Monday, 15 November 2010

Color Choices.

The colour I chose is very important to me. To say its my favorite colour is cheesy and an easy choice. However I think that due to my use of yellow in my work from the last few years and my choices made in fashion and objects I own being predominantly yellow shows that you could say its my “favorite.”

Yellow has very useful attributes for this task, its a warming color that can cheer the viewer. I want people to feel positive about myself and my work as positivity can help people get on side. Yellow has been proven to stimulate mental activity and brain power, this can be drawn from nature as yellow is a sign of danger and fear, therefore makes our brains think. This connotation of fear and danger can help, again, move away from the simple, easy, relaxing nature of the product and create a subconscious balance in the mind. Yellow in real life can instantly be associated to the American taxi cab, this backs up the slightly American feel to the text as this is the widest audience and where I'm looking to attract work. On a white background yellow can melt into the surrounding area and disappear, this can relate to my personality. On the front a very confident person however secretly wanting to melt into the background with others when its the right time.

I also wanted to add a third colour. A neutral tone to compliment the yellow and white. I chose a light grey as i felt this didn't over power the other colours and added a subtle tone to the site.

Aperture Gallery's

I have chosen to use HTML generated by Aperture for mac. i have chosen this for a variety of reasons. First of all i think the gallery is beyond my knowledge of html when i started this site. In retrospect i think that i could in the near future create something similar. However this website shows my skills and abilities. As a Aperture Certified Pro i felt it acceptable to show my skills with aperture and integrate the html from the programme.

Website Map

This shows the map and tree of my site.

Final WireFrame

I Chose this final idea for the following reasons;


1. Horizontal Layout
         Has a web 2.0 feel and look
         Moves away from print based design
2. 3 main elements
         gives the user clear obvious choice
         3 elements balance out the space and enable the elements to be horizontal too
3.Header
         Central header gives the logo impact attracting the eye initially and therefore becoming a memorable name
4.menu bar
         as everything is aimed at the centre of the image a new style of menu bar was needed 
         i chose to link it up with the header to keep the layout to keep the space uncluttered 
5. Text Space
         this central area has a wider space to make reading easier on the eye and linking the three images above together creating a whole site rather than separate elements  
          




From the last idea i thought about including three main elements. Therefore i came up with this idea. I like the regularity between the elements. They are however quite rectangular and long. Some of my content and imagery is horizontal rather than vertical. I also need space for text and logo's. From this i will finalise my idea.

WireFrame Five

This design takes ideas from the previous two. I wanted this idea to bring the good points from the other ideas. It shows a logo and navigation bar at the top of the page to allow for simple use and navigation of the site. Then there is four boxes laid out to look like one main box. This idea is going in the right direction however i feel that four elements is wrong as im aiming for three main area's on my site.

WireFrame Four

This idea progressed from my previous idea. It shows one large area of imagery. I would add elements like, navigators, logo's and content within the frame. The main problem i have with this idea is it looks like a flash type design. As my site is made in HTML it would look like i ether didn't no how to make a flash site and therefore was mimicking the design. Or that i was not aware of the message that the design was sending out. As my site is there to present my skills and ability's i dont feel that the possible negative views are worth the risk. Therefore i will re asses the options after a few more ideas.

WireFrame three

For my third design i went back to a horizontal concept. The idea behind this was to show two pictures on entry. one slightly larger than the other to create a stimulating composition due to the irregularity. Then the user could select ether image to take them further. I really find this idea useful however in its form at the moment im not sure if it works with my content and ideas i have for the site. I hope to use ideas from this concept in my final idea.

WireFrame Two

       

 This is my second wireframe. This is a vertical design showing a header,content box then three columns for content .
I Chose this idea as a strong contender for my final concept. However the content of my website is visual opposed to typographic. Therefore a constrained text area would be lost due to the lack of content and the picture area would become overcrowded.

First WireFrame





















This is the first wire frame design i have chosen. It is a horizontal layout showing three main elements. The first is the header and navigator area. This is aligned to the top left as most users will, first look at the top left. This is due to most printed media starting in the same place. Most websites follow the conventions from printed media. As a starting point this is a useful resource to gain ideas from. However in the last few years designers and websites have broken and moved away from printed media conventions. To show my design skills, ability's and knowledge of web design i hope to be as innovative as other fresh designers.

Portfolio Website,

The Brief;

Make a minimum 3 page website about you, one of the pages needs to have a
contact page with a form requesting as a minimum the user¹s name, email
and a message. The content of the form needs to be validated using
Javascript and should be sent to
http://www.sam-i-am.com/cgi-bin/echoform.cgi for processing. The site needs
to be built using XHTML and CSS and must pass level 1 compliancy. There
should be images as well as text for content.


I have a few initial ideas about how to tackle the brief. I will use past experience designing my own website as well as natural and digital influences. 

To start off i have drawn out a set of wire frame's to help design the layout for the website they will now follow in the other posts.