My site is complete! Today I have been browser testing and validating my website. I was really pleased to find only a few errors within both my HMTL and CSS, these are now corrected and my site is uploaded online- www.missamyscott.co.uk.
This is the homepage of my site. I am really happy with the outcome I have achieved although, it took me several attempts to get to this I believe it has created a stronger designer.
I have found it really challenging working on my freelance project as well as PPD and also juggling this with my job in a nightclub. At times I have felt I have neglected learning new skills as the work load has been huge! Over the summer I am going to have a lot more time on my hands to develop myself further. I am looking forward to having this opportunity as I have enjoyed learning the new skills I have throughout this module. I have found it really rewarding accomplishing aims I never thought I could achieve alone.
Today I have created my header design. I sketched out several ideas and began putting a digital design together in Photoshop. I am really pleased with the outcome of my header. It made it a lot easier to choose appropriate colours on screen to suit my personality and style.
This is my header design. I have used a bold colour subtly to highlight the keywords within this text and altered the opactity on the ‘&’ to create a faded appearance to ensure it doesn’t over-power the main content however, still serves the purpose it was intended for.
I am going to keep my website consistent throughout by using the bright pink subtly for aspects such as: borders, headers and also navigation hover overs.
Today Gavin Elliot from Codeworks gave a talk about his experience and expressed his thoughts on creativity.
It was an interesting talk as it was straight to the point and didn’t drag on. I seemed to take more in because of this. Gavin has been a designer for about 6 years as well as a writer and communicator (as he likes to call himself). He expressed his thoughts on creativity and made it clear everyone has the ability to be creative at any age however, creativity can be stunted whilst in education. I kind of agree with this as project briefs at college determine the route I go down to complete it. He confirmed my beliefs that creativity is a case of “‘trial and error”, creating a design you like one day and hate the next is very common in the creative industry. I am more than aware of this having completely changed my personal website design today!
He also said “Learn from others but don’t copy”. This is a very good statement as I do look at existing websites on CSS mania for inspiration and ensure I create a different design whilst taking into consideration what I have found.
Gavin suggested to look at gregorywood.co.uk and also jasonsantamaria.com. I found Gregory Woods site was quite hard to use, it wasn’t very clear however, I really liked the style he used on his post ‘ellis on the beep’.
I have always been thankful for feedback as it has enabled me to achieve better designs in the past and will improve my practice as a web designer in the future. Gavin suggested sending snippets of work such as the banner of a site to friends or family for feedback, if the feedback provided is good, work with it! I am going to do this for all of my future projects.
Today I bought my hosting for my site as well as a domain name. I bought my yearly hosting package from streamline.net. This hosting offered a free domain name. I am really pleased I got the exact domain I wanted, www.missamyscott.co.uk, as I wanted my email address to match this.
I am really excited to get my site online now, I just need to finish it! I am happy with my progress with my site, i’m confident I will have it completed by the course deadline, May 14th.
Today I went to meet the Hedgehog team to find out a little bit about what they do. I was shocked at how small the company was as it only consisted of 5 members, all of which were male! I was curious as to why this was, Sarat Pediredla (co-founder of Hedgehog) assured me it wasn’t intentional the web and software industry is simply very male orientated.
The atmosphere seemed very friendly and relaxed and overall a good environment to work, I think this is mainly due to the size of the company and the closeness in which they work together.
I spend a lot of time talking to Mark Forster (co-founder of Hedgehog). I really enjoyed finding out about what he does within the company, the software the company has been producing over the last few years and looking at a project they recently completed.
Hedgehog have developed software such as Fixx and Soloman. Mark showed me Soloman and explained how they originally made for their company however, they have made it available for other small companies and freelancers. Soloman is a CRM and contact management system that enables professionals to organise their contacts, appointments, notes etc. easily.
Mark showed me the project they recently completed for Rockliffe Hall. They created the booking system on this website. I asked how long this project took them and if it all went to plan, originally it was a 4 month project however, the project didn’t go to plan and the project took about 9 month and cost more than originally expected. This made me feel more comfortable with my organisational skills knowing that even companies have problems with timescales.
I am now following Mark, Sarat, Jonny and Craig on Twitter. I will be able to keep track of Hedgehog labs work and find out more about the company now.
Today I have been researching javascript image sliders. I want to include this within my website and also my freelance project. I don’t want to use flash for my image slider due to the loading time and accessibility issues.
I have found this site : http://opiefoto.com/articles/photoslider which looks really interesting. It provides a tutorial of how to create a java script image slider. I am hoping to try this out soon.
I am taken on a freelance project by choice! After hearing Lee Simpson’s talk I was really hating the thought of freelancing however, having worked on this project I have discovered it is something I really enjoy!
I have been asked by a friend to design and build a website for his company. He has several auto companies in the area that he needs to promote as well as advertise stock. He has an existing website he created himself however, it isn’t great. I am really pleased I have got this opportunity to put my skills into practice in a real professional project at the same time as building up my portfolio. Oh i’m also getting paid (big thumbs up!)
I will use my new website to display the completed site and also display blog posts on the project.
Today I have almost finished my website! Yesterday I managed to complete my homepage and make a start on my ‘about me’ page. Today I have completed the following pages: portfolio, contact me and also my blog. For my portfolio I created a page of thumbnails of homepages of projects I have completed which link users to that specific project page consisting of thumbnails of all the pages within that site. Although I have done this I still need to include a lightbox to enable users to view the pages as a larger image. I will apply this technique to all of my project page thumbnails. For my blog I signed up with wordpress blogs and simply linked it to my site. In the future I will re-design my blog page to the same consistent style of my website design.
Today I have decided to scrap what I orginally had in mind for my website re-design. I really wasn’t happy with ideas I had came up with and was at a complete stand still. I found designing in Photoshop annoying and decided today to get straight into building my site to see where that took me. I have began putting together my javascript banner containing projects I have previously worked on. I used my favourite colour, pink as the background and have decided this will be the main colour used throughout my site for header, navigation, borders etc.
This is one of my banner images. I have decided to keep the banner slide layouts consistent to create a easily flowing view for users.
Today I visited the library and looked through several books to find graphic design work that inspires me and could possibly have an effect on my practice as a web designer. I found a book called ‘Graphic Designer’s Digital Printing & Prepress Handbook’ Rockport publishers that contained work I found really interesting.
I found a piece on page 95 was about colour images and how replacing CMYK process inks with fluorescent substitutes. There was before and after images of the difference made by making this change. I believe colour is a really important aspect within web design, when looking at the difference between the images I can see how using better choice of colour improves the quality of the image itself and is viewed more positively.
I wanted to look at type and logos to give me inspiration as I believe I struggle with choosing appropriate fonts in my work to reflect the site purpose and style. From the research I have carried out I have found a style of logo I prefer; small icon/image followed by text. I prefer this as it is striking but clearly states the brand name as well as logo.
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May 14, 2010 12:37 am | 
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