Wednesday, October 24, 2012
St. Charles Project
My second project for my Information Design class will be creating some sort of interactive map for historic St. Charles. I chose this because I have visited this place numerous times ever since I was a little kid. Moreover I was going to focus on a particular tradition that they have every year and something my family and I have attended for countless years, the Christmas Traditions Festival. In this festival there are numerous outdoor vendors selling kettle corn, freshly baked cookies, and hot apple cider. However, it focuses more on the Traditions themselves which first and foremost is Santa Claus. There are numerous Santas lining the street that have cards telling information about them and the tradition that goes with them. There are also other characters as well such as elves and carolers singing up and down the street. I will include various locations and information about them while also including such things that are there year round such as the Ameristar Casino and Resort and the various historic aspects of St. Charles such as the Lewis and Clark boathouse.
Friday, September 7, 2012
Starting my Portfolio
Hello Again, I just wanted to share some exciting news, I am finally putting together a website for my artwork and animations. Started it a couple weeks ago from a site called Bluehost and I am actually using a system called wordpress to build it. I am truly looking forward to making a site honed for me and to what I like, while still doing what is design savvy after all. For right now, it is very much in a prototype stage as in most of the work is still on the art boards in Photoshop. However, as things progress along I hope to start posting screenshots of my designs and eventually have a working site to link my blog to so rather than checking this, you can check out the site along with getting to know me a little bit better.
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
Project 1: A Small Business
The objective of this project was to first come up with a small business idea and then choose all the building blocks to making it happen and finally creating a website. Below are finished products of all the pages created for said project and I will describe my process and what I have learned from it in the paragraphs following.
As stated above, these are the finished products of a long journey on creating a website that looks both clean and professional. The first part of this project was to come up with a business you would like to do. My choices were between either a game shop, a candy store, and t-shirt online store. I ended up going with a candy store. Next, was to get all the extra details out of the way like a name, color palette, and a logo reflecting both. After much deliberation I decided on the name Caramelody Candy, as though it is sweet music for your taste buds. The color palette was a little more difficult to deal with and I went through numerous colors from chocolate and caramel looking colors to taffy and jolly rancher like colors. In the end, I decided a happy medium, both being a challenge and goal, was the best option for such a project. Afterwards, comps were made in Photoshop to reflect everything I needed to make an effective website, in a neat and orderly manner. Below are two pictures that represent my starting out point to my ending point on the homepage.
As you can see many changes were made over the course of a few weeks and despite it looking far better than the first, more changes were and can be made at anytime. That is why if you look at the main page up at the top and compare it with the picture right above this paragraph, a few more things were changed. You won't always make something everybody likes, which is probably the most important thing I learned from this project. Your goal is to just make something the majority likes without losing sight of what it is your advertising.
Coming away from this project I was able to take a look at my strengths and weaknesses. My weaknesses are primarily in choosing a proper color palette and choosing in fonts. I am sure I have others, but those two are the most noticeable. However, my strengths are in keeping up with hierarchy and a nice gridded design. I think my biggest problem in this project was finding the proper kind of inspiration. I felt that I knew what looked good and that was probably one of the dumbest things I have ever done. I know now how important researching the look of other sites is and asking myself, "Why does this work or why doesn't this work?" I am on the internet a lot as are we all, so why don't we look at what is around us to help the continuing flow of good design, while systematically removing bad design. As a designer speaking to other designers out there, take the time to look around you and absorb the material, but also ask yourself numerous questions about what you like from this website and how it compares and differs from other websites. That is an excellent foundation in getting yourself on the right path of becoming an superb designer.
As stated above, these are the finished products of a long journey on creating a website that looks both clean and professional. The first part of this project was to come up with a business you would like to do. My choices were between either a game shop, a candy store, and t-shirt online store. I ended up going with a candy store. Next, was to get all the extra details out of the way like a name, color palette, and a logo reflecting both. After much deliberation I decided on the name Caramelody Candy, as though it is sweet music for your taste buds. The color palette was a little more difficult to deal with and I went through numerous colors from chocolate and caramel looking colors to taffy and jolly rancher like colors. In the end, I decided a happy medium, both being a challenge and goal, was the best option for such a project. Afterwards, comps were made in Photoshop to reflect everything I needed to make an effective website, in a neat and orderly manner. Below are two pictures that represent my starting out point to my ending point on the homepage.
As you can see many changes were made over the course of a few weeks and despite it looking far better than the first, more changes were and can be made at anytime. That is why if you look at the main page up at the top and compare it with the picture right above this paragraph, a few more things were changed. You won't always make something everybody likes, which is probably the most important thing I learned from this project. Your goal is to just make something the majority likes without losing sight of what it is your advertising.
Coming away from this project I was able to take a look at my strengths and weaknesses. My weaknesses are primarily in choosing a proper color palette and choosing in fonts. I am sure I have others, but those two are the most noticeable. However, my strengths are in keeping up with hierarchy and a nice gridded design. I think my biggest problem in this project was finding the proper kind of inspiration. I felt that I knew what looked good and that was probably one of the dumbest things I have ever done. I know now how important researching the look of other sites is and asking myself, "Why does this work or why doesn't this work?" I am on the internet a lot as are we all, so why don't we look at what is around us to help the continuing flow of good design, while systematically removing bad design. As a designer speaking to other designers out there, take the time to look around you and absorb the material, but also ask yourself numerous questions about what you like from this website and how it compares and differs from other websites. That is an excellent foundation in getting yourself on the right path of becoming an superb designer.
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