Monday, April 29, 2019

Website Development: Design Inspiration

Next Steps

Researching into website designs is something I've done a lot this semester as l have been designing websites for another module, so l have been looking into website designs. Although my website is a portfolio and not a website for a company, l wanted to create the appearance that my website was a company as l think this is professional and a stylish way to design my portfolio.

One of my biggest inspirations was a local film based marketing company; Squashed Robot Films, they recently updated their website and created a modern and informative website that utilises their video content to create a exciting experience for their users. They have a one page website that is split up into different sections using panels, to make it easy for the users to navigate through their website. Having this style also gives the company the power to create a visual hierarchy the users have to follow, whereas if they had separate pages the users may not navigate through each of the pages. 


Having a showreel at the top of the page immediately promotes the company and ensures users that this website is for a company that produces high quality video content. This is a dynamic design that has impact on the audience as you don't have to search to find out who they are, what they do, it's written in the logo, in the video, it's clear, and that's something l want to incorporate into my designs.

Having panels to split up the information is a convention l think really works in websites as the clear layout and breaks up your content. This is a convention l have used in my final project, designing my websites using panels to clearly give my audience targeted information. 

In my research, this design hasn't been used in many portfolio sites, so l think it would be a unique design if l incorporated it into my designs. Something different. I think it'd work well because l don't have a lot of information of content, so it would be a good layout for me to showcase all my work.





Tuesday, April 16, 2019

Website Development: Visual Style

Now that I've created my brand identity, have my colour scheme and typography for my website it's time to move on to creating my website. Reflecting on my research, people created a simplistic website with minimal pages and minimal information, this works well for portfolios because you want to showcase your work to an audience in a easy way, that has good UX principles.

Finding information easily is key when it comes to portfolio websites, so l wanted to create designs that have about three pages and are easy to navigate around. To help me design my website l decided to create a feature list of everything l needed to have on my website. Creating feature lists is common practise when designing a website so that you can ensure you have appropriate features for the type of website and they are coherent throughout the site.

Feature List

List of features to go on my website pages:

Homepage
·      Navigation Bar
·      Links to other pages
·      Logo
·      Text
·      Headers
·      Images
·      Videos
·      Footer information
·      Social media logos
·      Image Slider

Portfolio Page
·      Navigation Bar
·      Links to other pages
·      Logo
·      Text
·      Headers
·      Images
·      Videos
·      Footer information
·      Social media handles/logos
·      Scroll function
·      Image slider
·      ‘Gallery’ Wall
·      Images expand when opened to show more context

About Me
·      Navigation Bar
·      Links to other pages
·      Logo
·      Text
·      Header
·      Images
·      Footer information
·      Scroll function
·      Download icon
·      Downloadable document

Contact
·      Navigation Bar
·      Links to other pages
·      Logo
·      Text
·      Header
·      Images
·      Footer information
·      Scroll function

·      Information box


These are the basic features l want to have on my website, but as l come to the design process some of these will change depending on the type of design l go for.


My Finished Portfolio Website

https://lisalouiseadams97.wixsite.com/mediapractitioner