Reflection

Over the past semester i have thoroughly enjoyed studying the web perspectives. I have never used HTML or CSS before so found these programs fairly challenging at the beginning, but eventually got the hang of it. 

At the beginning of the project i was very stuck on how i was going to design my website and what exactly i wanted it to look like. I did some research of other peoples websites online and found a range of different websites that appealed to me. I then looked at these websites and picked out the different aspects of each one i like and made note of them so i could use them for my site. Unfortunately i thought that a lot of the websites i found were a bit to complex for my HTML and CSS knowledge, but i did think it would be good for me to make a simplified version of the websites I had found.  

Out of all the modules we have studied so far for DMA, i have found web design one of the most challenging. I think that HTML is practically like learning another language. I did find it very stressful and difficult to get hold of, and if there was one symbol wrong, then the site wouldn't work correctly. I do think that i would able able to create another site though as i have learnt a lot about web design this semester. 

I don't think that the website i have created meets my expectations. I think that it is too basic and i should have made the homepage a bit more grasping for the viewer. I also with i had included more coding to make the navigation bar more detailed. I also wish i had managed to include more links and detail on each of the pages, and i think in the portfolio page i should have included a bit of text beneath each of the sections, describing a bit about each product i had created.

I do think that the java-script i used to show my photography worked very well though, i think this was quite a professional aspect of the page, linking each photograph together.  

I am greatly interested with graffiti and street art so thought it would be appropriate for me to include my own graffiti image of my name at the top of each page. I think this image adds a lot to each page and i am glad i included it as the header image of each page.

Overall i think that my website was ok. I think that if i had the time i could have made it a lot better, i think that my website is failry basic but it does manage to cover the brief. Next time i will allow myself more time to include more in my website to make it more aesthetically pleasing. I really enjoyed web perspectives and definitely think it will help me in later life. 

Moodboard/Research

Here are some websites i found that had a layout that really appealed to me. As you can see all of the websites that appealed to me have a dark/black background. I think that having white text on a black background looks really effective, so I decided I would try to take this idea and incorporate this idea into my website to make it more captivating for the viewer.
I also noticed that the websites I really liked all had their navigation bar positioned horizontally along the top of website, this is what I will do for my website as i think it makes the website a lot easier to navigate around having each page very easy to find on each page. I also think that having a simple row of of links to each page makes the site look quite neat and tidy.
I think when it finally comes to me finishing off my website i really want to make my site look similar to these. I really like the third website as i think the subtle grey wall background looks really good on the page. I think when I finish off my site i will try to have a slight texture to make the background look bait more appealing than a solid colour.

Web Layout

After doing some research of different online portfolios i finalised the idea of what I wanted the layout of my website to look like. This is only a sketch of each page but it will show me clearly where to position each item on my page. As you can see I have positioned the navigation bar and the "graffiti image" on top of each of the page. I wanted this to be a standard theme to each page.
I thought it was suitable for me to only have four pages for the website. I could have more but i thought it would look quite good to showcase all the work that I have produced over the last year on one page, including my photography, illustration, and video. This will make my website consistent and easy to navigate around by me grouping all the productions together.
I wanted to keep my homepage very simple yet effective, so to do this i decided i would just include one large image at under the navigation bar. I have seen many websites layout their website like this and I think it looks quite effective. From research i also found that a lot of people include a photo of themselves in their "about me" page, so i thought this would be a nice touch for me to add.
With the portfolio page I really wanted to try and include the different products i had made, and hopefully will include some java-script in the photography section to make it look a lot more a captivating when viewing the images.
Hopefully I will be able to make my sight very similar to this layout as I think this could potentially look quite good.