I knew nothing about web design before creating this project and I found it really difficult. I had drawn lots of rough designs in a small sketchbook and looked at lots of different online portfolio websites for inspiration. It took me a while to try and get a basic layout done as I struggled with the code. I had to look at lots of different websites for help, I found tutorials and basic code which I could use and then edit. I got help from some people and I managed to create a basic layout which I then used to add my images and text.
I had two favourite designs; one was a circle layout and the other was with stripes and boxes. I really wanted to create a layout which was all in a circle as it’s completely different. For the gallery I would have had the images in a few circles and had either ‘Next or Previous’ buttons or a scrollbar along the bottom to view them. I couldn’t create this though as I couldn’t find any help in doing this and it is something that would probably take a lot of experience to create. My other design I liked was inspired by BBC’s ‘The Culture Show’ titles involving the titles over some of the diagonal stripes. I have always liked this design but I wanted to make it my own so I decided to combine the circle idea and stripes, but I done mine in black and white. I used Photoshop to create the striped circles which I used for the titles of each page. I have kept it simple yet its bold from the black and white, I also think having a white background is best for a gallery as more of your attention is on the images.
I originally created the homepage image with the titles of each page on using Photoshop so I could use hotspots to link them but I decided to make a navigation bar along the top. I really like this bar as when you hover over any of these links the text turns white over a black box, I prefer this to just hotspot links. For the portfolio page I used a piece of my best artwork cut up in each stripe which I really like. At first I put on each page of my portfolio such as ‘Photography’ a cropped piece of my photography underneath the title image but I realised it wasn’t needed and it looked far neater with just the images. I made smaller versions of my artwork under the title images, I made the height of each image the same size which didn’t work out so good with the landscape pieces but I am still happy with my galleries. I managed to make it so when they are clicked on they are viewed larger in a separate window which I am really pleased with.
I made icons under every title image with links to my Blog, Vimeo, YouTube, DeviantArt and Twitter so people can easily find me on these websites and keep updated with my work and what I’m up to. I have made the icons simple and clear like ipod/ipad app icons.
I struggled a lot in trying to create this but I am very pleased with the final outcome, if I had more time I would add more information to the ‘About’ page with ‘Next’ and ‘Previous’ buttons to view new circles with text on. I would also create a scrollbar along the bottom of the film and animation page showing one row of videos, so the page wouldn’t be crowded and I could have larger videos.
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