Step 9 – Exported files

This the area of the project where I had technical difficulties, which did have knock on effect on the rest of the project. The competition required final designs and written explanation to be uploaded to their own dedicated website. Thereby I had to export my files to correct size and upload them to the website. The designs needed to be no bigger than 2MB in size and uploaded in either on of these formats – jpeg, gif, pdf or .ai. The written explanation needed to uploaded in either word .doc format or pdf format.

I was aware of these formats, however the two days running up to the competition deadline my computer and software had problems and was acting erratically and repeatedly crashing. I kept on getting a error message saying that my disk was full, even though it was not. This added stress and pressure to the project. Concerning the problem I feel that I acted in the best possible manner, rather than getting upset and emotional, I tried to fix the problem. I even re-installed software and changed settings on the computer but still did not have any luck. All these technical issues ate up time and were a set back in terms of finishing the final design layouts. Therefore I was not able to upload my designs to the competition, which was a shame. However I still plan to send the designs to Samsonite at a later date, separate to the competition.

A day after the competition deadline, I kept on trying to fix the problems by searching on the internet, as well as speaking to other designers to solve this problem. Then I discovered that the problem was related to computer memory, a special type called virtual memory. Through my research I found out that Adobe Photoshop, the program I was using at the time, stores information/data relating to the design and because working to such a high resolution within Photoshop my computer used up all its virtual memory.

To solve this problem I had to create space on my hard drive by moving a lot of content onto an external hard drive. But, because of the odd crash-recurring nature of the problem, I think there may be more to this then a simple case of creating some space on my hard drive. Since the deadline was so close, I simply couldn’t afford to get my laptop professionally serviced or spend too much time solving this problem because obviously that could be time I needed on the actual project!

image source (website that help me fix my export problem): http://www.easyelements.com/scratch-disk-is-full.html

In hindsight, and from advice of fellow designers, I am aware that I should have used InDesign for the final concept sheets in order to achieve appropriate industry standards. Unfortunately print based aspects of design, such as the InDesign/Quark software, have not been taught on my course and therefore this skill was not available to me for this project when I needed it. Nonetheless, it is an area of concern I have identified through this project and will remedy as soon possible. Print based software such as InDesign has been a requirement for many of the jobs I have come across in the industry; which has encouraged me even more to learn the software (even if it is after the project, and on my own time).

From some of the ‘outsourcing‘ type help, I have actually made a conscious effort to learn InDesign thanks to a fellow designer/illustrator who helped me through parts of this project and offered a trade-off (she can teach me InDesign while I teach her illustrator, both of us playing to our skills. Even in the industry, members of design teams reinforce each other in this way; each member of the team pulls their own weight, brings their own specialist skills to make a strong, well-rounded group as a whole.

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