a successful interview and was chosen as a graphic designer for a local newspaper called the County Antrim Post. I worked full time there during the summer months and am currently still working there on a part time basis. Through this job I have learned a great deal in terms of print work and basic work ethic in addition to improving my work majorly in terms of meeting tight deadlines and working closely with a team of individuals.
As a graphic Designer in this newspaper I had to create Adverts, booklets, brochures and magazines on a very limited time scale. This was a new start up business and with a small number of employees we had to work really hard to meet the release deadline for printing 5000 editions each week. Working as part of a small team really improved my team work and co-operation skills with other employees. Now I am back studying full time in Jordanstown I can only work here part time which is disappointing as the experience I gained whilst working in the County Antrim Post is invaluable. The only disadvantage from working here was the amount of print based work being done. As a result of this I realised just how much I love working on live projects with html, html5, css, css3, php and javascript that can be viewed across any device at anytime from anywhere. Check out a small sample of some of the usual pages I created each day:
This was a university task which we had to work on in a group of three. The purpose of this assignment was to make use of the XML, DTD, CSS and XSL. We used each of these languages extensively throughout this project. We, as a group came up with a layout we believe portrays cinema listings in the best possible way. Each group member worked together in class to produce this piece writing these languages.
During April of 2012 I had to develop a multimedia prototype interactive resource in Adobe Flash. To successfully implement this I had to utilise good multimedia design and Human Computer Interaction principles to construct detailed storyboards and navigation flowcharts which included a justification of my design choices. This was not a easy task with the use of ActionScript but I battled with it and created this piece in only a few weeks which I am very happy with. I decided to choose the theme of ‘The Lord Of The Rings’ as I had a real love for everything associated with the films, games and books from an early age.
