Project 2 Reflection

During this project one of my main technical weaknesses was in color choice and type size – although it was very helpful that at every critique people were able to help me refine my choices. I tend to default to using too many colors that are too strong, while also using text that is too big/close in size that dilutes the hierarchy. I also am still lagging behind in technical photoshop skills. While I did try to branch out and integrate textures, they came from a “guess and check” method as I still am very new to the process.

Conceptually, I feel that I may have put too much content on my site, simply because I felt that if I did not have enough text the site would feel empty. This then diluted my attention when it came to time to add details that could have really improved the overall design. Looking at some of the other projects in this class, some of my favorites had relatively little text and simple layouts, but you could tell that there was more attention to small details and subtle visual languages.

The input that I received through the course of this project has helped me become better at avoiding awkward negative space and using subtle visual language. My first rough comp of the home page featured strong gradients, strong textures, and text boxes that weren’t aligned horizontally. Each time I worked on this project, I made it a point to look at all of my visual language options and tone down anything that seemed distracting to me – by the end of the project, they were much more subtle and effective.

From the previous project, I feel like I have started to become more open minded in regards to picking a unique design/layout. While my design was still fairly traditional, I forced myself to think of alternative options in several cases (such as the breakfast,lunch,dinner etc at the top of the menu page) that I ended up liking more than my original idea. I also feel like I was able to put my own personality into the design a bit more than the previous project – part of this may be due to the fact that we designed from scratch this time, but I also feel like I am becoming somewhat more comfortable coming up with my own unique design directions.