I've now completely finished my website :) and have to say, this has been by far the least stressful run up to deadline day i've ever had. All that's left now is for me to write an evaluation (it doesn't say anything about an evaluation in the brief, but I still like to write one to get down on paper exactly why I went about things in the way I did, in a concise way).
Here's my evaluation so far:
I got off to a good start on this unit and quickly came to a decision about the way I wanted my website to look. After the sessions with Lee I decided to download Flash Catalyst and attempt to use this, as I had found the Dreamweaver sessions complicated and I was apprehensive about using the program to make my site.
I found Flash Catalyst extremely easy to get to grips with, and it didn’t take me long to have a functioning website with all the main pages linking together. Unfortunately, I was unaware that Flash Catalyst had a limit on the number of pages per document, being a trial version. After presenting my site in the final crit and explaining my problem I was advised to start my website again in Dreamweaver. At the time this felt like a massive blow as it meant starting again one week before the hand in, but looking back on it now it was definitely a good decision, as aside from the fact that my site ran more smoothly & looked better in HTML, I also got to grips with Dreamweaver & really enjoyed using the program. It made for a more rewarding & satisfactory experience with this brief.
After a couple of days of getting to grips with the software & initial setbacks I managed to put the rest of my site together fairly glitch-free, using a combination of web tutorials, blackboard handouts and a trial and error method. By the Monday I had completed the design and linked all my pages together, just leaving the gallery to sort out.
I downloaded a lightbox javascript file from the internet and put that together with minimal hassle. My only problem at this stage was that although my site was working perfectly when tested in Firefox, none of my links worked in Safari. After seeking help from Neil I was told that the links in the code view were trying to link to the file on my memory stick, which obviously didn’t work once it was launched in the browser. After removing the excess information my site was running smoothly. This has demonstrated to me the amount of time I can save if I seek advice earlier rather than trying to figure things out on my own.
I then decided that the homepage needed something extra, like a slideshow of my work or a single image. Being unable to choose one image that I felt represented my work satisfactorily I decided to add a slideshow. After watching an online tutorial I put one together using insert image viewer in Dreamweaver. Unfortunately this didn’t work, so I had to put together a simple animation in Flash and insert it to my homepage. My site was then complete, and I was extremely pleased with the results.
From a design point of view, I hit on a design that represented my style of work fairly rapidly, and the only change I was advised to make in the initial crit was to change the sky blue colour of the header as it appeared too clinical. I had chosen the blue as it is my favourite colour and I wanted the site to represent my personality as well as my style of working, but could see the negative connotations the colour brought, so changed it to a deep turquoise. I also replaced the gradient with a flat colour as I felt this was true to my usual working style. The other piece of advice was to add something of interest to the header such as an illustration. This led me to coming up with the glow worm, as I wanted to include the positive associations of a lightbulb, such as ideas driven design.
In the final crit I was advised to not use the glow worm character as that could turn some people off my site, so decided to run with the light bulb alone. I feel this was a definite good decision, as the lightbulb is far more effective as an identity.
All in all I have enjoyed this unit the most out of every unit on the course so far, once I began using Dreamweaver. I definitely want to continue making websites, and feel this is possibly the direction I want my career to head in, although I still have a lot to learn. I am now going to attempt to secure live briefs involving web design to increase my skills and my web design portfolio.
