1. Identify purpose of website, the target audience and the audience needs
2. Identify website content appropriate to the target audience
3. Make websites accessible
4. Project management tasks and responsibilities
(Purpose)
Online presence
Increase profile
Standardise
(Target audience)
Potential employers
Potential clients
Other designers
Like minded people
Education
Stochists
(Audience needs)
Your identity - who you are
Your work - portfolio
Contact details
Prices (look like it's an offer)
Feedback proof (show full project for client with feedback from client)
Organisation is the key
(Identify appropriate content)
Look at other designers websites
Ask target audience what they would be looking for in a website
Ask other designers for advice
Accessible - needs to be online - Available to everyone, sound, legible font/ typeface, needs to work on a tiny screen as well as big monitor.
Not DVD's they get binned
Examples
www.ollymoss.com
(to blank, looks unfinished, not a good finish for first impressions, however you do want to click on something. When links are open it looks really good, Content driven site, Looks really good when opened, clear and legible. navigation is simple)
www.standardimage.jp
(Thought it was still loading, slow, bad use of colour, bad layout, bad typeface, links are not standardized, navigation jumps round, being fancy doesn't do it justice)
www.contrast.ie
(Personal, doesn't work on all screens, interesting interaction, quite complex, what do they do, image based website is intreaging but it doesn't navigate clear and simple)
www.circofrafico.com
(doesn't work at all)
www.jet-pac.org
(Looks like a template, very clipart, un aware of who they are, what they do? just looks like a blog, unclear navigations, interesting designs and pdf layout, takes a while to understand)
www.cabanonpress.com
(clear, good navigation, to much text, unlegible, gallery = photos not text that you can't read, hand rendered effect achieved, the menu is fun, background is to dark. Clear what it is)
www.leeds-art.ac.uk
(Tabs are unaccessable unless you use the scroll bar, navigation shoots around, takes ages to get where you want to go, i.e. emails. VLE. It is to much hard work, hard website to design with amount of pages)
www.news.bbc.co.uk
(Big website, easy navigational menu, huge content, easy to control, simple design, works effectively)
Navigation at the top, covers up the content,
Navigation at the left doesn't cover up the content.
The exception is www.apple.com, combination of navigation, categories and sub categories.
4 princibles of web design:
LAYOUT
basic layout, balance, flow, alignment, resolution, work with grids.
TYPE
fonts, font size, standard fonts (system), font stacks (when you replace a font with another font),
COLOUR
colour gamut, RGB, contrast, web safe, hexadecimal code - #fff, #ooo, #ccc
NAVIGATION
clear, simple, fixed place/ consistent, stay to the left, in context with website
Maximum screen size - 800x600
Fixed scroll
w=80%
Position?
