Character Development

A few current sketches of my character design.

Initial Floor Plans

Now I have been thinking about the way I want to progress in my project development, I have drawn rough floor plans. By doing this I have been able to understand which direction I want to continue.

Secondary Research

I borrowed some books from the library to look at church architecture through the ages in Britain. I know that I want my theme to be gothic, so hopefully the research will guide me when designing my environment. 

Primary Research

Animation Project

Initial Ideas Brainstorm

Evaluation- Interactive Project

Evaluation for 'My Portfolio'

I find it hard to know how to begin writing evaluations, but I guess I'll start with my project as an overall. Generally I am very pleased with the results, I am a little frustrated that I could not do some of the things that I had originally contemplated- I'll touch on that later. Considering the project was five weeks long, I planned, designed, created and completed a website (my first). This is quite a large achievement, I finished a six-page portfolio which included pages which allowed people to interact and understand my work.

I planned and developed thoroughly, using my project book. I do regret not generating a few more ideas to work on for the design, but also I know that the design I picked reflects my creativity. I've said before that I wasn't too confident with the software,  I feel that this project was about getting to know the basics. Now I know the basics I am more than eager to learn new methods and skills. The sites I researched amazed and impressed me, so much can be done through flash, jquery and HTML5. On my portfolio I had the idea of having a slideshow gallery on my index page, just to display some text and interesting photos which will really grab the audiences attention. I also considered having an entrance page in which I would have a graphic or photograph. I am really interested in words and how they can be manipulated, this is an idea which I would like to explore in future interactive projects. I did touch on this in this project through my titles. I photographed and used scrabble pieces to make up words- this directly reflects on my interest.

Another way which I explored typography and text through my portfolio and development was by looking at fonts for my page. I eventually decided on Times New Roman, however I altered the character spacing so it appeared a little more interesting. 

 I am really amazed by the scope of creativity which can be displayed on the internet- especially when considering the contrast between some of the first websites to the interactive spaces we see today. Exploring existing examples definitely motivated me into thinking of innovative ways to  create a portfolio.

My design is quite simple but I think it is successful. The feedback I received from  peers and teachers told me that they liked the strong used of colour and thoughtful layout. If I could improve anything on my design I would consider trying to use a photograph as the main content of the page, with the nav, footer and header overplayed onto the image. This is a definite change to my use of black colour.

Dreamweaver was initially daunting, but with some explanation of HTML and CSS I soon found myself picking up the basic codes and being able to put it into practice. Next time I would love to try experimenting with the DIVS arrangement  and try using a two column layout. As I have seen with my research, interesting things can be done with layout and I'd like to implement this. I am planning to take web design as my pathway, therefore I am planning to create mini projects where I practice with layouts and coding- in the long run this will help me massively. My general achievements with the coding and styling has encouraged me that I am able to accomplish things which I never though I was able to. The image below demonstrates my final index page.

My project book is a general reflection of all my thoughts. Looking back over it now I am a little frustrated  with my vagueness on some areas. Whilst I was creating it, during the project I didn't realise that I had not included much on interacting with the audience and gaining feedback. My next steps now it is completed would be to look at ways too gather some thoughts from an audience . I would then take this information and use it to improve my website.

I am generally really happy with my design, especially for a first attempt. I have surprised myself with technologies and I feel I've made something which reflects my personality.

Typography Choices..

Below are the examples of text colour and font for my website- by doing this I have came to the decision on the most suitable style. Typography is very important when it comes to design because it defines the page appearance. 

 

Above are all the fonts I have compared for my webpages, I have found the fonts from the list on Photoshop. I have tried to consider different spacing, colour and style. It's been a touch decision deciding which font to use for my piece. I wanted something which would be suitable and readable for the user- especially if there are large amounts of text. I was struggling with most of fonts, I just felt they were not visually creative  enough. However I discovered the tool of character spacing on Photoshop. This tool allowed me to experiment with the space between each letter by tightening and loosening the space.

Although I looked at Sans Serif fonts, I did not think they worked with the page layout and style as well as Serif Fonts. I have used Scrabble pieces for my titles and because this gives my design a fairly 'traditional style', I need the font to compliment this. With this is mind I was able to rule down my choice of fonts significantly to only Serifs. 

This left me with Times New Roman, a common and popular font and Trajan Pro. Both of which match my page style. However Trajan pro is capitals and unfortunately this isn't what I wanted, I wanted to be able to use elongated capital letters combined with smaller lower case letters. The only problem I have left with Times New Roman is that it still looked too common and did not have a flare of originality.   I used my knowledge of character spacing and used it with Times New Roman- this was much better because the letters were closer together which gave it more appeal with an traditional edge.

In regards to colour, it is obvious that I need to keep it related to my chosen colour scheme of shades of red, black and grey. The singular colours do work well but for added emphasis and links on certain words, I am going to change to alternative colours and add text decorations of italics and bold.