Fellow Clio travellers, My design project is done for now, as I’m departing for a field trip to Indonesia and Malaysia for two weeks. I’ve attached a few of my struggles in the design process to date. The first thumbnail is a glimpse of the HTML and CSS reverse engineering I used to figure out how to how to make a blog and a web page marry up. I was surprised how long it took to deconstruct 4 pages of CSS and a couple of pages of HTML!
After I got my first draft up and running, I applied heavy doses of alignment, repetition, contrast, and proximity. At this point the project started getting fun.
Please take a look at my second draft. CLICK HERE FOR 2nd DRAFT I was pretty happy that it was looking so good. I re-read all the design readings and started to get very critical. I was reluctatnt to change my fonts around and I really wasn’t comfortable moving the logo to the left side for alignment. I did it anyway and it kind of grew on me.
Please CLICK HERE FOR THE FINAL RESULTS. Please let me know which design you like better! I know of one small design glitch that I can’t fix here due to technology limitations on my computer at home, I look forward to seeing if you catch it in class on the 17th…please take some notes for me on the results of the murder board.
Next steps to move from the design project to the final project will be to migrate all the design fixes from the design page index.html to the blog side at oncombat.net/blog and to intertwine the content of the two below the top nav list
April 7, 2007 at 1:47 pm
Hi Bill,
I really like your design. The header image is great! The finger-paint feel is very evocative, I like it. I do like the second version better than the first. It looks more polished. I have two minor suggestions: (1) in your title image, try aligning the right sides of your two lines of text, or try moving the top line just a little to the left (it seems that they aren’t aligned, but it could be they are but the “O” throws it off a bit; (2) try reversing the red and green in the title, or better yet, make it all red (remember the color-blind accessibilty issue), it feels a little top-heavy. Otherwise, it’s very clean and appealing. Well done.
April 7, 2007 at 3:19 pm
Bill,
Final draft looks more styled. The Title heading pulls attention in a way the other dos not. I like the styled look of the header image, as it makes one think of the uncertain nature of the human dimension in combat.
Like surrounding wrapper of mottled grey on the Fear In Battle page. The different color wrapper directs attention to that which is inside it.
One thought… If you could integrate more images into your final project that are relevant to your text it will help to draw attention through what you are telling.
April 8, 2007 at 3:34 pm
Bill — I’m going to agree with Mark and Laura. I like the Final Draft better. The background color feels more like the desert, which of course is very topical right now. I’m not thrilled about the colors of the header, though. That’s probably just me, but I think it’s more a matter of preference than any technical reason on your design.
Thanks for the glimpse at your thought processes, too. It’s nice to see that someone else uses the old pen-and-paper method. I’ve enjoyed your content, too. You’ve certainly set the bar high for the rest of us!
April 9, 2007 at 10:23 am
I love the image in the header and the color in the title. I wonder how it would look with the red on the bottom and the green on the top? Great work.
April 10, 2007 at 6:15 am
Your previious commenters have covered all the bases: great work and I really like your image headers. However, I actually wanted to tell how envious I am about your trip to Indonesia and Malaysia. I lived in Thailand & Indonesia for 10 years and my youngest just spent 2 years in Kuala Lumpur so I was able to go back and check out KL in the modern age. I hope that you enjoy Southeast Asia as much as we did.
April 16, 2007 at 8:30 am
[...] with comments here: Jennifer’s Sputnik page, John’s Pearl Harbor page, and Bill’s combat page. I know I need to get my page up for comments, but for heaven’s sake, one thing at a [...]
April 16, 2007 at 1:35 pm
Bill, what I can say that others here haven’t? Your site is looking so great!! I like how the design carries through the other subjects, and your selection and integration of the header images is great. The site is clean, sharp, and getting around is very easy. Congrats!