Web Design Students
Millikin University

Carrie Seymour

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Semester Learning response

Design Knowledge:

I wanted to keep with a theme of consistency and simplicity. After creating a banner with some black and white photos and photos that I converted to black and white, it just became a theme for me. Black and white provides a certain timeless elegance, and with having the important parts, such as links and my logo (which also provides as a link) in color, it made them standout without me having to say "click here." I also played around with various combinations of black, white, and gray, with the background of the tables and the text colors. I liked the idea of having my logo go back to the home page -- I saw this on various sites, including the Nike site I wrote about in "Other Projects."

Though I appreciate the class feedback, I chose not to move my logo on the CLUE and Digital Versus Print websites. I like having it at the top right, because if one would go to those sites and want to go right back to my home page, it is at the top without scrolling down. I did, however, move the navigation on the CLUE site so it was not so far to the left.

This site should be easy to understand and to navigate. I think it is self-explanatory as far as orientation goes. Everything is titled, categorized, and has headings. To navigate, choose a link and it takes the viewer directly to that site. Then the site explains its purpose and/or has links to categories within the site.

The content is of high quality -- it is detailed, easy to browse, aesthetically pleasing, functional, simplistic, and informative.

Project Management Knowledge:

Managing my own projects relied a lot on how well my time management skills are. At first, I would work little by little on projects. Then, I decided to work on a project for large amounts of time, but take a break from them for various amounts of extended periods of time.

My projects evolved from design choices and personal interests. CLUE is my favorite board game and one of my favorite movies. I thought it would be a fun choice. This involved some researching. However, since this is a topic I am interested the research process went by rather quickly and was an enjoyable experience.

As for team/group projects, those seem to work out well, however, I prefer working alone than in a team when it comes to web design. I think it is harder to divide the work and make sure everything looks consistent when so many people are working on the same site. I had fun with both groups and I agree with the choices both groups made, because we discussed everything and came to agreements.

My first team for the magazine Mayfly case was, Nicole Fucinari, Paul Kloeckner, and myself. We chose the members of this team and it worked really well. All three of us are graphic design majors and we worked efficiently with each other. We chose to keep the website consistent with the magazine. We downloaded certain fonts and incorporated some interactivity with the reading of the haiku.

My team for the Prairie Christian Church & Dove Clothing Room case consisted of: Galen Broaddus, Michael Brown, Paul Kloeckner, and myself. These teams were chosen by Dr. Brooks, and again, I got along with each member very well. We based our theme on the church itself. After Michael and I visited the church we noted the colors are primarily red and green. Since those are also complimentary colors (they are on opposite ends of the color wheel and go well together) and the colors of the roof (green), carpet (green), and doors (red) of the interior and exterior were easily associated with the church, we agreed this would work well. The church is made of bricks so we used that texture in the background. We wanted a simple, easy to read and manage site with many pictures. Virtual tours and maps were very important to us as well. Every choice was carefully planned, and although the client did not agree with all of the choices, we believe the design of the site is still successful.

Tutoring Knowledge

Since I was very unfamiliar with web design in the beginning, I had to ask for help from various members of the class. Sometimes, it would be something small, such as, "How do I get to the page properties?" but other times it would be, "Why won't this show on the web after I have saved and synchronized it?"

I had helped a couple of students with Photoshop and those who had simple Dreamweaver questions. I helped with resizing issues, creating borders, banners, and buttons.

Various people I have interacted with tutoring each other: Paul Kloeckner, Hannah Karcher, Nicole Fucinari.

Special thanks to all those who have helped me: Aaron H. Bynum, Galen Broaddus.

User Knowledge:

I had very little Dreamweaver experience prior to taking this class. My skills in web design and Dreamweaver have greatly improved. I was already very familiar with Photoshop since I am a graphic design major. However, I learned how to combine and utilize my graphic design knowledge with web elements (format, layout, templates, interactivity, buttons and so on) in order to create functional, as well as aesthetically pleasing, websites.

Personal Project Idea

I want to do my personal project on the board game Clue. I want to research its history, see if the characters are based on anyone, how the rooms of the mansion were chosen, how the weapons were chosen, and how the concept was developed. I have always had a strong interest in the game, books, and movie. I love mysteries, especially murder mysteries.

I also want to include sections about Clue the movie, the Clue book series, the Clue Super Nintendo video game, the Clue FX board game, discuss various editions of the game, the new Clue DVD game and slightly touch on the Clue, Jr. game. I would like to show the various designs of the board, characters, cards, and so on. Also, discuss how the interaction in each form Clue varies. Such as, Clue FX has an automated voice, yet in each form of Clue, the game makes you think and question. Clue is by far my most favorite board game.

Client Project

Prairie Avenue Christian Church & Dove Clothing Room

http://students.millikin.edu/~gbroaddus/dove

Team Calice: Galen Broaddus, Michael Brown, Paul Kloeckner, Carrie Seymour

Our group first decided to research other Disciple of Christ church websites in order to see if there was a consistent theme. Throughout the various sites we saw different layouts, color schemes, menu topics and so on. Present on every site was the chalice. So, we decided to create a basic, easy-to-understand layout utilizing the chalice.

Next, we decided on a color scheme. After visiting the church the first time, we noticed that the roof and some of the carpet inside was green and the doors outside of the church were red. Being that they are complimentary colors (they are on opposite sides of the color wheel and “compliment” each other well) and they are related back to Prairie Avenue Christian Church, we decided that this would be a good color scheme.

We wanted to create a website that is functional as well as aesthetically pleasing, but nothing too cluttered. We chose to have a little fun with the various textures in the banner we created and with the background of the website. We chose bricks to imitate the brick of the church.

We chose to use a large, classic-looking, easy-to-read font to accommodate all audiences.

Two of our group members visited the church again to take pictures of the interior of the church and to “get a feel” of the environment. We met a few members of the congregation that showed us around the church and to the Dove Clothing Room. We realize that one of the main parts of the site is the Dove Clothing Room page, so we took most of our photos here.

We wanted to include photos of the clothing, toys and the coat drive. We also took a photo of the groundbreaking shovel and most of the rooms in the church for a virtual tour.

Our site is informative as well as interactive with the virtual tours. One can click on the image to view it in a larger format along with a brief explanation.

We have the basic layout complete, we just need more information as far as content, such as, Sunday School classes, times, and so on. We also thought that if the client wanted, that the newsletter could be easily uploaded and have a page linked to the website as well.

Hands On Training Tutorial Responses

Chapter 13

This chapter made it really easy to understand how to use and create forms. I liked learning how to make the form, the text fields (and how to change the sizes), as well as the list/menu feature. I really think the list menu feature is neat and makes a page look even more professional and complex, but it is pretty simple to make. I like how you can change the sizes of the boxes so easily with typing in the numbers in the property inspector. I also liked learning how to create the little checkmark box and the buttons. The jump menu was also helpful, too. Overall, I think this chapter was especially beneficial.

Magazine Case Review

http://students.millikin.edu/~nfucinari/mayfly/index.html

Our group designed this layout, because we wanted something that is consistent with the Mayfly theme that is not only creative, yet functional and easy to understand as well. We like simplicity. Our group emphasized the white space a great deal, since there is much white space for the haiku.

We downloaded a brush font to represent the sumi ink painting of Lidia. We incorporated the Brooks Books frog on each page as well. When a viewer clicks the Mayfly bar at the right, they go directly back to the homepage. Moreover, when a viewer clicks on the frog, they go to Brooks Books contact page.

We decided it was also important to keep the page black and white, except for the Lidia's symbol. We put that in red so it stands out and if someone clicks on it, they go directly to a page about the artist. There is a brief paragraph about her and some examples of her works that were used for past covers. When a viewer clicks on one of the images, a separate window opens with the image enlarged.

We also decided to just have the black bar on the left side, because, although it works well to have it on both sides for the Mayfly book, we believe that on the web, having the black bar on both sides makes the window seem small and enclosed. Almost like the haiku are trapped, and since haiku is about time and space, we like having it open and "free."

We chose to put the navigation bar at the bottom, and tried to make it almost look like a haiku itself. We just picked a few sample haiku so as to let the reader know what kind of content is in each issue, but not revealing too much so that there is still a sell value for the magazine itself. We wanted to keep it simple and not cluttered with information.

Members of our group:

Nicole Fucinari
Paul Kloeckner
Carrie Seymour

Chapter on CSS

I thought the this chapter was extremely helpful with such complex ideas. The repetitiveness of the exercises helped me learn what to do and by the end, I could read a few steps and figure out the rest with skimming. Changing the background colors, sizes, and typing in the correct numbers for the margins, became quite tedious. I think that the charts in the chapter also proved to be quite helpful to refer back to. At first exporting and linking files confused me, but I just had to read a bit closer and then it seemed to make sense. I like being able to look at the design but also switch and look at the code to see what I am changing and then to see how to physically looks. I really like how by changing the styles.css on one page, automatically changed the other pages that had the styles.css. It made it really easy to keep everything consistent once one already has the information set on the page. I like having the layout change on all of them so easily, instead of having to go back and change it all by hand or having to copy and paste everything. The only section I encountered problems was with Section 4: Creating ID Selectors. On step 19, I could not find the images/navigation folder to choose the sidebarbackground.gif, so I typed in the sidebarbackground.gif in the background image form. I really liked creating the rollovers and seeing how the alignment of text could be easily changed.

Chapter 10

I really liked this chapter, especially the last section. Everything was very easy to understand and I loved the step-by-step guides. It was repetitive which helped me learn it. The only thing I had a problem with is the Flash buttons. They never worked or appeared. When working on it the Flash "F" logo appeared and when viewing in a browser nothing happened -- so maybe you can help me with that? I liked the "Adding Elements to the Navigation Bar" table on page 374.

Chapter 8

I thought that this chapter was a bit confusing. I understood everything for the most part. the most difficult thing for me was Section 5: Layout Tables and Layout Cells. At times it was difficult to draw layout cells. Sometimes it would not let me adjust the size, a notice would come up saying something about I was making the size smaller than the minimum size and it would adjust it to the valid value but that would be a lot larger than I had intended. Overall, I had some troubles, but I think I understood it. I think that I will have to refer back to this chapter once I start incorporating and utilizing drawing out the layout cells.

Chapter 7

I found this chapter really helpful. Creating tables seemed easy -- either by insert>table or just clicking the table symbol on the bar. I liked learning how to change the border of the table. I also liked being able to select the whole table and changing how it is sorted. I liked creating the rounded table corners. The only section that seemed difficult to me was section 10. I never really could get the top table to merge with the bottom black table and make the border filled in black. Maybe you can help me in class.

peer resume critique

One Page Analysis of Nicole Fucinari’s Web Resume

Nicole’s web resume is really professional looking as well as aesthetically pleasing.

It is really easy to navigate Nicole’s site. Everything is clearly labeled, and the colors of the links compliment each other well. I like the background border of the black and white bricks. Also, it is really easy to download her resume -- she has it available as three different formats. All of her contact information is easy to find as well.

There really is not much I would change about her site. I think if anything she could add a navigation bar at the bottom, but she does have one at the top and there are the “back to top” buttons.

Her sections of her resume are easy to understand and sound impressive. She is well educated and has had much experience. She lists her employment experience at the bottom, which seems kind of odd, but when reading through her resume it makes sense. She talks about education first, since she is still in school. Then about her artwork and art experience which is what employers would want to know about. It is good that she does list the jobs she has had or currently has, but since they are (for the most part) not career-related, I like them at the bottom of her resume.

All in all, her site is easy to navigate, understand, and looks good. It is very professional and functional. It is obvious she knows web design well and is able to communicate these skills to the public, thereby utilizing her current knowledge and adding to her experience.

resume critique

http://www.careerfolios.com/Patrick-McNamara.html

I like this resume, because it is aesthetically pleasing as well as functional. I think the layout is nice and the navigation is easy to understand and there are two of them -- one at the top and one at the bottom. The colors compliment each other and the tool bar at the top takes you write to each section, and there are “back to top” buttons. The section titles are bolded and in bigger fonts so they stand out. I also like that there are bulleted points. This is a clean and professional-looking resume.

http://www.1st-writer.com/WebResumeExample1.htm

I do not like this resume for many reasons. First of all, it is plain looking. It is all in black and white except for the one blue line at the top of the page. Moreover, this person did not use tables and the text stretches across the page. Though there are bulleted points, they are really long and with the text stretching all the way across the entire page, it makes it seem even longer and even wordier. This person has “Areas of Expertise” underlined, making me think it is linked to something, but it is not. This resume is very long and boring, and I think if it were sent out, the employer would set it aside without reading more than the potential employee’s name. What is even worse is that this is a site trying to help you write resumes. It says at the bottom that “When you need it written 1st-writer.com is here to help,” but this is an awful example and deters me from ever using their services.

One Page Analysis of Paul Kloeckner’s Site

09-25-06
One Page Analysis of Paul Kloeckner’s Site

Posters of Rock Links Page

Paul‘s homepage has a really great graphic at the beginning. Navigation to the links page is very clear and self-explanatory.

When it goes to the links page, he has his navigation at the top, but it is not centered. I think that he needs to center align this, because it looks funny off to one side. His whole site is not up just yet, but I can tell that when you click the picture a poster or the title underneath it, there are supposed to be linked to something. Some of the links just are not working yet. The links that are working go to the same place. This kind of confused me. I think that the picture would go to some site or something, and the title would go somewhere else, but the poster that is with its corresponding link both are linked to the same place. For example, 70’s Rock Poster graphic and “70’s Rock Poster” text, both go to his annotations.

The color choices of the links are somewhat difficult to read. The red links are harsh on the gray background. The rollover blue color is nice. So is the yellow for the “Back to Top” button. It is also nice that the visited links turn yellow. I think the red just needs to be changed.

I really like the content of his page. It seems well categorized and he has good examples. It seems pretty user-friendly and for the most part, is easy-to-understand. I think the graphics are really nice and viewers will like them. I like his banner at the top of his page. I like the font he chooses and that his banner is one image, so those who do not have that font can view it on any screen.

He does not have an introduction to his page, but I think his pages speaks for itself. The page is for anyone interested in rock posters and he has them divided in clear categories. The quality of his graphics are consistent. He has an overall theme that is carried well.

All in all, I really like Paul’s site. There are a few changes to make it easier to understand, but I think he did an overall excellent job.

Chapter 6

I like how you can click and choose an exact color or you can type in the #FFFFF. It confused me when the type size was listed as differently than the version of Dreamweaver we have in class. I chose small. I liked creating my own Font List and being able to edit them. Section 5 confused me, until you told me skip that section on color schemes. Creating tables seemed pretty easy. Section 7 confused me until I skipped it. I really liked creating Flash text. I think it's neat that even if someone doesn't have that font you choose, they can see it since it is Flash text.

Web presentation topic:

A comparison and contrast of computer screen versus printed page as media for publishing. Issues include, but are not limited to: animation, interaction, quality/resolution of images.

Writing Space Chapter 1

Why are people divided so much about digital media and books in print?

Both are helpful and needed. Each one is needed in identical ways, yet each one is needed for its own specific purpose. I think they go hand-in-hand with each other. I believe there will always be books in print, but there are definitely advantages as well as disadvantages to both. It is always nice to have something in print, in your hand. While it is much more convenient and easier to edit to have something in digital format. I like to compare the books discussion to how students write papers these days. Some people go straight to the computer and type their paper, while others (like myself) prefer to write it out by hand, then go to the computer and type it. Moreover, as a graphic designer, I love to work on the computer, but I prefer having the final product be printed in my hand (I prefer having my work as a poster printed out, rather than just leaving it in digital format). I believe that digital versus print is more often than not (when it comes to reading a novel) is just a personal preference.

a favorite web site

I searched various websites and I found http://www.nike.com to be very interesting and well-designed. It is just as aesthetically pleasing as it is functional. I like it because of the images, options, animation, color-scheme, and it is easy-to-understand.

09-18-06
Analysis of Favorite Site

http://www.nike.com

I chose www.nike.com, because I like the interaction of the images and information with the potential customer. The website seems very user-friendly and easy to understand.

When the website loads, the viewer can move the mouse to see parts of an image. The loading bar moves with the mouse and so does the information of choices. The Nike swoosh sign appears right away in the upper right corner. It is a widely recognizable symbol. The image that appears when the viewer moves the mouse is randomly chosen to appear out of various images (for example, there is a shoe image, but if someone closes the window and reloads the site a different image may appear, such as someone running with the shoes on). This website is to market Nike products. It shows the various continents and then country choices. After that, there are more choices geared towards specific merchandise and products. This website is very well organized. The titles of choices make it easy to find the specific item one is looking for.

The navigation of this site is very easy to use since it is well organized. It is easy to navigate, whether someone wants a specific item, or just to browse at several things, because even if someone goes to the site not knowing what they want (or if they are just looking for fun), once he or she finds something that he or she likes, they not only can easily purchase it, they can see exactly which buttons he or she clicked to get there. For example, North America>Canada>All Canadian Sites>Nikerunning.ca>and so on to a certain item.

The website is aesthetically pleasing as well as very functional. However, it takes a while to load since it has much animation and graphics. Moreover, though it is very well organized, it seems to take a while to find something since there are so many categories one can choose from. This seems like a double-edged sword. It is very detailed and specific, but almost too specific. Maybe the site should not be broken down in quite so many categories. Or maybe some parts of the website should have been simpler so they could load quicker.

All in all, the quality of the content and the graphics are wonderful. The overview of it is easy-to-understand and the navigation is clear and easy. It is predictable and works well. Though the browsing takes a while, it is kind of fun to browse. There is much to look at and functional. I think that this website was designed well and serves its purpose. However, when the creators of the site made it, they did not think about people who have very slow internet-access and this could be a downfall. I really do like this site, but I can see how it has its downfalls.

Chapter 5

In Chapter 5, at first, I did not like clicking and pointing to file to create the link. I thought it would be easier to type in the link, but then I got used to it and it went pretty quickly. I really like the link history feature. Reminds me of the history feature in Photoshop and I think it helps make it go quickly as well. I liked creating links for text as well as images. Making the hot spots reminded me of making hot spots in Frontpage for images. Though making links sometimes is tedious and repetitive, overall, I think this was a very helpful.

Chapter 4

In Chapter 4, I did what the book said, but for selecting colors, sometimes I would rather type in the number #FFFFCC, rather than pointing and clicking. It was fine for this particular project, but if there was a gradient background the correct color might be hard to find. If I knew the number ahead of time I think it would be easier to type it in though.