Exploring Web Design

I have enjoyed the course overall, and I feel I’ve learned a lot about the design process. Web, e-learning, or otherwise, I think I can take some of these things with me in my career.

The thing I’ve appreciated the most is the blog – it’s given me the opportunity to explore design resources on the web and think critically about them, not just glance at them and say “cool” then move on.

The readings have also been tremendously helpful to me, since I’ve been doing some sort of design work for quite a while, but without any formal instruction. The readings have helped me solidify my thoughts about how a web site should look, function, and feel, rather than relying solely on my own intuition.

I also liked the progression of the assignments. Being asked to come up with the site architecture in an early assignment, and then apply a visual treatment in a later assignment, really helped me to understand how to separate these two tasks. I didn’t feel overwhelmed or “frozen” when I went to design the site, since I’d already done the legwork in a previous step. I guess I never knew that I was trying to do both things at once, and now I’ll consciously consider each as a separate step in the process.

Lastly, the Kuler color site was incredibly helpful, and it’s a resource I’m sure I’ll return to again and again. Lacking anything more than a “feeling” about what color looks good with another, this introduction to color theory gives me a space to experiment, as well multiple starting points for palettes of my own.

Here’s a link to a review of some neat JavaScript tricks to add a gallery to your web page that works like a Flash slideshow, without the pesky Flash.

http://blueprintds.com/2009/01/20/top-14-jquery-photo-slideshow-gallery-plugins/

I’ve been recruited to make a website for a photographer friend of mine, and was looking for an elegant way to add a slideshow of his work to the site, when I stumbled upon this post.  So far, I’ve been able to download the files I need and tweak the code to add my own pictures and thumbnails.

So far, a definite thumbs up from me, and an easy way to add some “flash,” without actually having to use Flash!

I always have a problem in the beginning stages of the process of deciding how a page should look. I get overwhelmed by the entire project, instead of just focusing on putting it together – tackling one small park at a time until the whole thing is done.

The link below leads to a great post on the author’s design process – he calls it the layout and the polish. I think he does a great job of breaking this enormous task into less threatening chunks. It’s something I need to emulate when I’m designing a project.

Elements of Great Web Design: The Polish

I’m particulary amazed to see how small changes make such a big difference in the before and after. I’ll be referring back to this tutorial often.

I have my blog set up, and I’m ready to get posting!