Archive for ‘Project 3’

For the most part my projects in this class, have all had CMS elements to them. So when this project rolled around I thought i was golden, however it was a lot harder than I originally anticipated. Between the bold simplicity I wanted and the hierarchy nuances that are so critical to the style I was going for I kinda got lost.  My technical mistakes included a weak organization of navigation elements, that seemed to all be of equal importance and lacking hierarchy.  Another mistake I made was in not including a way in which to submit comments.  Conceptually I think I’m close though, there seems to be a fine line between simplicity and unfinished final product.  One are that my theme was strong however was the organization of the site overall, although it lacked hierarchy, the categories and tags stayed consistent from page to page. Things I need to improve on include the hierarchy between post and comments. I improved mainly in the consistency and feel from page to page.  And lastly I need to develop a process and attention to detail i have for print.

This project was really fun, but also hard to do since it was so personal. I enjoyed the “blog” aspects of design compared to an actual site. It was hard at first, however, to remember all of the little things that go along with a blog theme that you have to design. As far as technical mistakes and weaknesses, I still feel pretty confident in my Photoshop skills. The first design always takes FOREVER getting it perfect and how I want it, but after that design is complete I can usually blow right through the other two page templates. As far as conceptual mistakes and weaknesses, I realized sometimes that I don’t think of some small things that might be a problem. For example, since I have been the one designing a site, everything makes complete since to me. However, then someone will suggest something to clarify what is going on on-screen. (like a rollover or highlighting what is being rolled over, etc.). I still struggle a little with sticking with the grid. I think I have improved on pushing the norm when it comes to rollovers. I feel like with each design, my sites become a little more interactive. I really enjoyed the freedom that this assignment brought. I also think that with each project, I become faster at designing because I can now see the similarities that all sites have regarding menu, navigation, etc. I still would like to learn more about what happens after the designing… for example, I am not sure if I am actually leaving out crucial parts of a design because I’m not exactly sure what to do after designing. I really look forward to the next project and continuing to grow in webdesign.

I enjoyed this project most of all. I liked that I was able to choose the amount of content and design it for my self personally. Essentially my reasoning for taking this course was to understand the basis of web design so I could design something for myself. Now I feel like I could do it pretty successfully. I really liked the simplicity of my blog and thought I handled the hierarchy well. I wanted it as simple as possible so it would be easy to navigate and not clutter or distract the viewer. As far as that goes I think I was successful. I do think my Archive page could use some work as to how it is all arranged and how the viewer would find what they are searching for. I also need to consider a footer, how the page would end or how how you would go to another page if you wanted to skip through without going through the archive. I guess there are a lot of smaller details to be worked out before this could be a functional blog, but I am pretty happy over all with my design.

Working on personal projects, it becomes difficult to distance yourself from the work and look at every element objectively. I find bias in certain elements after designing them and hope to make them work because I like the quirky or uncanny feel of the piece as a whole, but it is when I find attachment that I neglect to look at the negative or seek to improve more on the elements as a whole. The areas I would need the most work on would still be color and type. I have gotten a taste of what deserves more visual presence, but still do not spend hours working out the small details to perfect the overall feel. After letting go some of the attachments to pieces it became easier to design the blog as a whole and work out more kinks when I started to give room to type and less to the pictures or logos. The subtlety of color helped to bring all the pieces together better in this project than the last one, and having a better understanding of who the client was helped me to come up with a design that met the needs and visual presence more closely than to the last client. For the future, getting to know who the client is and understanding  them will make it easier to design for them. Additionally, whenever I run into an issue with a specific element not working, I need to go back to the inspiration and sketch alternative solutions.

This project was hard to wrap my head around at first. I knew that we were doing a blog but it was hard for me to understand what all we were going to be tackling in this assignment. It was fun looking through all the wordpress themes and blogs that I usually surf on the web, and looking at them as inspiration and taking little elements out of each blog to incorporate in my own design was a lot of fun. I think the strengths I have in this design are more hidden then the weaknesses. It’s not that i believe that I have more weaknesses then strengths but that my weaknesses are a lot more apparent and noticeable. First of all, i really need to redesign my “recently added posts” segment in the single post page. It looks amature and unfinished. I thought that the typeface I used for the post titles was also a weakness that I had. it looked good to me at first, but after working with it for a while I decided that i wanted to change it. It doesnt match the rest of the design as far as cohesiveness goes. Another weakness that I see on my design is the post a comment part. To me it looks unfinished and lacking in detail. I need to figure out a way how I can treat multiple comments and comments on comments.

As far as strengths go, I feel that, besides one typeface, it is all very cohesive. The whole design flows from page to page and it is really easy to understand. It is a very simple design and a photography based site. I was very pleased with the way that i treated and handled the photos i chose as they represented the post. I don’t think i need to learn anything in order to make my design better, the only thing that I can do to truly improve in this design is just to spend more time on it. There are a lot of things that i wasnt happy with in the end that i can improve with just more time.

Once again, I see both progress and.. non-progress (?) being made in my work. Getting into this after spring break was very difficult and while I am proud of the final outcome, I know it could’ve been better had I spent time on it over the break. Technically I think I need to be better at being thorough in my work. I forgot a few minor things for the overall layout and it was things that every site needs– no bueno for me. As you mentioned, I need to work on my type treatment; a weakness I do recognize and though I’ve made progress, every project presents different challenges.

Conceptually I think I am stuck in the box. Maybe its because it’s mid-point in the semester, or maybe because its my 8th straight semester doing nonstop projects, but I am in full get-it-done mode without getting adventurous in my design work. While this is not good, I’m extremely happy it’s Friday and maybe next week will be better.

Sketching it still my biggest weakness. I tend to feel pressure to start designing right away; maybe its the nature of the lab, but if I am sitting in the lab sketching then I feel like I’m wasting time.

As I’ve said before, I see definite improvement from the beginning of the semester and it’s getting better and better. If I could feel rested and legitimately inspired, I think I could do great things in this class.

At first, I thought this project would be super easy. Design A Blog. How hard could it be? Title, an image and some words about the image. I wasn’t thinking about… comments, pages, archives, dates, authors, categories, tags, etc etc etc. It was WAY more work (am I really surprised?… no… am I surprised I haven’t learned better by now? yes) Having a more involved wireframe helped me a lot with the layout of the blog. Just proves our teachers are right, prep work does pay off. again… not surprised. I’m afraid I may have gone a little too simple, a few more design/decorative elements I think could have helped a lot. There is a fine line that is tough to figure out between good simplicity and bad simplicity. I struggle with that in almost all of my work.

Starting off with my strengths I think i have come pretty far in my treatment of heiarchy. I think that a user can easier determine what is more important in terms of information by quickly looking at the page. The use of different colors, weights. and even different fonts is coming more naturally to me. Another strength i think I have in interactive design is an overall clean feeling that when someone experiences they won’t mind poking around the site for awhile. Personally if a site is too busy a lot of times I will just leave and seek the information elsewhere.

As far as weaknesses I think the main thing I need to focus on is basic functionality. For example small things I might leave out of my designs that I take for granted that are easy to find and use on other people’s websites. This is troubling because we have focused in class about how to design from a user’s (future user that isn’t you) standpoint. It is so easy to just work from myself instead of focusing on what will be most important for the end user. I seem to just get excited about aspects of the site I enjoy designing and give less thought to things that might be more important than they seem to me at the time. This leads to errors like forgetting simple things like page progression at the bottom of a page, which adds needed functionality but also can dramatically change the look and feel of a blog, especially with a footer added as well because the bottom of a page as a whole is a big aspect that I overlooked.

From previous assignments I’m not sure if I have improved on anything or done anything worse. The varying content of the different projects makes me focus on such different things. One this that I am optimistic about is I feel like I have good range to design different types of sites. All of my designs have been so different and I enjoy this variety and I think it reflects well on me in my portfolio.

well i kinda feel like i took a step backward on this project. as if there was no progression or improvement in skills.  this is my fault tho. i wanted to set a defined feel for the blog, one color, no shadows, no gradients, as few grays as possible, minimal fonts, minimal in style…however i found that forcing myself into an unnecessary scenario might be a bit much especially when a different treatment would offer a better solution.  maybe its good that im challenging my self, but perhaps im doing it without cause or benefit.  who knows…i sure dont know.  

one for is certain, this project was definitely a challenge.  id like to do it again. and again. and then again. there are so many ways this project can be handled that i have a hard time picking or deciding on a single direction.  which again, might be where the forced direction came from.  

it would be nice if i didnt procrastinate as well…that would be a huge help.  sleep deprivation isnt good for designing im sure.  i just have a hard time thinking that homework or a project is worth doing until it absolutely has to be done. ha. lame.  

i need to work on fonts…deciding on fonts. implementing effective fonts. idk. again its one of those that if theres a million choices, i will have one hell of a time picked a single one. yay me. i was impressed with mostly everyones in the class. which is good. i like having good work around me. gives the design process more of a push for me knowing that there are others around me progressing steadily while i am staring at a blank page, or blank site map, or blank wire frame, or crapy inspiration. 

however…i am still enjoying the work.  just lots i need to learn. lots. lots. lots. lots. lots. lots. so much, my fuzzy little head might explode. and this soap on the desk im at smells horrible.  its so strong. super strong. its taking over my nose. geez

aslkdgjhaghiqogh ummmmmmmmmmm im hungry. havent eaten in forever! havent slept in days! but atleast im gonna be in austin for the weekend. wooohohohohoooo. its like LA for Texans. is that a good thing tho? LA? hmm…
nCAA basketball didnt go well yesterday…not for me anyways. stupid Arizona, not like i like Duke, just should be Texas in the elite 8. bummer

but blogs are awesome, and i need to get one, i should make one. but im lazy…why am i lazy? 
as long as im doing work tho, im learning.

This project was really different for me than the previous two. On the last two, I struggled with design and ended up completely changing everything at some point in the process. For this project I started out with an idea and it worked well throughout the whole process. I had to tweak some things along the way, but I never completely scrapped my design and started over. That was nice, even though I felt like I was slacking because of how much less time it took me to do it. Then I remembered that I was spending twice as much time as I needed to on the previous projects and I felt better.

I think my technical struggles and weaknesses are definitely getting better. I really can’t think of anything I really struggled with technically on this project. I’m even getting to the point where creating layer folders and naming all the layers is second nature and I feel like the project is incomplete if my layers are a mess. I feel like that is a good sign for my infant web designing skills.

Conceptually, I did have to come back and rework a few things. In my first comp, I didn’t have a place related to each post to tell readers which category each post was related with. I had to go back in a reorganize things a bit to fit it in cohesively. I think I may have some areas on this project where I’m not using a web safe font where one is needed. I tried to correct this, but I think maybe this should be a technical struggle, but I’m not entirely sure where web safe fonts should and should not be.

I think coming up with a solid design idea from the beginning was definitely a sign of improvement to me. I don’t know if that was specific to just this project though because I spend most of my internet time on people’s personal blogs rather than corporate websites. It could be that I’m just more comfortable and familiar with blog themes and that’s what made this process easier.

My sketching got better! I have a few more this time, but I do need to continue learning how to work things out on paper first. I think in the world outside of school, sketching will come more naturally when I have longer amounts of time to commit to projects throughout the day. Frequent interruptions in the schedules of my day make it difficult for me to get in the mind set of sketching. I will keep trying here though!