Project 3: A Reflection

With this project, as with all the projects beforehand, my biggest problems stemmed from using Photoshop. The medium is still difficult for me to design with, and though I can definitely see myself improving, I still would not say that I am entirely proficient. That said, I have started to love the nuances of designing in Photoshop, as opposed to Illustrator or inDesign. Photoshop allows me to be extremely detail oriented, and I can easily lose hours adjusting opacity, changing colors, adding shadows, ect.

With this project, one of my initial design problems was using too much reversed-out text. I went into this assignment with a dark color scheme in mind, and started with all my body copy white-on-dark, not realizing the eye strain that much reversed out type could create. My biggest issue after that was using a lighter background color on my dark themed site. I tried a number of variants, and ended up matching the color of my white(er) heading text. I was afraid that the sudden large area of white on dark would draw too much attention, but once it was matched up with images and copy, it all evened out fairly nicely.

Another issue I had was finding a balance between text and images, especially on my main page. I wanted the main page to catch the eye, as it’s the first thing a viewer would see, and really determines whether they view the site or not. My initial design was primarily text, as I imagined a blog had to look. I was stuck on blog themes stemming from Blogspot that were text heavy and image light. After reviewing my inspiration and broadening my mind on what a blog can actually entail, I allowed a lot more images into my site, helping the overall look and feel tremendously. I even went so far as to hide most of the body copy on the first page, only revealing it over a mouse hover-over.

Perhaps my biggest concern with this assignment, and with all the assignments before it, is how difficult it was for me to initially approach the project; and I know exactly why that is: sketches, fragments and wireframes. I always see the huge importance of those pieces after the fact, and then approach the following project the same way, tackling the main project on it’s own, only after I have a single idea in my head. It’s bad design, and leads to a lack of creativity, and I need to stop it. So I will!