Customer Briefs

EnCert
A new company providing Energy Certificates to homeowners. 'Greener' houses are more desirable and the Energy Certificates form part of the Home Information Pack (HIP). All houses for sale with 4 bedrooms or more must have a HIP. (See the scheme of work for an example Home Information Pack) Encert require a logo for their website and letterheads. EnCert needs the logo to look professional and make the clients to associated it with energy (gas, electricity etc).

What this company wants:
EnCert are after a logo with a professional look, this means I will need to have a controlled use of colours. They are after a logo relateed to energy, so that means that I will have to use images or words to do with energy. Their logos' need to be used on things such as letterheads, posters, websites etc and will be aimed at people who are looking to acquire an Energy Certificate.

Microsoft
Microsoft approached Vizual Impact to produce some displays for its stand at a show to be held in the Birmingham NEC publicising its newest operating system. Produce a graphic that could be printed onto a large piece of card to be used on the Microsoft stand.

What this company wants:
Microsoft are after an eye catching poster that can be placed on a cardboard sign which is to be used to try and make their new operating system (Windows 7) more publicly known about. The colours on this poster need to be relevant to that of the Windows 7 theme, dark, neon blues and greens. It is going to be aimed at people who are unknowing about Windows 7, and make them want to be informed about it.

An organic mobile fast-food service has requested a roadside sign. It will be used on a stand so when its van is parked in a lay-by offering quality burgers and all-day breakfasts, passing motorists will notice it. This sign is to be in full colour and must be eye-catching .

What this company wants:
A bright sign that will attract drivers attention. Bright colours and big words need to be used to be able to catch motorists attention. They need it to emphasise the fact that they make "quality burgers" and "all day breakfasts". I will make various prototypes, some with all the information on one poster, another with the information spread out in a series of different posters. The posters are going to be used on roadside signs.

Upgrading a Computer System

I have been given a computer system and it's specifications and I have been told to make 3 hardware changes to suit the needs of a graphic designer. The system is as follows:

• Intel Pentium D "Dual Core" CPU (3.5 Ghz)
• VIA Chipset 1066 Mhz Motherboard - slots avaliable: AGP8x (1), PCI (3), RAM (2); ports available: LAN (1), USB (6)
• 512 MB RAM
• 80 GB HDD (SATA300)
• 18x DVD+/-RW Dual Layer & Dual Format
• onboard UniChrome PRO 3D Graphics with 64 MB shared memory
• mouse and keyboard
• 15" flat screen
• cheap inkjet printer

I am now going to identify 3 things that need upgrading and suggest improvements.
1) onboard UniChrome PRO 3D Graphics with 64 MB shared memory

• Because this is just a basic onboard graphics card it is not going to be very good at all. It also has 64 MB shared memory which could be improved greatly. To improve this I am going to suggest:
• Nvidia Quadro FX 2700M Graphics with 512MB DDR3 memory:
  This has a greatly improved memory capacity, 512MB rather than the really low shared memory of 64MB.
  

2) 512MB RAM

• 512MB is not a lot of RAM, and if I am dealing with a lot of images and have quite a few programs running then this RAM is not going to help me a lot. To improve this I am going to suggest:
• Upgrading to any RAM that is 4GB DDR3:
  Using this new RAM will give you an overall improved performance on your PC, reducing the risk of programs "freezing" or "not responding".
  

3) Cheap Ink Jet Printer

• A cheap ink-jet printer is not good for printing out images to a professional quality at all. To improve this I am going to suggest:
• Epson Stylus Pro 7880:
  This printer can print any size up to A1, allowing for a wider range of things to be printed off by the designer.

While trying to select a graphics card to upgrade to I came across two choices:
Nvidia Quadro FX 2700M Graphics with 512MB DDR3
and
Nvidia GeForce GTX 280M Graphics with 1GB DDR3 Video Memory
The lowest price I could find for the GeForce GTX 280M was £240.44 and the lowest price for the Quadro FX 2700M was £213.32. The GTX card is more expensive but comes with more graphics memory than the Quadro and this would be useful when working with graphics. Both cards are powerful enough to run the latest Adobe Suite without a problem. I would recommend the GeFore card as it is worth the extra bit of money as it is more future proof and reliable.

Digital Graphics Software

Photoshop:
Photoshop is a piece of software by Adobe and is one of the leading image editing software to date. Photoshop has many useful features for graphical designers. You can merge images seamlessly and this creates a panorama. A busy graphic designer can customize their keyboard shortcuts to allow them to get the most out of photoshop and to help them work more efficiently. for first time designers or people who are just using Photoshop for the first time, the newer version of Photoshop has a History Log, this keeps track of your editing history and should you forget how to create an effect or perform a technique you have before, you can look at the history log and view how you did it step by step.

Illustrator:
Illustrator is also another tool by Adobe, except Illustrator is more about "creating" images and drawing things rather than editing photos as such. It is mainly a vector based program and the images are saved as vector images although when they are displayed on the screen they are rasterised, or bitmapped. If the image is a vector image then the image is stored as a set of instructions, that is why when you resize it, it does not pixelate. The image files are smaller thatn bitmaps as they stores all the maths behind angles, line sizes colours. The reason it is smaller than bitmaps is because rather than saving each individual pixel and what colour/shading that pixel is, it simply stores the line/angle sizes and what areas have what colours, reducing the size drastically.

There are also free alternative to Photoshop or Illustrator, for example GIMP 2. A free program that allows you to manipulate images just as well as Photoshop or Illuastrator and may even be just as powerful.