Writing Assignment
I’m not really sure what to think of web design yet. I love it in some aspects, but in others I tend to not like it at all. It’s a weird love-hate relationship right now I guess. Web design gives you so much freedom, yet it’s in a very limiting container. For example, you can’t put anything too low on the screen because some people might miss it… and you can’t put the main navigation bar towards the bottom because that’s not the norm, etc. I feel way more comfortable doing print design (just because I’ve done it so much), however there are limitations to that as well. I guess the more I work with web design, the more I’ll be able to be creative and work around the limitations (hopefully!). As far as technical mistakes and weaknesses, I actually feel pretty confident in my Photoshop skills. I’ve worked with Photoshop so much that I haven’t really had a problem knowing how to do something. As far as conceptual mistakes and weaknesses, I tend to struggle starting. I guess you could call it “designer’s block”. I have a hard time coming up with a clean, effective idea that’s also creative even though there are limitations regarding screen size. Once I actually come up with an aesthetic and design, I then usually start pulling things together. Sometimes a struggle a little with the layout and sticking with the grid. The grid is one of the specific details that I really feel like I need to work on, but I also think that I improved on it as well. Usually the end product of my web design pages end up following the grid (for the most part) however there are times in the beginning when it’s hard to follow the grid when I want a certain thing to be in a certain place, etc. I also think I’ve really improved on expanding my creativity with this project. When designing the AIGA website, I felt a little caught up in the old design and it was hard for me to really go “outside of the box”. I really enjoyed the freedom that this assignment brought. I also think that I have gotten faster when designing the website pages because I’m starting to know what I’m doing (kind of…haha). I can’t wait to see what the next project holds so I can improve and feel more comfortable with web design.
was really excited about taking this class. I knew it would be a lot of work, but I really feel like design is moving towards web rather than print so I want to make sure I know how to do everything and expand my design knowledge. This project was really great for learning. Rather than completely creating whatever we wanted, we had something to go off of. However, this was also somewhat of a challenge because I didn’t realize how much stuff really goes into designing a website, and after studying the AIGA website, it was hard to go away from it and design something new. When we did the site diagram sketches I felt so overwhelmed, but gradually I started understanding how everything works. I would say that I already knew a ton regarding photoshop, so the technical skills wasn’t really a problem for me. In print design, I usually spend a ton of time in the beginning looking at inspiration, however with web design I had a harder time finding inspiration. I really can’t wait to start the next project. I’m really enjoying this class.