Archive for ‘Project 1’

h dear, I am behind in the blog world in this class. Project 1 was a good experience for me. I was really frustrated with all of the content AIGA insisted on having in their page, but in the end I was glad I finally worked it all out. I feel like at the beginning I was really stuck and then at the end of the project I was struck with inspiration and finally was able to get something going that I was proud of.

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.

This project was a really tough one for me to wrap my head around. From going to designing packages and posters all last year to an interactive interface with buttons and links was really hard to get started on. I feel like the biggest weakness that i had during this project was conceptual. It took me some time just to get my direction and get rolling on my design. To be honest i had looked at the AIGA website so much that it was more complicated to create a new design than it should’ve been. The treatment of all the text and how to organize it was so hard for me. I had trouble straying away from the original AIGA design because thats all I had been looking at for the past few weeks. Unlike designing poster where there is literally hundreds of pieces of inspiration out there, looking for inspiration for web design seemed to be a lot harder for me. It took me over 2 weeks of mixing and matching and trial and error to finally get my direction down and get rolling on my design.

As far as my stance on the technical issues, photoshop is a very tedious program to use. I don’t mind designing in it but when it comes to dealing with shapes and different treatments of type, it became very frustrating. I could’ve designed in illustrator and moved it over to photoshop but I think that doing the whole project in photoshop will help me become more familiar with it like i am illustrator. And thats what im striving for.

I already know that there are areas that i need to improve on. One are that i was very unhappy with was the way that i treated the text in the articles. I feel like the text is too cluttered and that i couldve spent a lot more time focusing on that. Overall i feel like it was a good project as far as my knowledge of web design goes. I learned a lot and really am looking forward to do it again.

hen this project was first introduced I was pretty excited. I have wanted to learn more about web design for some time now, so I was glad to finally get into this class. I knew from the start that it would not be an easy class and would be a lot of work. Now having finished our first project, I feel very relieved and feel like I learned a ton from this. My designing started out very very slow, partly from my forgotten knowledge of Photoshop and partly because I didn’t know what I was doing. I started laying out my sites in Illustrator, piece by piece and then transferring them into Photoshop, layer by layer. This proved to be the easiest way for me because I can work quickly in Illustrator and get what I want then just past it into Photoshop. But I think I really need to start working in Photoshop more and build up my knowledge and skills. I think now having this project done I look at web sites totally different, I notice what works and what doesn’t, and now see how I can make them. I really learned a lot from this and this my next project will be a huge improvement.

I think I did alright on this project, it was hard to find a balance between designing a website that catered to the audience of AIGA, while at the same time being new to web design and the problems it presents.  I caught myself getting way to in to the aesthetics of the site over the function.  I spent most of my time on this project struggling to fit content into my page, while containers, headers, and large images came easy.  The biggest challenge for me was creating the navigation of the site, which differs quite a bit from print, where the only navigation is just to turn the page.  I also realized decisions that seem small, such as choosing a primary color can effect a design greatly.  Overall I think in the future wire frames will play a much larger roll in the route i take in designing a website.

I used to use Photoshop a ton in high school, even to do things that would have been WAY easier in Illustrator, so I was used to creating little shapes and knowing how to edit them and editing text and stuff so as far as technical problems with the software I didn’t really have much. A few times I just got really into following a little system that I set up with these boxes and totally forgot about the grid. I just followed the grid when setting up the major things but then as far as filling the rest of the page it strays a little bit in areas. Not sure if that would be a technical mistake or a conceptual mistake.

I feel that I am improving on creating things like links and buttons and things you interact with. My first couple of drafts they navigational stuff looked pretty awful but I slowly began to figure things out. It was difficult to deal with all the different hierarchy thats is involved with a website. all the different levels of links and labels and titles and body text… but again towards the end I started figuring more of it out.

For next time I need to improve on doing more of the dirty work. More sketches and brainstorming before I get on a computer. Thats hard to do but I feel like if I had a few more little details worked out before hand I would have save myself a lot of time playing with different ideas on the computer and the final project may have turned out even better.

This project was definitely a stretching and growing experience. I went into this thinking I had a good grasp of photoshop, but quickly saw that using photoshop for web design was entirely different than using it to edit photos. I spent the first few days extremely disorganized and frustrated using layers; getting everything organized into folders was a huge step for me that was very helpful (and tediously annoying). I feel like I’m still stuck knowing only the basics of photoshop; walking around to my classmates comps felt like I was looking at “real” sites, while mine still felt very elementary.

I never realized how many small details of websites there are and I honestly am not sure I included everything I was supposed to. I would like to figure out a better way to extract items from actual sites besides taking a screen shot so the resolution is actually decent. Adding the small rss, facebook, and twitter icons were difficult. Another downfall of mine is sketching. While I took the time to sketch out big ideas for the site, I spent a lot of time creating different “alternatives” within my actual compositions… I feel like I should do that ahead of time. Next time, eh? Something I am unfamiliar with is type treatment on a website. I still am not sure what fonts are “best” to use (I know there’s a list of web-safe fonts, but I also know designers are font-snobs) and what sizes are appropriate. I struggled with making the sidebar text readable but still space efficient. Random: I also struggled with changing the color of the text a few times- it kept graying it out. Why was that?

This is entirely not a cop-out, but the snow days came when my motivation was at its highest causing it to flag immensely. I lost momentum and struggled to get back in the “this project is FUN!” mindset. The longer we were out of class, the less I felt like working on this project. I feel like the next project will go better now that I can jump right in rather than spend a few days wandering around lost and confused.

Things I Want to Know More About:

-“Convert to Smart Object” and “rasterize layer”…. when is this used?

-Gradients/textures

-Appropriate website type treatment rules

-Best way to capture web elements  w/o using screenshot

-Using cs5

ne thing that bugs me about my redesign is a few things that ended up getting left out. I forgot to include the “connect to AIGA” section which includes facebook, twitter, linked in, ect. I even included it in my wireframe so I’m disappointed I didn’t catch it. The opportunity to be able to connect with AIGA and easily share what you find on the site is important.

I think some of my navigation and logo treatment is too large. The real problem is editing the file easily. I have my psd files really organized but it is still difficult to go back and resize and move a bunch of different elements to change the overall look and feel. I feel like once you build elements from pieces of other built elements things tend to become harder to change because you would have to go back and change all of the elements individually. I’m not sure how to make this easier on myself, but I know it at least helps that my files are super organized.

I think because of the fact that I design elements from other elements sketching needs to become a larger part of my process. Because I start with one element and go from there, the design style starts to become set in stone the farther I get. The more I explore in an easily editable format like sketching, the better off the project should be. The opportunity to explore more different styles before I even touch the computer would be far better.

I also think I should sketch individual elements instead of just entire page layout. I really didn’t even consider doing this before. It becomes even more important if I am copying the style of an element that I had already built.

ell…now that it is turned in an no more time can be spent on it, i see many overlooked mistakes. i wish i had managed my time better so i could have found the little mistakes earlier rather than later. i dont like mistakes.  i do feel like i was successful at using photoshop and illustrator to the  best of my ability to work on these websites.  this project forced me to learn new things and refresh myself on old techniques. i kept remembering things throughout the project which made me rather proud of myself. ha.  found out after three and a half years of college i still have major time management issues. after every project i feel like, “thats it, ive learned my lesson, never again,” and ofcourse on this one, i cram the whole thing into one day/nights work. lame. i need sleep.  websites are harder to conceptualize through sketches. i love to see things on paper first before ever touching a mouse, however it was much more beneficial to see the layout or rough take shape on the computer rather than in my sketch book.  wish it wasnt that way.  i probably spent too much time on the foo-fooey elements. should have invested more time into layout and placement rather than making things look visually appealing. had a spelling error…really upsets me. very much so. thats disappointing.  i got the project done though! awesome! thats a plus

In choosing a specific direction I created folders for individual articles, as if one person would be opening the folder and viewing all the contents related to the subject. This direction however forced the images and font into specific sizes. Though a hierarchy is clear relative to both elements, when viewed Independently the images dominate a large portion of the page, and are even not properly aligned in the second column. The fixed width of these elements forced the type to be small and the titles of the articles to be seen as a secondary element rather than the main focus. From AIGA’s real website it is clear they wanted more focus on the title and preview of the article rather than the image and this is something mine no longer focuses on. Additionally, sacrifices were made on my part that should most likely not have been made. The news feed was cut down, and though it is a constantly updating and scrolling element, the majority of items would not be seen. More emphasis was placed on the archives by adding the scroller, but the font size was diminished and does call less attention to itself. In terms of space, the website is crammed closely together with not much negative space to let it breathe. While the overall size of the site is not as lengthy, the viewable area is cramming more into less space and may loose clarity in some of the tightness of the elements. What may help in the future is to first rely on the type to be the main elements and try to revolve everything around it being readable and evenly spaced.