Website Design Evaluation

Evaluation


What software have you used to create your website, web presence and to put your ideas on the web. Have you used specialist software or free online software or both?
For the final website outcome, I used Dreamweaver CS6, I used Blogger to present my work and my ideas to put them across the web. I used Dreamweaver for my actual website, however, before I used Dreamweaver I used a website called Wix to practise with which was free online software.

What issues did you have in designing your website?
I didn't come across any problems when designing my website. I used Photoshop and Wix to design it, and it all went the way I wanted it to.

What issues did you have in making your website?
I had a few complications with Dreamweaver as I got slightly confused to begin with. I followed a step-by-step guide on how to do the coding, the image re-sizing, the layout, the text and etc. I got confused with a few parts of making my website on Dreamweaver and I did a few steps wrong at first, but I fixed it and the process went fine after that.

Was it easy to get primary resources? What did you do?
I took pictures to put onto my website. The pictures I took were mostly landscape and scenic and I tried to make sure that the pictures I used all linked together so that it would make sense to anyone viewing my website.

Coding: Did you use it, understand it or does it not make any sense at all?
I used coding when making my website on Dreamweaver. I thought it was quite easy, I didn't have to use a lot of coding, just adding div tags to make my captions and my pictured editable and so that if you click a certain option the expected topic will appear.

Did you produce interactive web pages? Were they creative and functional?
I didn't get to this stage. I tried to do this, following the tutorial, but I simply didn't have enough time to complete it.

If you were to do it again, what would you do differently?
I don't think I'd do it much differently if I was to do this project again. I may have spent less time designing and more time actually making my website so I had more time to fix the errors that I made. However, I'm satisfied with the outcome.

Did you find it easy or hard to follow the tutorials?
I found the Dreamweaver tutorial quite difficult, because there were so many steps, it was hard to keep up and I ended up confusing myself with some of the steps but apart from that I haven't found any other complications.

If you had more time, would this be something you would like to do more of? Would you like to revisit web-design next year?
I don't think I'd do more website designs out of choice because I feel that it isn't a strength of mine, I didn't feel like I excelled in this project, Dreamweaver is a complicated software and I'd probably avoid using it unless necessary.

Preperation

Dreamweaver

So far, I have added the thumbnails at the bottom of the page and added div tags onto the template so that some parts on the sheet are editable. I found this complicated because the instructions are not easy to understand but I have tried to get to this stage. 

    I have added the full images onto the 'enter images here' div tag to the correct image so that when you click a thumbnail, the suitable image will appear.

I have tried to add  transitions to the page but I found this difficult to do because I have done something wrong in the process of creating the website on Dreamweaver. 

Copyright

What is Copyright? Copyright is a legal concept, it gives the creator of the original piece of work exclusive rights to it, but usually, it's for a limited time. It means "the right to copy" in most cases, but it also gives the copyright holder the right to be credited for this piece of work, they also choose who gets the financial benefits of the piece and other related rights. You have to pay for your rights because this piece of work is now yours under the law. Examples of artists who have already had copyright put onto their work are people such as Andy Warhol, he has his own museum for his work to be viewed. Another artist is Lichtenstein who is famous mainly for his pop art and has his work copyrighted.

Libel and Sensitivity to Society: All people are different, which means there's a lot of mixed opinions about different topics. If you want to show your work or you want to speak out about it, you should think about other opinions and views before you make these points heard. It may result in being offensive or in someone complaining if you don't do so. Many examples are websites such as YouTube where people have uploaded offensive videos and people have replied their opinions, Tumblr is also another site where people may upload an offensive picture, GIF or video and it causes arguments globally.

Decency: Decency often means rude, inappropriate and or explicit work which has been uploaded for the public. People can control this by reporting said work or sending a complaint. People can also warn the viewer by reminding them that they are entering a explicit website etc.

Safeguarding: Safeguarding can be related to 'decency' but this mostly involves children and what they can view when they're surfing the internet. This is mainly installed in school computers so that children cannot see anything inappropriate or links which could cause damage to the computer like viruses.

Tutorials, Logo Designs and T-Shirt Designs

Photoshop Tutorials

I've been looking on Youtube for tutorials on different effects on Photoshop, as I would like to create a couple of logos that I could use for my website and for my t-shirt designs. This is the first tutorial I looked at > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rlyv9Juk04 it's quite long but I think I got the hang of it quite quickly. Here are images of the development and an image of my outcome:

Logo Number 1 Development:

Logo Number 1 Outcome

The outcome of my logo was successful but could be improved. I like the shattered glass effect, but I think it could of been portrayed better if I'd of made the shadow effect on my lettering work. I didn't add a separate text layer, therefore the shadowing on my letters didn't work as effectively as I'd like. I'm going to create a logo for a different band in a new effect and see if that works any better than this did.

Logo Number 2 Development

I will now try out a second logo on Photoshop using Youtube, if it comes out successfully i'll add it to a T-Shirt design.

Tutorial Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYGxhiEKGY0

I did a step wrong at this stage and as you can see it went incredibly wrong, I watched over the tutorial again and realised what I'd done wrong, I improved this fault and I got the outcome I wanted. 

Logo Design Number 2 Outcome

I thought that this outcome was more successful than the last and it was a much simpler tutorial to follow, it looks exactly how I wanted it too. I made a mistake in the process but I improved it and I'm satisfied with this now.

T-Shirt Designs

T-Shirt Design Number 1

T-Shirt Design Number 2

I prefer my first design as the background fits with the logo. I prefer the second logo, but it doesn't really fit with the T-Shirt.

Photoshop Website Design

Website Layout on Photoshop

I've been experimenting with designs for my website on Photoshop for when I do it properly on Dreamweaver. I'm mainly looking at colour schemes and the organisation of my images.

Website Template

Free Online Website Template

I used a free online website template to practise making a website on and to show website designing skills. The website is called 'Wix.com' and I found it quite easy to use. After practising on this, I will eventually create a website from scratch using Adobe Dreamweaver CS6. My website is http://bryonywardx.wix.com/bryonyphotography and within my website, I've uploaded some primary images.

Local Website Design Companies

Local Website Design Companies


http://www.creativespark.co.uk

Creative Spark
Creative Sparks are a creative agency based in Manchester. They basically create logos and the graphics for advertisement for large businesses. They've worked with massive companies like JD Sports, the BBC, Universal and the Co-operative.







http://www.fluidcreativity.co.uk

Fluid Creativity 
Fluid Creativity are also an agency based in Manchester that deal with helping companies promote with their Graphics, however, this company does that with website design. They try and boost company sales and etc by making their website really emphasise what the shop's about, they promote the company and give them a huge online presence by creating designs that will attract the businesses more customers. They work with companies all over the place, including America.

Social Networking

Social Networking


Social networking has many pros but also cons. One of the pros of a social network is that it's a good opportunity to spread your work broadly across the internet so that people all over the world can see it. It could be anything from art work, photography, a performance or graphic work, social networks allow you to get feedback on it and gather different opinions. The internet allows you, potentially, to turn a hobby into a profession, as the rest of the population that has social networking sites can bring up your 'views', 'likes' etc and you could be recognised. Places like 'Youtube', millions of people everyday upload videos of them 'Vlogging', singing, making hair and makeup tutorials etc for everyone else to watch. You can also earn money off of the videos you make if you turn it into a career to upload videos.

However, like I said, there are many cons of social networking. You can gain good feedback on your work but you can also receive negative and sometimes rude feedback and comments. There are people on the internet that deliberately go to people's videos to abuse the person, people like this are commonly known as 'internet trolls' and this is a definite con because people deliver abuse on a regular basis to people trying to get their point across on a social network, or uploading a video or even just on personal pictures that you put on to your profile.

These are the most known social networking sites where you can upload your work:

- Facebook

- Twitter

- Tumblr

- Youtube

- Blogger

- Flickr

I think that Youtube and Tumblr are the best two websites you can use to put your work onto the internet. My reasons for this is because, firstly, on Youtube, it's so popular that most of the population are on it, therefore if you upload a video, because it's a website used solely for sharing videos, you're more likely to get views on your video and feedback, it also spreads extremely quickly as you can share  Youtube videos on all other social networking sites. Secondly, I think Tumblr is a fantastic website to share primary images if you're interested in Photography, you can tag the images you share to your followers. If someone searched the same word you used as a tag, your picture would come up and people can then re-blog your photo to their followers and it seems to me the quickest way for your images to be seen.

http://thisisgen0cid3.tumblr.com/photography *sorry for the swearing*

I've uploaded some of my photography to Tumblr to illustrate my point of social networking sites being convenient for people that want to make sure their work is seen.

Good Websites and Bad Websites

Good and Bad Websites

I've been looking at a range of websites and deciding which I like and dislike for various reasons, some of them being the ones I'm writing about below.

Good:

Tumblr
Tumblr is a popular social networking site where you can upload your own pictures and reblog other people's pictures to put on your own personal blog. I like this website, I think the layout including the theme and the way the posts are on your dashboard is simple, it's very easy to use. It's a good way of advertising and it's also good to promote your photography.





Youtube
Youtube is a popular video streaming website. It's a website where you can upload primary and secondary videos and watch other people's videos. You can find near enough any video you want to see by typing it into the search bar. Thousands of people use Youtube everyday. It's a good website because you can advertise yourself singing, playing instruments or just making a video that will go viral. It's a good place to be recognised for a talent or etc. I like Youtube because it's extremely entertaining and you can listen to any music you want free of download or fuss, which you can't do on many other websites. I also like the layout and it's really easy to use.



















Bad:


Primark 
The Primark website is very basic. It doesn't advertise the clothes very well at all and you can barely browse the products as they don't have an online shopping option. This means that to browse their clothing properly you have to actually go into the store, which isn't a very popular option in this day and age, as a lot of people find it much more convenient and just easier in general to shop online. The fact that you can't purchase anything online on the Primark website means that you can't see the prices of the clothing either, so you'd have to go in store if you saw one of the few things they do advertise on the website and if you wanted to purchase it, you wouldn't know the cost.





Tesco
The Tesco website is very busy. I think that if you put a lot of images and colours on your homepage, it looks like you're trying to advertise everything at once and it's too much for the customer. There should be a drop down option in stead of all the icons placed all over the main page. You can however purchase your food online and get it delivered to your house, but I can't imagine it being easy to shop on this website because it's so busy against a white background, it could be organised much better.

My Chosen Topic

My Chosen Topic


For my project, I'm looking at t-shirt designs and designing t-shirts for bands. I will take pictures of existing t-shirts which I can use on my website and then take the designs that I already have and try and find inspiration in them. I will also design logos for t-shirts, as well as band art, and once I have my designs I'll put my primary images onto my website.

I've been looking at band t-shirt websites to inspire me for my own website. I like this website because the layout is really simple and it tells you all the information you need to know about purchase and other details. The designs are really complex yet nice, they have a lot of modern designs for old bands which is what i'd like to do. ------>

• http://store.amplifiedclothing.com/index.php

Another website I looked at is 'Electric T-shirts'. I didn't like this website as much because the layout is a bit all over the place, there's too many fonts and colours and also they don't show a lot of their merchandise on the homepage, so it fails draw you in as much. ------>

• http://www.electrictshirts.co.uk

Inspiration
I've been looking at different band logos from all different eras and their designers to inspire me for my own work.

I started researching who designed a few of my favourite logos. The first designer I looked at is called Ivor Arbiter, he designed the famous "drop-T" logo for The Beatles, which started out on Ringo Starr's drum kit and then became registered as a Trademark by Apple Corps in the 1990's. I love this logo as it's so simple, but when you see this font, you instantly think of Ringo Starr's drum kit in the 60's.

I then looked at another designer called  John Pasche who designed the logo for The Rolling Stones. It was a cartoon-style huge pair of lips and the designer said he was influenced by Mick Jagger's appearance. The design of the lips was simple yet very effective. I think that most people would know that logo if you showed it to them. It also became very popular in this generation as a print on a t-shirt, a lot of places like H&M made their own designs of this t-shirt and people bought it solely for the design, not because they were a fan of or even knew who The Rolling Stones were.

20th Century- Mood board

Mood Boards

This is a mood board I made for art in the 20th century from around the 1940's to the early 2000's.

This is a mood board I made specifically for the era between the 1960’s and the 1980’s, using Pinterest, because this was a very influential era.

Overview

20th Century Art Movement

I'm looking at art in the 20th century and the movement which art made throughout time. I have used the website Pinterest because it allows you to 'pin' photos and organise them into a mood board.





Art Nouveau

Art Nouveau is a form of art which was quite popular and recognised in the 1890's until 1910. It was then re-descovered in the 1960's. It's considered a New Art because of the style it's in, it's inspired by natural floral patterns and curvy effect. This specific form of art is found around Europe, like Paris, London and Vienna. I like this style of art because of the floral and natural patterns, I think it was a really important movement.

http://pinterest.com/bryonywardx/art-nouveau/










Cubism and Picasso      

Cubism is another form of art in which many artists were inspired by and created many different outcomes from the style. Cubism began between 1907 and 1911 and has increased in popularity throughout time. The creator of Cubism was Picasso. He was an artist who was around in the 20th century. He created many cubism pieces and has made multiple famous paintings including Les Demoiselles d'Avignon which was created in 1907. I really like Picasso's cubism work, I think his work would of been really inspiring to many artists.

http://pinterest.com/bryonywardx/cubism/












Surrealism 

Surrealism is a cultural movement which was discovered in the 1920's, it's a form of art that's best known for its style. This is because surrealism is more creative and different to the original art. It's best known for it's originality.


http://pinterest.com/bryonywardx/surrealism/

Introduction to my blog: