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I have moved to newlyancient.com and will be writing regularly there! Content on this domain is no longer updated, but will be maintained as an archive in its original form.

Tag Archive for 'reflection'

Annual Report Design: Part 4: Day by Day

1 year, 7 months ago 1 Comment

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Of all the ways to represent a year, this is by far my favorite. What better way to represent a year than to show a year? A calendar is an ancient idea, yet it is still relevant today. It can show both the big picture and the individual components of a year very well. Be warned though, producing a calendar of the past year is not an easy task. However, with a little bit of work, you can duplicate my annual calendar style.

Annual Report 2007: Calendar
  1. Track your schedule using Google Calendar or a similar calendar application. Include your school or work calendar in it, and update the calendar as days are added or removed.
  2. Add the Holiday feed for your region to your calendar.
  3. Add a calendar widget to your blog.
  4. Fire up your favorite graphics program, which supports symbols.
  5. Draw a small square and fill it with a color.
  6. Convert the square to a symbol. In Adobe Fireworks, this can be done by right clicking the square and selecting Convert to Symbol with the default options.
  7. Draw an equally sized square and fill it with a different color.
  8. Convert the square to a symbol.
  9. Draw another square the same size as the first two and fill it with a different color.
  10. Convert the square to a symbol.
  11. Draw a transparent square the same size as the first three.
  12. Convert the square to a symbol.
  13. Browse to January 1 in Google Calendar.
  14. Browse to January 1 in your blog calendar.
  15. Choose the most suitable option from the following:
    • If you wrote a post on that day, duplicate your first symbol and put it in a suitable location.
    • If you went to school (or work) on that day, duplicate your second symbol and put it in a suitable location.
    • If you wrote a post and went to school (or work) on that day, duplicate your third symbol and put it in a suitable location.
    • If you did nothing on that day, duplicate your fourth symbol and put it in a suitable location.
  16. Look at your calendar, and see if anything especially noteworthy happened on that day (such as graduation or a favorite holiday) and put an appropriate icon on the day. Good sources of icons are IconBuffet and Silk.
  17. Repeat steps 13 through 16 for every day in the month. Align the squares to the grid, making sure edges match up.
  18. Repeat step 17 for each month, placing a small space between months.
  19. Copy each of your first 3 symbols to the bottom of your calendar and create a key.
  20. Add embellishments as is necessary for visual appeal.

Why use symbols? If you want to change the color of a square, you can just edit the symbol and all of the squares of the same type will automatically update.

Hopefully, you can see an interesting pattern of you year. Which symbols did you use the most? What months have the least posting or the most? The results might surprise you.

Download an archive of my design file.

This is the fourth installation in a series upon how I produced my annual report. I encourage you to check out parts one, two, and three.

A Year in the life of an Arthus

1 year, 7 months ago 9 Comments

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Today, I turn 15. Since last year, much has changed in my life, but a lot has stayed the same. Over the past year, the biggest change has been going from a 500 student primary school to a 1500 student secondary school. It has been a wild ride and I am still getting used to the very different atmosphere. Compiling this report has been a great experience, which has helped me to investigate deeper into what my life has been like over the past year, and what I have experienced. For those of you who missed it, here is my report once again, complete with cover:

Annual Report 2007: Cover Annual Report 2007: Music Annual Report 2007: RSS Annual Report 2007: Tasks Annual Report 2007: Calendar

Download an archive of my annual report, complete with the design files.

The thumbnails above can be clicked to bring up larger versions of the slides. You can also view all of the slides in a continuous strip.

As I went through the process of compiling this report, it was startling how much data I have upon my own life. I know what I listened to, where I spent money, what tasks I completed, what I read, every page I visited, how much time I spent on activities, my daily schedule; the list goes on. Here are some statistics which didn’t make the final cut:

  • Blog Readership—since least year, (specifically since about October), my blog readership has increased exponentially. This time last year, I had a subscriber base of 12. Now, I have a subscriber base of 201. See for yourself:

    2008-01-14_2152

  • Technorati Rank—with my increased readership, comes an increased approval rating in the blogosphere. This time last year, I had maybe a half dozen blogs linking to me. Now, that number has grown to be 564. (Though many of those links are only for my WordPress plugins) Here is a graph I was able to find for your visual interpretation:

    Links to Newly Ancient by day

  • Site Visits—My site visits fluctuate a lot, thus I like to pay more attention to my blog readership. However, I have increased from 18 visitors last January to 151 today. I present to you a graph, courtesy of Google Analytics:

    2008-01-14_2230

  • Business—Since July, I have been tracking my work through Freshbooks, which provides me a great interface to track hours and bill clients. Since this contains client information, I would rather not share it. Suffice it to say, I have been steadily gaining more clients. However, in 2008 I would really like to work on increasing that cash flow, as my expenses increase and I head towards college. If you need a designer or web developer, please get in touch.

  • Flickr—I have been trying to take more photos during 2007. Unfortunately, my daily photo project fell to the wayside, as other pressures came in to play. During 2007, I took 180 photos which received approximately 6,000 views total. In 2008, I would like to focus more on photography by putting more thought into my shots. I think photography is a useful art which I have yet to even begin to get a grasp upon. For your statistical pleasure:

    2008-01-14_2243

  • del.icio.us—Since April of last year, I have integrated del.icio.us into my workflow, using it as my primary bookmark engine. I have shared about 500 bookmarks on del.icio.us and can only imagine that statistic will continue to grow in the coming year. I also am going to work on integrating my bookmarks more with this blog, possibly providing weekly aggregate post of my shared links. Is this a feature you would like to see?

All in all, this has been a wonderful year with many amazing events. I have found a passion for educational technology and expanded my readership, as well as moving into high school. Perhaps the best way to present the year would be to break down the most memorable events, which are thankfully plotted on my calendar as part of my annual report.

Annual Report 2007: Calendar
  • January 14—My last birthday: I still have the iPod I got that day.
  • February 14—Valentine’s day (’nuff said)
  • March 31—My school science fair, where I received a gold medal
  • May 21—My 8th grade trip to a camp in New York (lame)
  • June 14—I graduated from 8th grade and moved on from my school of 9 years
  • August 4—My trip to Cape Cod with family
  • August 17—I failed to make the soccer team in soccer tryouts, a good lesson learned
  • August 28—I entered high school, toting my new MacBook Pro
  • December 10—Students 2.0 was launched, with wide approval and a great reaction

Over the past year, I have learned a lot about design, writing, and the ways of this strange species called humans. Hopefully, the coming year will be even better and bring with it even more intellectual and social challenges. But, who knows? Well, I do know the coming week will bring you articles upon how I designed each of my slides. Good year and good luck!

Annual Report 2007: End

How was year? What was the most memorable day? What do you think of my annual report?