Archive for ‘Reflection (P1)’

This entire process has been a fun challenge for me. I’ve never tried to design a website interface, and I don’t use photoshop all that often, and those are both things that I want and need to change. I think my biggest downfall in this project was that I got started a bit late, and spent too much time dealing with the technical aspects and the wireframing, and didn’t develop a successful visual language in my final piece. The only elements I really have are the translucent grey backgrounds and the heavy blue title bar and tool bar buttons, which don’t really have anything to do with eachother… On top of that, I have trouble working in photoshop, therefore do all my working in illustrator and have to transfer everything to photoshop, and get to deal with any translation errors.

There are some areas in my piece that I feel like are more successful than others. I do like the translucent grey background boxes, even though I said earlier that they don’t really tie into the visual language with the blue banner up top. I don’t want to brag and say they are amazing, because they aren’t but they do look like something you would actually see on a real website, which to me is achieving the desired outcome.

I don’t want to say this project has grown my skills from classes in semesters past (it has) but this whole class is going to improve my vision as an artist. Not to say that I am going to walk out of this class as an amazing web designer, but it is opening up my horizons, expanding my skill set, and if nothing else, at least I can be more discerning and have a more critical eye when browsing the web.

A few things I need to learn to improve are 1.) GETTING STARTED EARLY…. I always get a late start on my projects and have to rush to finish them instead of taking time to refine them. 2.) Creating stronger visual languages in my pieces… Already been said, but I need to work on creating new concepts that flow and are appealing to the eye. 3.) creating successful type languages and hierarchys… I think my over all hierarchy in my piece did its job, but it could have been done in a more visually appealing way… I’ve never been too great when it comes to font choices… 4.) I need to become more fluent in photoshop…

This project was my first ever web design and I really enjoyed it. However, since it was my first web design there are plenty of mistakes and weaknesses that I know I need to improve on for the next project.

One thing that I found incredibly helpful for this project is the importance of grid structure. Having a 16 column grid really helped my design to have a nice flow without too much on the page or too much negative space to make it feel awkward. However, even though the grid helped, I still struggled with where to put things on the page so that it flowed nicely and made sense.

Another issue that I had with the design is over using motifs like the ribbon and the color blue. My first rough with the blue ribbon was over powering because of how much I used it so after we talked about it class, I toned it down… a lot. I think that even though I only used the ribbon two times per page, it was subtle enough to not be over powering but enough to get a personal feel for the website.

I think my biggest struggle for this project was finding a design, color choices, and type choices that were all cohesive to where it had one solid feel for imprint. I feel like I spent most of my time looking at inspiration and gathering type faces and looking and color palettes than I did actually putting the website together. Spending a lot of time working on hierarchy and type choices is something that I need to improve on, but I know that the more time I spending designing, the better I will be at it because hopefully some time in the near future it will become a habit rather then something that I stress out about.

I really enjoyed this project and I think that overall, it is fairly well done (especially considering this is my first one to design). It makes me really excited for what were going to be doing on the next project because I feel like I’m getting the feel of web design now.

When I began this project it was kind of overwhelming, and I didn’t know where to begin. I made my wire frames easily but trying to figure out the design when there are so many choices and options, and to make everything fit and with proper hierarchy and no awkward space., it was a huge challenge.  I started designing in photoshop and realized quickly that in order to get the level of design that I wanted, I would need to design everything in illustrator first, and then move it to photoshop, and figuring all of this out was difficult. This project was way more time consuming that I originally thought. The details in web design are way more important than in anything I have ever designed before. One area in my design that I think needs serious improvement is my side bars. I realize they take up way too much space and they should be much smaller and less important. I also struggled with type size. When your face is so close to the screen it is hard to realize that the size can be much smaller to be readable, and that includes the imagery as well. I need to improve my spacing and usage of the grid system in a more efficient way. I had an idea but fitting that into the grid was difficult. After this first project I have a feel for how this process works and I think moving forward into the next assignment I will be able to organize the content in a much more usable layout. Another area I struggled with is the small visual language components, and by that I am talking about the hierarchy within the small blocks of text and images, like for the articles summary that leads you to the main article. Arranging all of the text, choosing fonts that go well together, and finding body copy that is readable and the correct size is way more difficult than I had originally anticipated. I have realized that I need to take a step back while I am working and really look at what pops out first and what needs to be the main focus of the page.