PALM is a company that specializes in personal digital assistants. They used to lead the market but have since fell behind some of the bigger companies like apple. Fiona gave us a brief history of PALM and talked about what they did and what they now do. To be honest I wasn’t very interested in this lecture. Not a very creative based lecture but you cant like them all I suppose.

Fiona then went on the talk about PALM’s online store, which involved a lot of facts and figures, very exciting stuff.

She then talked about what goes behind the scenes when you make an order online or on the phone, again very exciting stuff. She talked about the dangers of selling online and what they do to protect themselves against online frauds.

Another thing that is import when running an online store is generating online traffic. A common way of getting potential customers to the store is by search engine marketing. There are two branches of this.

• Search engine optimization  -  SEO
• Search engine advertising (pay-per-click)  SEA

SEO  is all about making sure your website appears when something related is searched in a search engine while SEA is actual adverts with in the search results. These advertisements would be very expensive as they will be seen by a large number of people.

She then talked about advertising in social-media sites. There are mixed views about advertising on these sites as some people feel that they are invading their personal space while there is the argument that the majority of internet users are part of some sort of social-media site therefore the advert will reach more people. I personally am not a fan of adverts in social-media sites.

Over all I did not enjoy this lecture. I found it hard hard to find interest in some of the things she was talking about as I did not find it very relevant.

BPM specializes in advertising in pubs abd other venues like shopping centers. Robbie told us how they use video and sound to advertise and create certain moods that can influence the consumer.

It all seemed a bit “1984″ to me, George Orwell certainly wouldn’t be happy with the whole thing.

He told us how they play certain music or music at a certain tempo and how it can have a huge effect on the consumer. It is not something that the consumer realizes  but the could be influenced into buying something or staying in a certain place e.g a cafe for a certain amount of time all depending on what they hear.

He then talked about how he helps his clients advertise in pubs and clubs using screens. His company makes the advertisements seen on screens in pubs and clubs that i’m sure we have all seen at this stage. They usually display drinks that are on promotion or even show music that Robbie’s company edits into videos.

He told us how important it was to know your audience. This is how he actually got the idea for the company. One night he was in a bar and the bar was playing music that did not match the crowd that was there.

He talked about the advantage of using digital media over the likes of print. His advertisements can be changed within minutes and can be changed off site therefore making it easy to push certain products that for example aren’t selling well that night. Put an add saying they are on offer and they are bound to sell more. This is a very smart way of advertising and will eventually make print advertisements out dated and not relevant. They simply just cant keep up with digital advertisements that can be changed within minutes.

throughout the whole lecture Robbie talked about the importance of audio and he even runs a service that effectively replaces DJ’s, he provides a service that shows video and audio to the pub/club.

It is a great idea for a company as I can see advertising going this way in the future. Print media will soon be out dated and replaced with the likes of screens. I also audio playing a bigger role in advertisements. I’m not sure if this is a change that I will enjoy. being told what to buy by a voice on a speaker seems very 1984 and I dont think that is a good thing.

In preparation for the dail trip Ronan Mullen who is a lecturer in the ITB and a senator in the Seanad took us for a lecture to explain what we should expect and gave us a brief history of the dail and the seanad. This brought me back to my leaving cert history days so i really enjoyed this. Ronan gave us a great history lesson  on the formation of the dail and the seanad and also gave us a great overview of the day to day running of the country. I really enjoyed this lecture as I have always been interested in Irish History and History in general.

We all met up outside the the dail before the tour. The first place we went was for tea and coffee in the visitors cafe. We were then brought into the dail were our tour guide talked us through everything. From the dail we took a brief tour around the building stopping at various points. The tour guide then lead us into the seanad which is a beautiful room that was once used as a ball room. It has a huge decorated ceiling. From the seanad we moved near the exit were the tour guide talked about the various portraits in the large open area.

I thought the tour was great, it was very interesting and it i something I would certainly do again if I had the opportunity.

When our tour was finished we all seperated for lunch and arranged to meet up at a certain time for our tour of the science gallery.

On exhibition in the science gallery was a Hyperbolic  Crochet Coral Reef. It was linking some sort of confusing science with art which in theory sounds great but it was a bit of a let down. Wasn’t exactly my cup of tea. I didn’t understand the science part of it and personally didn’t think the displays were that nice looking. I was impressed at the amount of work people put into making them and was amazed at how many people contributed to the displays but I just couldn’t bring myself to enjoy them.

The highlight of the day was definitely the tour of Leinster House. As irrelevant as it is to  group of digital media students it was just a great experience that I would love to do again.

The theme of Fionna’s lecture was Inspiration. She started the lecture by showing as a good quote about inspiration.

“NOTHING IS ORIGINAL. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is nonexistent.
And don’t bother concealing your thievery – celebrate it if you feel like it.”
Jim Jarmusch

I really like this quote.

Fionna then took use through the process of designing a logo, from the initial idea the client had to the final logo. She first does a lot of research which is really important if you are going to deliver the best image you possible can. Knowing what works and what doesn’t work before jumping into a project will make the whole thing easier and you will achieve the best result when you are finished. She used a logo she designed for a company called fat kitty films as an example. They were looking for a n 1950′s style logo which included a cat to go with the name. Fionna gather dozens of 1950′s style images and then even researched 1950′s style fonts. From this she made decisions on what her final logo should look like. From there she started to piece together a couple of different logos and submitted a handful to the client. The client then gave her some feed back and then a final logo was selected. I was surprised to see how much research she put into, possibly more research time than time creating the logo. This is something that I would like to start doing. I tend to jump into work and learn the hard way.

She showed us some of her web design work and talked us through that process as-well. She then went on to show us some of her flash adverts, this was very relevant as we were working on a flash advertisement at the time  for another module.

She finished the lecture with an anonymous qoute

“Talent…is the desire to practice”

Overall I like the lecture. I plan on doing alot of research for my future projects as she showed that it really helps.

http://www.glimmer.ie/

After graduating with an MA from the Fine Art Department of the National College of Art and Design Dublin in 2008 Emma got the opportunity to go to New York as part of an internship with the Guggenheim museum. Here she practiced in new media. Working abroad sounded very interesting and is something I plan on doing after I finish college. Emma strongly recommended taking an internship if we get the opportunity to. I’d say it is a great experience working abroad.

After New York she took up a residency in the Limerick City Gallery. She worked here along side a group of artists and overall the experienced sounded cool.She then went on to talk about and show us some of her previous work, including the piece she did for her masters.

Personally I didn’t quit get her work. It was all  a very different take on art and something i’m not used to seeing. Her work is very interactive and maybe that’s why I didn’t think it was so great. I’m sure if i had the chance to see and interact with her work i would enjoy it alot more but from seeing pictures of it, it didn’t seem like my cup of tea.

She made an interesting piece called the “Rexotrek”. this was her piece submitted for here masters in NCAD. the whole idea behind it was to show that dogs can be happy. She spent months recording audio and video of her dog pretty much just running about. she attached a specialist camera to the dogs head and pretty much let it run free while she followed close behind with a laptop recording the data from the camera that was mounted on the dogs head. Personally I didn’t like the footage, it was very hard to make out what was going on and overall not very interesting.

She set up a display in a gallery for her masters where people had to literally crawl into to see the footage, giving them a good look at what a dog sees. Not something I would be to keen on doing. Call me old fashioned but I like my art on a wall where I can rub my chin and look like I understand what I am looking at, but hey! that’s just me.

Some of her other work was very similar to the Rexotrek, in the sense that it involves some sort of human interaction. Which is very creative and I appreciate the amount of work that went into them but they were not my cup of tea.

Ian worked as a free lance editor but has at one stage or another worked in many areas of digital media.  Although he works free lance he stressed the fact that it is still alot of work if not more work when working for yourself.

After leaving college Ian was very lucky and found some work in an unlikely place. He managed to get in touch with a Scottish musician that he was a fan of called James Yorkston. Ian was shocked when he was asked to film for James’ EPK (electronic press kit). Ian gladly accepted and went to Scotland to start work. He shot many pieces including interviews and live footage of  James and edited down into a short piece that was to be sent away to James record label. This sounds like something I could see myself doing as I am just as interested in music as i am film.

Ian has done quit alot of stuff like this and has made a bit of a name for himself while doing so. He has worked with alot of musicians including Lisa Hannigan who i’m sure everyone at this stage has heard of.

Ian also did a bit of work for RTE on a comedy pilot.

My favorite part of Ian’s talk was when he was talking about his current project. He was working on episodes for the RTE storyland competition. I have being following the storyland competition since last year so this got my attention. He showed us one of his episodes which I and the rest of the class seemed to really like and it is something that I have being keeping up with since.  I would recommend his show “We own the street” to anyone and recommend that they vote for it in the competition. It is very funny and very well shot/edited.

Overall my experience at this lecture was not great but that had nothing to do with Ian’s lecture but more so my own fault from the night before. I really liked Ian’s lecture and was really impressed with his work. He has made a name for himself and is continuing to produce really high quality work.

Edward talked us through some of the things that the company does. These include:

• Online Strategy
• Web Design
• Advertising campaigns Search
• Marketing
• Email Marketing
• Online PR
• Search Engine
• Optimization
• Project & Campaign Management
• Multimedia design

I was surprised at how much the one company did and this really gave me a good insight into how varied the jobs i could be working will be in the future. Edward talked about some of the previous work the company has done and I was pleasantly surprised by some of the companies they have as clients. They have done work for companies as big as SONY. They have also done some work for discover Ireland.

He told us how there focus is the at first engage people. When they have achieved this their goal is to convert them. By converting them he didn’t mean ask them to change religion but more so by the product they are advertising. BY converting them he meant something as simple as a sale, a download, a visit, an open, a click, a new member, a cross-sell, an enquiry, a click, a booking, a forwarded email. It was all dependent on what the projects objectives were.

Edward gave us a run down of the type of people who work at ICAN and talked about how varied the jobs can be.

ICAN employs:

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

He talked about what I like to work for such a company and even showed us pictures of some of their employees “hard at work”. This really gave us a good insight into what it is like in such a working environment. He told us how fast paced and stressful it can be trying to meet deadline but that the end product usually makes it worth while. This is the kind of working environment I could see myself working in sometime in the future.

Edward encouraged us to do anything work related even if it means making a website for free because in the end we will benefit from the experience. I plan on putting this advise to good use during the summer and try take up some sort of project.

I really enjoyed Edwards lecture as it was my real first look at working in a media based company.

Her lecture was all about learning styles and how they differ from person to person. There are certain ways that people take in information and we all fall into a different category. Geraldine linked this to Digital media as it is very important to cater to the different ways in which people take in information when designing something that delivers a message or some content. At fist I didn’t think this lecture would hold any relevance to digital media students but soon discovered it’s importance and how it is something we will all have to work with in the future.

Geraldine told us about the different learning styles. She only touched upon a handful of them considering there is more than 60.

Geraldine told us about the following ones.

• Learning Channels: How we take in information
• Cognitive Strengths: How we commit information to memory
• Manner or Style of Learning: How people process information to understand it
• Personality Type Influences: How you personality effects the way you learn
• Types of Learning Behaviour: Different types of intelligence

Learning channels are broke into 3 ways in which we take in information. The three catagories are Visual, Kinaesthetic and Auditory . Visual is to do with site, Auditory with sounds and Kinaesthetis is to do with touch and movement. She then went on to tell us how each group learns best and even what each group performs best at. For example Visual learners are better at things like dressing well and remember things and colours while Auditory learners are good at working with words and languages and remembering names. Kinaesthetic learners on the other hand are good at Sports and competition. Each group has it;s own strengths and weaknesses.

Geraldine then gave us a number of multichoice questions to determine which learning channel we fall under.

She then told us about Cognitive strengths in learning. After this she talked about how personality can effect learning, I found this part of the lecture very interesting. After a series of tests to determine which personality type we fell under she gave us the full list of them and went through some of them.

Geraldine then talked about learning styles, this was all about how people approach learning situations.

Geraldine finshed her lecture by talking briefly about learning behaviors.

Overall I enjoyed the lecture more than i though i would and learned a lot about how people learn and how things as obscure as personality can have a big impact on how you learn. This was something that I never really thought about before hand.

My Dodgy Sketch

My finished Typography Portrait

I like the effect of the typography and was surprised at how easy it could be achieved digitally.

A typeface is a complete alphabet including letters,numbers and other characters, for example Arial is a complete typeface.

Before letters were used images were used to describe objects, these would have been cave paintings. The first writing alphabet using letters was Phoenician. This was around 1500BC in the middle east and there were no vowels.

The greek alphabet is the source of all modern scripts in Europe. The Greek alphabet differs from the phoenician as it represents both vowels and consonants. This was also the first time people read left to right.

The Roman capitals were all capital letters and would be painted onto a surface using a brush and then later carved into stone. Sculptors would cap each letter and this became known as a serif. This helped legibility with large blocks of text.

Uncial script could be writing faster and began using lower case letters. The move from parchment to papyrus happened when Uncial script was developed. The calamus also was replaced with the much finer Quill.

Half-Uncial script gained increased ascenders and descenders.

Carolingian Miniscule became the dominant script in Europe while emperor Charlemagne was in power in rome. This script used lower and upper case letters which was rare.

Humanist script began in renaissance Venice in the 15th century . Shapes were more slender, taller and more open. Two cases were used together.

Gothic script was a mixture of Carolingian Miniscule and other native scripts. Gothic script became the standard for books and script.

We also learned about Gutenburg and and the printing press and the importance it had for typography.

We then learned about readability and how it was improved using line spacing and column set up. We had a look at kerning and word spacing and how it used to improve readability .

At the end of the lecture we were giving our typography portrait assignment.

In out lab session we presented our semiotics project and then started work on our typography assignment.