My final project for school PART_1

Before christmas I talked to two professors of my school. They both told me indirectly that my project is a bit big for the time that is reserved for making it. The fact that I'm going to be traveling 1,5 months of the reserved 3 months for this project isn't really helping.. hahaha.

I'm making a Flash-game(a game you can play with your browser) for a company.

I mean it is a big project. It just might even be too big for me to finish it in time. But it's not "fair" for my teachers to tell me that I'm not able to finish it in time. Hell! I prefer taking too big project that actually forces me to learn new stuff.

I could design a visual appearance for some company but there is nothing new in that. This is the problem in our school. They are not forcing/making us to learn new stuff in our own time. I think students need balanced amount of support and forcing if school expects them to evolve to something and learn new stuff.

I know these two teachers didn't mean anything personal by telling me to make my project a bit smaller. It's their long experience saying that these things finally fail. Is it pessimism or realism? I don't know and don't really care. I'm planning to show them that it was pessimism, at least this time. Still, little support would be nice.

Top 10 material

An hour ago a lady rang me and told that my add design was one of the top 10 of this years Newspaper Union's national competition that was open to all design students in Finland.

I'm quite happy. I mean I didn't win the competition but considering that I spent 3,5 hours (doesn't include planning) to make the poster and post it. So I'd say I'm pretty pleased. 3,5 hours because I forgot the deadline was that day.

Work time includes: printing a photo of a shoe in school, going home, making a small "photography studio", shooting the idea, editing the photo, finalizing the work, going back to school to print the work, realizing that the photo is too yellow, editing the photo, having to change the fonts of the work to really tastless fonts: 'Impact' & 'Helvetica' (those are the NO NO's of graphic design right after 'comic sans'), fighting with the printer for 1 hour, finally succeeding (still not being happy with the print quality), going to post office, using 9 euros to envelopes and stamps, mailing the envelope and going home.

So being number 2-10 of Finland is just fine for me. Now Helsinki and award ceremony here I come.

Oh and the final work.
(Actually it's stupid to write this blog entry in english since the competition is in Finnish and the slogan points to one of our ministers and foreign politics. :D well, not going to write all this again.. )

The colors are actually not as bad as this web-version of the print might suggest.

Stand up marketing I mean comedy

What makes it even funnier is that it's all true :P


Without adds people might actually think what they need. Now someone else is telling you what to buy and you're buying it! Don't say that it's not true because you are wrong. I tell you you need socks that have 5 little holes for each toe and then you go and buy them. You didn't need them but you bought them.

Study graphic design..

..And spend more time writing reports than doing creative work. I'm not kidding. I should be doing creative stuff but I'm stuck for hours trying to write bullshit, 5-8 pages to be exact. I understand that they don't want me to forget Finnish language and I have to know how to write reports for the rest of my life but it's just something I don't like doing. Writing the first few pages is Ok but after that you just have to start repeating the same stuff over and over again and finally make a short conclusion that binds it all together.

(Wait just a minute! This all sounds somehow familiar... YES of course, back in high school we wrote hundreds of essays during the courses and at the final examen, and they all had the same pattern: Write something good at the beginning and then 300 words of bullshit and after that something smart for the teacher so he/she thinks you know what you are writing about. Everybody wants you to write a report but nobody wants to read it properly. I could compare it to life but I wont involve life in this blog entry ;p )

Anyways

I'll give you an example: Few years ago we had to make new book covers for any book we wanted. I did these covers of a war book:
Back & Front cover

Then we had to write an essay why we chose that book and why we used certain color and then some analyzing, etc.. AAARGHHHH!!!

Finally at the end of the course we got the notes and the teacher gave me 3/5 of the whole course. I don't give a rats ass about the notes but I'm always interested of where it comes from. This particular work was OK according to my teacher but I failed to explain why I had used the color green and what did the gun and the hand symbolize. She also didn't like the fact that text in the back of the book was missing, as well as the price. The instructions said you don't have to put any of the original texts etc. Only the design count.. Well obviously it wasn't the case with me.

At the moment we're designing a marketing campaign on some subject that we drew out of a hat (literally). I got skin care product. Immediately I got a great idea for some face-cream for teenagers. The problem is that that is not how this assignment should be done. First we should analyze the markets, make plans for budgets, choose which medias to use etc. and only then start thinking of an idea. Oh and of course before you get to do any work you have to write marketing plan, briefing for the teacher and few other documents. By the time you get to do something creative the course is almost over and you just have to make something really quick!

I understand that this is how the real world works but still now we are climbing to the tree with our asses first. If you have an idea first like I did with this skin care product you then have to build the whole product over the idea. Not the other way around like in real world where you have a product and it needs a innovative solution.

Is it my fault that I get ideas before I've managed to write 20 pages of reports?! HELL NO, this time the school is doing something wrong, not me! That is my statement and I will hold on to it! You can only get it from my cold dead hand!

(And yes, in that last sentence I refer to earlier parts of the writing like they teached me to do in school. You know the book cover.. Ok if you still didn't get it. I'm like the dead soldier and the gun is my opinion.. symbolism..)