Filed under: CAT274
I finally got a chance to tackle the uploading of the Week 6 classwork. When I was working on it in class, I kept exporting one slice at a time, completely eliminating the benefit of using Fireworks. I decided to let it be and come back to it later with a clearer head, only to realize that it would be difficult work without a copy of Fireworks on my laptop. Upon picking up the project again about 15 minutes ago, I’m a little red-faced to admit that I hadn’t noticed the checkbox for “export selected slice only” that I had ticked before. There’s no way that I can say that I didn’t learn something new in this module.
Here’s my work: http://bcts-potomac.aacc.edu/cat/cat13/week6/navbar.htm
I’m also really finding a lot of use for last week’s Kuler lesson. I’ve been using that site all week for class, work, and anything else that I happen to be doing in an Adobe program. It’s a really useful site.
Filed under: CAT274
Module 6 comes with 4 pieces of e-guidance for web design, some of which i found more useful than others. Here’s a summary of my experience:
Blasting the Myth of Above the Fold – by Milissa Tarquini
It’s interesting to read how far behind the times even designers can fall. I was a bit confused, though, because by the end of the article, it seems like Milissa has gone back on her celebration of scrolling and is reminding you to keep everything important within 600px of the top and pray for a day when people can be trusted. Since I plan to make a photography website, i don’t think I’ll be focusing on content below the fold. In my perusal of photography sites, I’ve noticed that none of the well-made sites ever drop below the fold on my screen. Not just the important content, but ALL of the content is above the fold.
Search Engine Placement Tips – by Danny Sullivan
This was an interesting read. Anything regarding search engine processes and optimization is basically one step away from greek anyway, so I’m glad I have some prior knowledge of submitting a web page for search or I’d be lost. Since my page is a photography page, and my content will be 90% images, I’ll have to be especially vigilant with alt-text.
I liked this article’s focus on the differences between “design” and “art”. In graphics-heavy fields, it’s easy to forget why you’re doing what you’re doing. I’ve never seen the main difference between design and art laid out so clearly. (design is about function, art is about expression.)
8 Web Design Tactics to Help You When You’re Stuck
it’s interesting, (but not surprising) that all of these tips apply to just about any other project I’ve ever been stuck on, whether it’s art or car repair or plumbing.
Filed under: CAT274
I took the advice of some of my classmates and rearranged the “early bird” banner. The bird has been moved and the worm has been shrunk and “squirmified”. It’s amazing what a few gradients can do. During this revision I took the time to do a Google image search for pictures of robins, and I think this banner reflects that. I didn’t want to add too much realism, because as it turns out, robins are pretty ugly birds up close. My smaller banner version is in the works and will be posted when I move my laptop off of my lap and onto a table so that I can reunite with my mouse.
Click the banner if you want a full-sized version.
Updated with mini-banner:
Not much was needed as far as a change in layout.
Filed under: CAT274
For my final project, I’m planning on doing an update of my existing photography portfolio. It’s been about a year since I last redesigned. My old site is stuck at 800×600. This time I’d like to make something fluid, since I don’t imagine many art directors are using 800×600 resolution. Ideally, I’d like to keep my rollover system and create a system where the field that the photos appear in can expand as greater resolution is detected. That way I could have a 500×500 area on one monitor, or a 750×750 on another. I’m excited to have a final project that can be made directly applicable to my life outside of school. The biggest challenge will be figuring out how to make my 3 page website a 5 page website.
In between my thinking, I read a little bit of Vince Flanders’ today too. The man certainly knows his stuff, and it’s always helpful to see examples of what not to do, navigation-wise. He’s no Jakob Nielsen, though. I think the most disconcerting part of the whole experience for me was the nasty layout at the top of the article page. He had some goofy joke graphic in the body near the top with a bunch of ads below it. At first I thought it was part of the ad, because of how it disrupted the flow of the page, but it didn’t link anywhere and had his web address slapped on it. Really, just the presence of ads in the body in that annoying online newspaper fashon was kind of off putting. Shouldn’t a web guru be able to place that stuff on the side, or in the footer? The navigation on his home page was killing me too. I really wanted there to be a bar somewhere and a few choice articles on the front, like Cracked.com. He was pretty funny though. His contempt for architects cracked me up too, being the son of one, and someone who works with them frequently.
Filed under: CAT274
I’ve got a couple of entries prepared for the MyAACC banner contest. I’ll definitely re-tool them due to things like flagrant disregard for the color of robins, but suggestions are welcome.
Filed under: CAT274
This was a great read. All of the in-depth color discussion that the ANGEL slideshow in module 4 left me wanting. I especially enjoyed the comparing and contrasting of the RYB and CMYK color wheels. Although I’ve used CMYK in color correction for print, I didn’t realize that there was a whole school of thought dedicated to the idea of CMYK as tool for achieving more pleasing aesthetics. I’m looking forward to chapter 3 now.
Filed under: CAT274
Just did the work for chapter 4. Man, Adobe is really flaunting CS4. Especially the whole “adding images through Bridge” thing. It’s cool to see what Bridge can do with PSDs in CS4, though. I wonder if Bridge CS4 is as incredibly slow and resource hogging as my Bridge CS2 is. I just circumvented that little part of the exercise beacause I didn’t want to wait for Bridge to boot up for one image. Looks like everything came out alright, though.
http://bcts-potomac.aacc.edu/cat/cat13/Lessons/lesson04/naxos.html
I still don’t feel like I can make much sense of CSS, though. I can manipulate Dreamweaver into making rudimentary CSS, but I’m not really understanding how to determine when to use it.
Filed under: CAT274
I really like this assignment, and not just because it gave me the opportunity to browse Getty Images for groups of clowns and elderly people in speedos. I thought it was really cool to access a stock photo site from the perspective of a Web Designer. All of my interaction with stock photography in the past has been from the point of view of a photographer, so this was a fresh look for me.
The imagemapping was also really neat. It was sort of an “Aha! So that’s how it’s done!” moment for me. Now I’ll have to go back and re-do the header for my online portfolio. It’ll probably load way faster as a single image instead of a sliced up collection of gifs and jpegs.
My imagemapping and cropping exercises can be found at the following link. I won’t bother posting a link to page1, page2, or page3, since if I did the exercise right, you should be able to get to all three of them from the following page.
http://bcts-potomac.aacc.edu/cat/cat13/week4/mapexample.html
Filed under: CAT274
I put off posting a link to the latest classwork in my blog at the end of last class for no particular reason other than laziness, so you’d think I’d be posting now to amend my blog’s conspicuous lack of links to imagemaps. You’d be partly right in that thought too. I did log on to post that link, but I was quickly distracted by Jakob Nielsen’s guides in the Module 4 reading.
I don’t know who this man, is, but Google Images tells me he’s a pretty hip looking character, and his Top 10 Mistakes in Web Design tell me that he should be President of the Internet. Ok, maybe not President of the Internet because of the title’s threat to Net Neutrality, but he’s at least the kind of guy I’d head out for a night on the town with, hunting the people who make those talking iPod ad banners. The portions I most enjoyed in the Gospel of Jakob were on the foolishness of linking to PDFs (I’m looking at you, ANGEL) and how much people hate pages that open in new windows (ANGEL).
One Happenin' Dude
the Gospel of Jakob:
The Color for the Screen article was pretty informative too. At first I was afraid it was going to be another Psychology of Colors discussion like the ones in photography school that prompted all of my wedding photographer friends to paint their doors red. It was, but only for one slide, and the rest of the information involved topics that I’ve always been curious about but never been smart enough to ask, like how hexidecimal values are assigned to colors. To weigh into the discussion at the end, I feel like the 2000s have favorited muted earth tones paired with very loud, bright colors. This might be an idea that I’ve developed through overexposure to photographer’s portfolios and band websites, though.
Color for the Screen (ANGEL link)
I’m pretty familiar with Photoshop, so the videos were mostly review for me, but it’s nice to have a frame of reference as to how Fireworks fits in with the grand Adobe scheme.
Filed under: CAT274
Module 3 involves creating a table and block quotes, importing text from a text file, and further explorations into CSS. With the guidance of the book, I feel like I’m making good progress and understanding what I’m reading. Currently, I’m having a bit of trouble getting the header image on the Santorini page to load, but I think that’s something I’ll be able to fix. Class is about to end and I don’t think I’ll have time right now. My work can be found at:
http://bcts-potomac.aacc.edu/cat/cat13/Lessons/lesson03/santorini.html
