Week 7 Reading

Design Beautiful Websites: My quick recap:

Form via function.  Useability; visual appeal; consistency as a result of clear structure based on thirds/golden rectangle. This article provided good inspiration for sketching out layouts for our web sites/pages.

I was unable to print the pdf, and would have liked to have kept the article as a reference. The “fold” at 400 pixels is something I will  think about. Thinking in pixels is new territory…..how big is each of the three monitors I am now regularly using..have no idea.

 Best Faces for the Screen:

Avenir, Blueprint, and Georgia, are fonts that it looks like I would like to use in the future when I am in a “spend more money on computer stuff” mode sicne I don’t currently own them. At the moment it looks like Georgia is the only one I have access to. I probably will download the free font they suggested, but will save that activity til later.

Week 7

Videos:

Using Layers: I am very interested in the color mixer and blender, but couldn’t get them to “go”. I made a vector rectangle, left it selected, and went to the color mixer palette, but the fill color on the main tools palette never changed so of course, neither did my rectangle.

Rollovers: This video was fast. I was amused that it instantly replayed.  Slicing; Over/Up images make sense but will take practice.

Wk 6 FOGE Storyboard

Here is my (rough) storyboard.

Week 6 Website Review

My review of the FOGE website can be found at:

http://bcts-potomac.aacc.edu/128b/18/foge-recommend.html

Week 5 Reading

Top 10 Mistakes in Web Design

Fixed font size as related to CSS style sheets caught my attention, especially the result can be tiny type. I guess we’ll learn this when we get to Style Sheets.

10 Worst Websites to Navigate

The article was very entertaining. Garrish websites are no more appealing than garriish billboards or anything else. Loud harsh colors are hard to take up close. I felt visually assaulted by a few of the sites.  I agree with the authors in particular regarding ads; flashing, and virtually anything video. When I’m  on the web, I’m usually on an information mission, and the last thing I want to do is watch jerky little movies, or search for hidden or tiny links to take me where I want to go.

Week 6 Fireworks Excercise

T o see a larger view of this excercise, please visit: http://bcts-potomac.aacc.edu/128b/18/home-page.png

Fireworks: Chapter 3 & 4

Layers and stacking order are familiar ground, but I’m still amazed by the many shortcuts offered by Fireworks – the shapes and textures are very fast.

Week 6 Reading Assignemt

Article 1.

I never found the 5 Principles of Design, but the page was packed with interesting information and links that I saved in my favorites folder for later exploration. Free fonts and logo design trends especially caught my attention. 

 Article 2

Seomoz.org

 This article was clear and helpful. The suggestion to design from the inside out took me by surprise. I had been pondering the logo, and headear and how to navigate, buyt hadn’t gotten as far as developing any kind of theme that could be carried over. The suggestions to sketch beforehand and do research were reassuringly familiar.

Week 4 & 5 Assignments

Here is my webpage duplication. A larger version can be viewed at: http://bcts-potomac.aacc.edu/128b/18/design.png

 I enjoyed this excercise alot.  Creating a comp in Fireworks first before tackling all of the web nuts and bolts makes alot of sense to me.

The day must be coming soon when Adobe will encompass Illustrator;Photoshop; and Fireworks.  There are alot of shared capabilities between the programs.

Fireworks seems ( and this is not fair ) “cruder” than programs geared toward print production.  Maybe simple tools work because the medium is 72 dpi, and the bright backlighting of the screen livens up even the dreariest graphic. However it is a fun program to use. Fast masks and filters are fun to experiment with.

Week 4 Assignment

The link to my site mapping page is: http://bcts-potomac.aacc.edu/128b/18/week4/mapexample.html

Site Mapping

Moving from image, to page, to linking images, and site mapping is starting to make sense. I was searching a (really basic) website soon after completing the assignment, and was pleased to realize that I was starting to recognize what was going on behind the scenes.

  

Fireworks Reading

Reading about, and exploring the vector and bitmap tools gave me a real appreciation for  Fireworks as a web tool. The ability to make and modify shapes quickly and easily was really impressive. Prior to trying out the program I wasn’t sure why you wouldn’t just stick with Illustrator & Photoshop, but I can see now that the program makes the kinds of things you might want to do on the web really easy and slick.

I don’t have any big questions yet, woops……I do have some. I forgot to look at the file sizes being generated. Do you optimize a photo in Photoshop first? Or do you need Photoshop at all? And I wondered about bitmap text – I was thrilled to see font choices, but the text looked kind of rough.  

cheers,

et

Week 3 Assignment

The link to my index page is:  http://bcts-potomac.aacc.edu/128b/18/index.html

Comments on the week’s assignment. 

Astonishment is the word of the day. When things work (like the link above) the web world is magical.  Previewing my feeble site was exciting.

Other: I continue to expect adding text and photos to a page in Dreamweaver to be more similar to In Design (in other words – easy).  The enviroment at this early stage feels very restrictive (how do I change the leading? how to I change to a specific font? how can I change the FEW colors available?  The site map is hard to follow now, I can’t imagine how I’ll sort out problems when it gets really complex. ….sort of get it, but know I’ll get tripped up.

et