6 Design Aspects

 A reoccurring theme for my websites it that there isn't really a lot to set them apart from the sophomores and that simply isn't acceptable.


One way I feel that I can make my sites better is to refine the menus and make those smoother.  ESPN (great website by the way) has a great example of a working

My Personal Logo

      The first half of my high school career is over and it was time for a rebrand.  My personal logo from before was now obsolete and needed to be updated.

Original Sketches

      The first part of this rebrand is to create sketches on various ideas for a logo.  This "Personal Logo" is supposed to reflect you and your interests.  I figured that even though baseball is my life, I should probably move on to something else, something that is a little more unique.  Here I thought about how I like to throw on a nice shirt and tie every once and a while and expanded on the thought of having a tie as the centerpiece of the logo.

      After putting in much thought, I narrowed it down to the three ideas which came down to whether or not I should put my name in on the logo or leave it out.  The benefit of having my name on the logo is that it makes it more personal and adds to the personalization of the 

Final Product

logo and puts more of a brand onto it.  The other option was to bring out the tie and really focus on the coloring and patterns.  Overall, I decided to make it a little modification to the design and try to make it as simples possible.

      After working tirelessly on Adobe Illustrator and watching Republicans debate it out i finally churned out this bad boy;

I elimenated as many colors and shapes as I could to make it simple and sleek

Colorization Project

In this project, we took an old, rusty looking picture and touched it up with more color.  Plop an image into photoshop and open up the hue panel from the bottom tab.  Set the saturation to -70 and the rest to 0.  Select the paintbrush and set it to 48px and 100% hardness.  Paint stripes on the picture to your liking.

Jabberwocky Website

Final Result

Keep in mind that I suffer from colorblindness.
I also don't have any graphic design knowledge.

This project was where we had a preset html page and we had to edit the CSS to transform the website into a masterful work of art.  I obviously didn't get the memo that these we supposed to be beautiful.

Don't Make Me Think Blog Post #1

Website with Excessive Background Noise

CNN.com - Although the site is well organized the adds in the background create unneeded noise that distract the viewer and can be somewhat annoying.

Website with low Competing Noise

Youtube.com - Youtube's sole purpose is to allow people to view videos posted by other people and it achieves that.  The simplicity of the website works to its advantage because it is easy to navigate and with the simple color pallet it works well.

Website where there is not obvious clickable areas

Website where it is obvious where to click

Wikipedia.com - Really not a big debacle about this one, the good ole blue link buttons are evident enough of what is clickable or not which is genius if you think about it.

Website not split up into clearly defined areas

MLB.com - The website is simple and it gets right to the point but when you scroll down all of the parts have the same background color and they all blend together at first glance.  Only when you look around you notice they're meant to be separate sections.

Website clearly split up into defined areas

ESPN.com - Unlike MLB.com, ESPN is physically split up into different sections where the viewer can clearly see where the section begins and ends.  It is very streamlined and organized and well put together.

Website that uses good conventions

Website that makes good use of visual hierarchies 

Apple.com - What Apple does good with their website is that they make it very simple with a white background and sans serif fonts and a sort of grey style color scheme.  When there is a big announcement they need to make they just upload a huge picture with a loud background and that will capture the attention of of the viewer right away.

Let Me Educate You on: Wordpress

     Wordpress is a database based website creator and produce.  They will help you create a website for free and host it in their database for free.  If you're looking for an easy way to make and maintain a website, Wordpress is for you.

   

WordPress.com 

There are two sites that you can use to create a website.  The first one is Wordpress.com.  This is if you want to create a site in the Wordpress database hosted by Wordpress.com

WordPress.org

If you want to download the application and host the database on your own computer you go to this site and download it for free.  This allows you more hosting freedom and the ability to host bigger sites.

The Best Sites for Stock Images

     Images are a big component for creating a solid website.  Pictures make the website more interesting which draws more attention to the website.  Getting these pictures can be somewhat challenging due to copyright laws and trademarks.  Stock images are free images that anyone can use.  In this post I will go over four sites that offer stock images on Africa.  This is what I found for each website I used.

Gratisography

Pexels

Unsplash

Morgefile

     All of the pictures came out to be nice and crisp from all of the websites.  My favourite picture came from Unsplash.  The lion looks really cool in the tree and the branches are at the 1/3rd mark on each side.  I found the most photos on morgefile.  There were pages upon pages of photos you can choose from and there were a wide selection of topics.  There wasn't a standout website that was the best to navigate, all of them were fairly simple to find what you needed.

Gratisography
Pro: Photos that can be used for a lot of different sites
Con: You can't search for pictures and there are not that many.

Pexels
Pro:
Con:

Unsplash
Pro:
Con:

Morgefile
Pro:
Con: