Design for Web - Workshop 2

Using a specific set of websites, we instantly analysed and dissected the websites based on our first impressions within 5 seconds. This was a task to help us understand how people perceive websites and what makes them leave or stay.

http://ollymoss.com - Dull, Minimalist, Empty (A lot of negative space), Functional. Made using - http://www.indexhibit.org 

While perusing Olly Moss's website, there were very drastic changes between its blank, black homepage and other content. As Simon says: The website design should be simple, its the content that should really make the website. 

http://www.malikafavre.com - This website has been made using 'Cargo Collective' and is too colourful! { it would of been more user friendly if the images were all set, faded colours that highlighted when you hovered over them }. Grid. Fashion. Busy. Hectic.

http://360langstrasse.sf.tv/page/ - German. Informative purpose. Too full on. Bad usability and functionality. Pointless.

http://mercertavern.com - Vintage. 1800's. Broadcast. Simplistic yet effective. 'Fresh'

http://noble-design.co.uk - Clean. Professional. Sharp focus. Obvious.

http://www.caavadesign.com - Hipster. Album artwork. Collage. Bad use of space. Bold. Urban. Geometric.

3 questions you must ask yourself when designing a website

What is the purpose of the website your creating?
Who is the target audience?
What do the target audience need?

What can we do to see what the target audience need and want?

- Researching existing contemporary websites and website based around the subject.
- Focus groups. Talk to the target audience. Ask them what they want to see on your website.

What is generally what we see on every website?

- Navigation
- Type
- Image

Limitations of designing a Website

• Size - Resolution 

- Design to the lowest possible resolution

- PPI for internet based image 72 ppi, but when thinking about modern monitors the new ones are about 226 ppi.

• Fonts

- When working on the internet you are very limited to the amount of fonts you can use

-as soon as you use a font for a commercial purpose then you will have to pay a license fee

- A list of standard fonts is used, so if fonts are not accessible from a certain computer you can choose several different fonts for it to change to so you always have control of what is being seen. instead of default Times Roman being used

- You can download a web kit where it will download a font actually onto the website, so you would then be able to use custom fonts instead of the limited default fonts.

• Colour

- RGB is the standard colour mode for design for web, every monitor/ computer has slight variations of RGB therefore colours will be different on every monitor.

- Using a hexadecimal colour code which is the limited amount of colours that can be used for web, each colour will come with its own code which will be used when making the website for example #cc3333 being a light maroon colour.

 

Useful publications for web design

- HTML and CSS - Design and Build Websites

Language in web

• HTML - Hyper Text Markup Language

• CSS - Cascading Style Sheets

• WYSIWYG - What You See Is What You Get

• URL - Uniform Resource Locator

• FTP - File Transfer Protocol

• CMS - Content Management System

2 things you must purchase when you design a website 

- The domain name

- The  space that you are using on the server that is hosting

Creating a Scamp - Dimensions - 1024 x 768