Learning Journal

Over the last two weeks I have had a lot of fun and have blown off the dust from my HTML and CSS skills.

Continue reading “wk4 – Learning Journal- Austin Hayes”

These last few weeks have been pretty fun. I actually felt like I went into a sort of flow state with coding my Lemmings page and my Portal page: I knew enough HTML and CSS to make things look the way I wanted, and I wasn’t being interrupted by having to troubleshoot or google any significant issues.

Continue reading “Wk 3-4: We’re So Back”

The last couple weeks have been great practice and review on HTML, CSS, using FTP transfer, and linking other sites. We also reviewed some typography principles and articles.

Continue reading “It’s all coming back!”

When what you thought you remembered finally comes back into the light.

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Well, the semester is in full swing now, and glimmers of what I learned more than 6 months ago and notes that I thought were so clear then are now coming into blurry focus. I am always so eager it get into the meat of a course and learn stuff, and I feel that we have been doing that. Building simple sites, writing code and doing the research to know the when-where-why’s of it all help me to get a sense of where I have been and where we are going.

Continue reading “4 Week Growth Spurt”

Oh man, what a good few weeks it has been in the development of the classes education. We went over and discussed the basic understandings of CSS in order to be able to properly troubleshoot our code later down the line. The biggest three things discussed are Specificity, Cascading, and Inheritance. Alongside our basic understanding of CSS we also learn how to apply a CSS reset or CSS normalize in order to have diversity and consistency within multiple types of web browsers! It’s a super useful tool if you want you’re creations to be properly displayed no matter what browser the end user has. We also cover typography, and really a lot of great articles involving typography! One of the topics of typography that stood out to me the most is kerning which is the space between letters. During my time as an intro to web design student I have noticed that fonts will “mush” some letter combinations together and I can’t stand it. Discovering kerning has allowed me to be able to look more in depth and hopefully I can apply it to my future work. Regardless of what we’ve covered in the past two weeks we definitely know that professor Mead is a great person who loves Llama’s and Lemmings.

All the knowledge I’ve gained in the past two weeks has been underwhelming yet humbling.

These past two weeks have reminded me of the gaps in my knowledge of web design and semantics. Most of the content in this class so far has been reviews of content I learned last semester in the AAD85 class. Even though I took this course only 4 months ago, it is amazing how much your brain tosses out when you’re not actively putting your skills to use. So more than anything, this class has humbled me and reminded me how important it is to continuously practice your skills in order to maintain the knowledge in these areas. Granted, there are much less learning curves when re-learning a topic, but still disappointing nonetheless. So even if you’re not using your semantics knowledge for a practical instance, refresh your skills and keep using them.

USE THEM OR LOSE THEM!

Now that we’re into the semester a little ways, the things that I find myself needing to review are getting more and more complex. Flexbox? Responsive design? Stylesheets even. The list goes on.

Continue reading “Continuing on with HTML and CSS”

When you know enough to wish you could do more but you don’t know how to get it done. I’d say that has been my week with the portal page.

Read more: Patience…

That is a frustrating feeling in anything we are learning. I need a flexbox, but I can’t remember how to create one so I watch YouTube videos and read articles. It’s the never ending learning cycle that sometimes I am patient with myself and sometimes I’m frustrated thinking I should know how to do this.

I also want to create a responsive design, wait, not true…I just want it to be a responsive site…you know, automatically. Shouldn’t dreamweaver know that we need a responsive site? But no, I need to go search that up too.

On a good note, the minute I wanted my <ol> aligned side by side, I knew I needed flexbox and the minute I wanted my site to work on mobile I knew I needed it to be responsive. So that’s the start I am at.

“Cheating” in the design world is OK and sometimes even encouraged.

Skylar Johnston, AAD86 FA23

One thing I have begun to learn more and more by talking to peers and mentors is that cheating is OK! Sometimes.

The biggest thing that is important to remember when learning a new (specifically technological) skill, is that it’s not going to be easy at first. As us designers and coders open up our world to new diverse technological tools, there are numerous learning curves we must face! When it comes to coding, memorization of semantics and syntax is important to code effectively and efficiently. Memorization does no happen without practice. And in the design world, memorizing which tools does what and keyboard shortcuts is one of the biggest learning curves there it to the program! (in my opinion). So now is when the cheating comes in, and by cheating I mean the good old internet. I think cheating is a pretty serious term for what I am talking about but its catchy. So what I’ve learned after taking the summer break and revisiting many programs that all contain their own selection of tools and rules, CHEAT! Go to google, watch some tutorials, learn some new skills. The internet is such a powerful tool and in the real world, we wont be limited to only the knowledge we have. So ack questions, be curious, and CHEAT!

It will make you a better designer.

Growing is Learning and Learning is Growing: How do we go to “the edge” of what is comfortable, and then take another step?

When I am not reaching for a new goal, learning something new or exploring what is uncharted or scary for me, I am not growing.  The things that scare me are often the things that I know I have to step into to get to where I want to go. This semester, I have set some professional goals to broaden my horizons in web design, but this is not my only venture.  Public speaking has always been a fear of mine (and many of us).  I have decided to join a local chapter of Toastmasters, an organization that teaches and fosters positive feedback and an opportunity to face fears in public speaking.  I believe that this step of courage will benefit me in not only the professional world, but also in interpersonal communication. 

I hope in this class to answer these questions every week:

• How have I pushed “my edge” professionally?
• What have I learned in this web design class that I will take into the professional world?
• How have I pushed “my edge” personally?

Glad to be here learning more web development. I have a number of pages and sites to refurbish and upgrade with contemporary code and styles, maybe some script. Looking forward to it.

Continue reading “Day by Day”