Finished!

All finially handed in and i'm off home for the easter!

Post Its!

Right, originally wanted the comments to be posted onto separate post its which layered over each other but as ive been worrying about everthing else to do with this site havnt had time to try and implement this so it has ended up as two rows of five postits, which looks better than nothing!

The dreaded PHP DONE!

All my PHP, finally done and dusted! not exactly flashy but it took long enough to do all that! woop!

Change of scenery!

Had a bit of a change of mind and decided i didnt like how dark the previous background made the whole website feel so decided to change it for a lighter, but still quite scruffy and a little bit grungy looking. Think it looks a lot better now, and Adam seems to like it far better so by far worth it!

Another bit of Flash!

Just about finished my first big bit of Flash work, I have made the main viewer for Adams work. On the main page when the user hovers over each project name it fades a few bits of work from the project. Then in each project, clicking on the pictures fades it into the main frame. Think it looks quite good. Quite simple in what it does, but it took me a long time to actually get it all working. Just kept on buggering up all the time for no reason. Oh well, only couple of bits on it left to do!

Last of the Flash!

Just finished my last Flash element of Adams website! Ended up making a part for his about me section.When you hover over each red word, pictures form each different element fade into the page. Then when the user takes the mouse off the word the pictures fade out and the ones for the next word hovered over start to fade in.

Pretty happy with this and Adam likes it too. Now just for the PHP! gonna be fun.

Done a little bit of Flash!

Done a couple of little bits of flash. Figured if I did two small bits and two big bits that should make up three proper Flash elements. The card pinned to the top left will be in the corner of every flash active page and flickers every so often, just to draw attention to it.The other is the main contact card in the middle which is based on Adam's actual business card. When someone goes onto the contact page, the card bounces in from the right hand side.

Finished design of artists site!

Finished the design now, decided to go with a grungy background to match the feel of the paper. Also gone with quite a rough font for the main buttons to match this feel. Thinking it looks quite good, now just getting it to a working website! woop.

Artists Website

Decided to make the main center page a bit more interesting by merging this tattered background into it. Iv'e also faded some coffee stains and splatters into it as well to make it look worn and tattered, think it looks better?

Artists Website

I have made Adam's business card on photoshop to use in different parts of the site

Artists Website

Started to design Adams website, a couple of pics here of how its looking:

Artists Website Update

I have decided to create a website for my house mate Adam Walden who is a Graphic design student at Nottingham Trent in his 3rd year. He is looking for a website to promote some of the work he has been doing over the past few years and hopefully i will be able to make a good one for him.

Cool banner ads!

http://www.bannerblog.com.au/2010/02/bmx.php
http://www.bannerblog.com.au/2010/01/infiniti_starplay.php
http://www.bannerblog.com.au/2010/01/best_buy_geek_squad.php
http://www.bannerblog.com.au/2009/11/apple_ipod_next_level_fun.php
http://www.bannerblog.com.au/2009/10/smart_maps.php
http://www.partyacrosstheinternet.com/ralph.html
http://www.bannerblog.com.au/2009/06/kelloggs_allbran.php

Rockatee:

This is the website 'Rockatee' created by Maleika Esther Attawel, a freelance web designer living in Germany.

http://www.rockatee.com/portfolio/

Good:

The home page is very striking and extremly well designed, using a few different over lapping elements included in the header and main body. Yet the colour still isn't over powering
The RSS feed at the bottom of the page oviously keeps the user up to date with the most recent blog entries.
Simple to use navigation, with some more important parts made into giant buttons to make it even easier to get to.
Fills the screen nicely, even with such a big screen as background isn't one solid bit of colour, it intesad has a nice slight pattern to it.
The about page is well done, as it helps you to get the know what they are like in a simple, and fairly quick way.
The portfolio page is well layed out and easy to use.

Bad:

On the home page and the Portfolio page, smack bang in the middle of everything is a big picture of her latest project, which is a bit distracting, and doesn't quite fit with the rest of the site design.
The RSS feed is at the bottom of every page, even the blog page, which has the exact same things on. Also, i think it is a bit too much having the last 4 posts as it is quite a lot of text in a mainly image run site.
Can't view full websites from her portfolio page.
All of the pages match with second header and overlapping boxes apart from blog page.

Things I would take away from it:

The use of colours, not just using 2 bright colours, instead use a range of flatter colours.
Use a set of subtle repeating backgrounds, draws you in no matter what screen size.

Another re-work of Jugglers!

I know I havn't really posted much about this re-work but here it is, not 100% done yet but it's almost there! I have to say, I MUCH prefer this one to the previous! Pretty sire everyone else can see why too!

Jugglers re-work

This is where i first started to go with my re-work, instead of making the entire background juggling balls, I just made it a strip, so it's not entirely full on colour.



I wanted to create a different navigation for part of the site, so wanted the user to have to hover over a juggling ball and on each different segment it changes what it says for each product etc.



I then decided that I would combine the two ideas but when I put the juggling balls as the background with the original colours it didn't look very good, or right, especially because of the such dark background. This is why I decided to completely re-do it with new darker colours and personally I prefer it.



Thinking that it wouldn't look right putting pictures and text directly over the juggling balls I decided to create a box and partly opaque background for it.

Jugginling Website

This is a picture from a Juggling website called oddballs:

http://www.oddballs.co.uk/?gclid=CJmaopSHuJ8CFReY2AodKjtw0Q

For part of the website they have a series of looping clips in which people are demonstrating the different products the shop has to offer, they are also links to the pages where they can buy the products by clicking on the videos.

I think this is quite an interesting idea, as it makes the site a lot more interesting to look at and draws you in. I intend to try and use something similar in my website.

Bit of a change in Direction

After finding out my results for first term and having a chat with Shaun I have decided to change my plans for the Jugglers website which I am currently making.
This is where i have got with it so far:



Seeing as it it getting a wee bit boring, I have decided to try and remake it a bit different, maybe still using this in part of it.

2 Week Website Project

As we have to create a website for an existing shop near by, my first thoughts were for a skate shop in Nottingham called Non - stop, especially as they have a really badly laid out website. Some of the parts f the website are very technical, but visually it's a bit crappy. Also, there are a hell of a lot of things that they sell at that shop, so it would take quite a long time to make.

href="http://www.nonstopsportuk.com">/



I have therefore settled on the shop Jugglers in the lace market.

This is their current website which is currently under production by a local Nottingham company.

href="http://www.jugglersonline.com/">



I've started on some wireframes and will post them when I've picked one and started plumping it out.

Non web designer 3

Tim Burton
I'm not entirely sure if Time Burton counts as a designer or not, but I have chosen to do him anyway. Ever since a young age I have loved The Nightmare Before Christmas... I know... but how the whole thing looks is absolutely amazing! Again, like Vivienne Westwood, I like the fact that you can tell apart all of his animated films and short from anything else, yet they still don't quite have the exact same feel all the time.
As we learnt last year, he was not the first to use the style that he does, the sort of twisted and strangely shaped look. Yet his is still vastly different to those which influenced him, and you would never mistake one for the other.
Being a fan of MOST of Burton's work, I fell that it will influence the work I produce by trying to stylise some aspects of it based on his work. This will only be done where it is necessary and applicable though. It's not as if I'm going to go out of my way just to get a minor reference to him in.
Tim Burton manages to make some incredible films, but most couldn't more different from each other (apart from the animated films), for example, Big Fish and Batman Returns, two of my favourites of his. And even though he seems to have a bit of an unhealthy crush or relationship with Jonny Dep, I will be looking forward to and influenced by his films for years to come. I should think that this will show in some pieces of my work also.

Non web designer 2

Richard Rogers
I have chosen Richard Rogers as my second non web designer. The main reason I chose Richard is because he has sculpted so many skylines now it is incredible. Also I have always been a fan of the millennium dome, mainly for how much different it is to anything, not only in London, but the world.

This is Terminal 4 at Madrid-Barajas Airport. Normally airport terminals are just clinical, straight up and down, with nothing else to them. I mean I would go to this Airport just to see the terminal, then fly back.
Richard Rogers has managed to make spectacular things from usually mundane and boring sites or tasks. One thing that is definitely not mundane or boring, is one of the projects his firm is in charge of at the moment, designing tower 3, which will stand where the twin towers used to be, and will serve as the new world trade centre.

This should be magnificent when finished.

From Richard Rogers work, I take the knowledge that not all of your work has to be a hit straight away, as the millennium dome wasn't liked by most when it was first built, but most people now have managed to warm to it more, so much they keep finding different uses for it so it doesn't just get knocked down like it was planned to be from the start.

Non web designer 1

Vivienne Westwood
I chose Vivienne Westwood as one of my designers as she is part of one of the biggest design aspects of the world, clothing, yet she is still so different, and you tell a piece of her clothing a mile off, even if it is a simple piece. This influences me greatly, as to have such a widely recognisable and desired look is what ever designer strives for. Particularly I like the more extravagant pieces she makes, as they truly are nothing like what anyone else has or will ever do.
Another thing I think is brilliant about her, is that she doesn't take any crap from anybody. This is best shown by her walking out of the Sex and the City film premier, for which she created a wedding dress, after only 10 minutes "publicly criticising the clothing featured as being frumpy and boring". Not exactly the approach to take if a client doesn't like what I design for them I know, but still, you have to admire it.
Vivienne Westwood creates her pieces in different collections. This could be taken into thought when it comes to web design, as you don't want to make everything exactly the same all the time. Taking a fresh look at things every so often would help freshen my designs and make them a bit more creative.
Another thing to take from Vivienne Westwood would be to not just follow the trends of the time because you know people are going to think that it's ok. You have to take a chance and become the leader of trends, not the follower of one. This will make work more well known and in demand than the wannabe copiers.

Waterfall and Whirlpool software development models.

Waterfall
The waterfall development model is designed so that you only have to go through every part of the design process once. For each and every step you have to make sure that every little thing is finished before proceeding onto the next. The greatest strength of this method is the fact that you have to be very thorough and analyse every part of each section because it will be the only chance you get before moving onto the next part. It is also argued that it makes the development of a project cheaper as it is said to be quicker. this is because as each problem develops, it should have been found at its most basic stage, and therefore at its easiest to fix. This in turn makes the whole process more efficient.

Whirlpool
In the whirlpool development model you begin the development at one point which you keep cycling back to. With this model you constantly re-evaluate and re-develop all aspects of your design until you are happy with it all, instead of each piece individually one after the other. The downfall of this model however is that it takes quite a lot of time to keep going back over the same aspects over and over improving them each time. This also makes it hard to time manage as it is hard to say how many more cycles it will take to complete the product, unlike the waterfall method, where you can clearly see how much of the project is complete and what is left to do.

Both have their strengths and weaknesses. Personally I think that the Whirlpool method of development will work best when making a website. This is because it is very hard to get things 100% perfect in each stage so that you can progress onto the next. Also, as you are constantly getting new feedback from the client and others, different parts will need to be changed from each stage. This will really scrap the waterfall method from use.