IMM 2016: Articular Multimedia Wrap-Up
My name is Chris Flannery and I am a touring musician and freelance designer. I recently graduated from The College of New Jersey with a B.A. in Interactive Multimedia and minors in Management and Marketing. This summer, I will be on tour with my band, Save Face, across the US and Canada. In the past year, I have worked on a business plan for a design studio/student maker space tentatively titled “Articular Multimedia”, the name Articular being derived from the medical term which describes a joint or connection, just as these two disciplines would be connected under one roof.
ABOUT ARTICULAR
Articular Multimedia is a concept for a business plan which would have two parts; a client-facing design studio and a maker space specifically for students to collaborate with other students on curricula-based and entrepreneurial projects. Originally, the intent was to carry this out as a full business plan, including formal business documentation, pursuit of investors, entry into a business plan competition in search of startup capital, acquisition of clientele, so on and so forth. As time progressed, it became increasingly apparent that I simply did not have enough time to execute this as fully and thoroughly as I had originally intended, and thus scrapped the idea in favor of something more “multimedia”-based.
NEW ARTICULAR CONCEPT
I have never done web development, that is, have never created HTML/CSS/Javascript documentation to the extent required to actually get a fully functional site up and running. So, I decided to take all of of the research into the design studio that I had done so far and compile it as an agency concept website, spending the last month of the class learning as much about web development as I possibly could. I am pleased to say that the final product is a fully functional, fully responsive site which showcases both the business concept and my (newfound) knowledge of web development practices.
ABOUT THE SENIOR SHOWCASE
The senior Interactive Multimedia showcase is an end-of-year celebration of student achievement in which all 100 or so senior IMM students present all of the projects they’ve been working on over the course of the school year. The event is open to other students, faculty, parents and industry professionals, and consists of a gala-style showcase, an alumni review and Q&A, and food and drinks.
HANGUPS
The biggest and most obvious challenge I faced was running out of time to complete my original idea. I had a timeline planned out with milestones I wanted to reach every week, but looking at the project as a whole I eventually realized that even with meeting my weekly goals this would not be enough planning to actually think about starting a business. Once I switched over to the web-based idea, the weekly milestones and challenges faced changed completely. Suddenly it became all about not only learning various web languages but also working through various bugs in the actual creation of the site. One of the hardest things for me was figuring out how to perfectly align all of my elements using media queries for a responsive layout. Other than that, I used bootstrap and some jquery plugins to make everything look nice and pretty. In the end, I probably spent between 100–120 hours learning web dev and creating the actual site, not to mention the countless other hours that went into research for the first 3/4 of the year.
ADVICE FOR FUTURE STUDENTS
If I had time to start this project over again, I honestly would not have started with such a lofty goal with so little time. But then again, some people have more time to dedicate to their projects / more of a clearly defined idea of what they want to do from the get-go / more technical skills on hand going into it, so to each his/her own. I think it is important for an IMM student to realize very early on what exactly they want to do with IMM later in life, as it is so multi-disciplinary that with no clear goal you may end up feeling like you know a little of this and a little of that but fall far short in any given area of students who have dedicated their entire TCNJ career to becoming experts in, say, animation, or back-end programming. With this in mind, I would recommend all IMM students create something for their senior thesis project which encapsulates the one thing they are best at, and use this as a portfolio piece / leverage to land a great job post-grad.
CONTENT
Actual site will be posted online shortly. Here is a link to my portfolio:
Feel free to email me with any questions or comments here: chriswillsflannery@gmail.com
To check out where I’ll be this summer, follow me on instagram:
