Web Design Students
Millikin University

Kendra Brown

Learning Review

User Knowledge

I never used Macs before this course, unless I absolutely had to. I had taken a web design class before, but it was in high school...we used Microsoft Frontpage, which says it all. One good thing about that class is that since everyone was designing a different page within the school's site, continuity and cohesiveness was a major point. So I had never used Macs or Dreamweaver before now. I'd used Photoshop and InDesign in a class last semester, so graphics-wise I was okay. It took me a while to get used to a new computer and a new program, but after I just sat down and spent a little time playing around I got the hang of it. I'm still not used to not having a right mouse button though.

Design Knowledge

I've always been able to tell good design from bad design. It's been pretty obvious to me in the past when a page is badly designed. After this course the bad pages are even more obvious...However, it is also more obvious when a page is designed well. When I can open a website in two or three different web browsers and have it look good in all of them, that's good design. When each page of a site has the feel that it came from the same company, that's good design. Also, I can put a finger on why I do or don't like a particular site now that I understand the process of going from design to finish. I also learned that the job of a web designer is to find a happy balance between the different tastes of the people who are going to see the site. The designer needs to be able to please everyone at once.

Project Management

First thing I learned: don't wait until the last minute to start your project! I'm a procrastinator, but this class made me realize that it's not a good thing for a college student to be. I learned to force myself to start early on things so that in the event of a disaster--like an ice storm?!--I wasn't up a creek without a paddle. I've always been better working by myself than on a team, so I had to learn to work with other people and consult with them before diving headfirst into my section. So my people skills improved somewhat. I still like to have one big pow-wow at the start of a project and then do my own thing with my section, having small meetings in between to make sure everyone's staying consistent with colors and such. I like as much independence as possible, but I've learned that teams can make good projects great. Go Team Awesome!

Tutoring

I won't mention any names, but this class has helped me be more patient with people. When someone asked me how to do something, and I showed them, normally if they didn't get it right away or had to be shown again later I would get a little snappy with them because I'm impatient. Which is why I'm not an education major. But now I realize that I'm much more patient when people need to be shown something more than once...I'm also more clear if I'm telling someone how to do something instead of showing them. I've become more concise and exact in my direction-giving, which means people will probably have an easier time understanding what I'm telling or showing them. Anything that makes me more patient is always a plus. :)

Hands On Training Tutorial Responses

Chapter 13

This chapter made it really easy to understand forms. I liked learning how to make the form, especially for when I need a list menu feature.  It makes the site look so much better and complex, when it’s really very simple to make.  Jump menus and checkboxes are also really simple and add to a site’s overall feel.  VERY USEFUL chapter!

Magazine Case Review

Diana Zaleski
Elizabeth Richardson
Kendra Brown

Poetry Magazine Makeover Group Project

The Poetry Magazine Makeover Group Project web page design case provided our group with many opportunities to utilize our previously learned web design knowledge, as well as force us to grow within our own personal capabilities. The project has also provided our team with great creative and artistic opportunities. We were provided with text and graphic files and asked to create a website using these materials. It was a great opportunity to take existing materials and re-invent and re-tool its purpose and reach.

We came up with an overall artistic theme, and created personal and general goals. We decided to organize our web site around the Sumi-e paintings the magazine features on the front cover of each issue. We thought this somewhat minimal interpretation for the site would be fitting for the magazine; considering the basic attributes featured in a haiku poem. We wanted the site to thoroughly reflect the mission of the magazine.

This creative vision posed a few technical challenges our team had to work through. With the guidance of our webmaster, Elizabeth Richardson, we were able conquer these challenges and expand our web design abilities. We achieved all of the technical objectives posed for this case including creating html files with graphics, text and hypertext links within the pages and an overall web site aesthetic. We also succeeded in taking the given information and restructuring it for use in our web site.

We created individual pages for the magazine’s pertinent topics entitled: About, Submit, Subscribe and Contact. These pages each feature a different Sumi-e painting that we thought embodied the topic at hand. We tried to keep the site very clean looking, utilizing the white space to our advantage. The intended audience for this site is English language haiku enthusiasts, however, we tried to make the website accessible to the general public interested in haiku and Mayfly Magazine.

We strove to achieve an overall aesthetic that kept our readers and the magazine’s main concepts in mind. We designed our web site for ease of navigation, maximum information content, and visual appeal. With any group project working with others may commonly pose certain challenges; however, our team worked well together to achieve our desired goal.

CSS

Since I don’t have a lot of design experience this chapter is very scary!  It’s a ton of information to put on someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing—unless you’ve had a lot of experience with it I think it would take a lot of time to figure out how to do what you what to do.

Chapter 10

Most interesting so far.  Rollovers, like everything else, are actually pretty simple once you learn how to do it.  Renaming and checking files got pretty boring pretty fast.  Useful for making sure everything is linked correctly but tedious.  Multiple event rollovers were really cool; they took a while but looked good in the end.  Flash buttons were also really nifty and I hope I can find a way to incorporate them somewhere someday.

bookmarks case

xxxxx

Chapter 8

This chapter was….a little confusing.  Layout tables & cells are not my friends.  The layout cells were hard to draw and the size was hard to adjust most of the time.  Despite that I understand it mostly, but I will probably have to have the book handy for when/if I start using layout cells.

Chapter 7

This chapter was very helpful.  Tables are something that make creating/organizing a website easier, so everyone needs to know it and the book made it very easy to understand.  Some things were harder to get to actually work—like section 10—but for the most part I really got it.  Repeating the steps over and over really helped me learn how to do it.

resume critique

Overall I really like Diana’s resume.  The information is well-organized and flows well; the colors really work together and set each other off perfectly.  The only thing I would suggest changing is perhaps using tables to break up the information, it all seems to kind of run together, especially with the text going across the entire page.  But for the most part I really like it.  I’d hire her! J

Chapter 6

I really like the color scheme command in Dreamweaver—I only wish we could USE it!  It makes having your colors match so much easier because they’re done ahead of time, instead of you having to test out all these different colors to see what works & what doesn’t.  Using Flash text was also nice, maybe I’ll use it eventually since it’s so simple.

9/17/06
Website Analysis

The website I chose to analyze is HYPERLINK "http://www.aimeemajor.com" http://www.aimeemajor.com. Aimee is a girl I know from the website we both post our art on, deviantART.

Orientation and navigation overlap each other in the site. Every section of the site is reachable by clicking one link on the main page; there is no confusion of how to get to a certain section. You don’t have to go to one page, click another link, and another after that, to find what you want. It’s all right there on the home page. All the relevant and useful parts of the site are easily found right away. Also on the home page is an update section, where Aimee writes a little blurb each time she adds new things to the site. So even if you haven’t been to her site in a while, you’ll know right away when the last time she updated was.

The content quality of the site is great. The site is designed for people who want to see more of Aimee’s work, besides what she posts on deviantART (or dA). Everything anyone could possibly want to know about Aimee is on this page, again easily accessible. Not only does she have her complete resumé posted, but she has a more personal, informal profile as well. She has several galleries full of her art (life drawing, original art, fan art, etc.), as well as galleries of her work with custom-made dolls, hand-made cosplay* costumes, and animated short films. She also has pages for her collections, such as her collection of cel art* and kimono-related items. Basically the site is all about Aimee, and although she does a great job of keeping everything on the site related, she also does a good job of linking to other things her visitors might find interesting, like the daily sketchblog site and the website for Haute Doll magazine.

*cosplay: usually made into an event such as a contest, cosplayers are people dressing up as their favorite characters from various sources, normally anime* or comics. This is usually done at anime/comic conventions, and most of the costumes are hand-made.

*anime: Japanese animations.

*cel art: can be anything, usually it’s original art screenshots from animated films (the screens that are painted and photographed before being animated), but also can be original art from comics or concept art from movies. “cel” refers to the type of shading that is used, where shadows are done in solid blocks of color instead of being blended more realistically.

Chapter 5

Again, I like that you get shown the several different ways to link objects and pages, instead of just seeing one way and then happening to figure out another on your own by chance. I really like the Point to File method of linking, it's a lot faster and I can see exactly what I'm linking to more easily.

Chapter 4

I really liked that the book shows you different ways to do the same thing, like inserting pictures. That way you can find the way that's easiest for you to remember, which is probably different than what's easiest for someone else. I don't like the basic setup for defining the site! I like the advanced version because you can look everything other all in one place before you finalize it.