Sk-etchbook

Well the website is just about done! I encountered the usual problems caused by inexperience, the design side involved a lot of imagination versus application via large amounts of experimentation. The development as I'm discovering is heavily dependent on trial and error, even when everything seems to be coded correctly there still sometimes seems to be phantom occurrences happening? Got things to look right in firefox on the mac and have designed with the intention of the result been viewed on the college monitors as they are slightly larger then mine. I am going to do a little cross platform testing once I have finished adding the final img links.

I take any web design project as a positive experience because I now take the opportunity to produce or manipulate graphics in CS first before tearing them apart and then reconstructing the functioning site with a mix of WYSIWYG editing and hand coding. This, at times, can be more frustrating then watching a thalidomide try to tie their shoelace and not unlike some of Ikeas finest furniture you will still end up with a few nondescript and rather peculiar looking pieces!

One of the most valuable nuggets to me at the moment is the experience of timescales. The ability to produce something is by no means the same as the ability to know how long it will take you to produce the afore mentioned something.

The final piece has gone through a natural metamorphosis throughout the production. This I believe is part due to the limitations on my ability to manifest my internal visualizations then code compliant CSS but also because this was how the concept developed in my mind. To illiterate on this, I mean to say if you are producing a piece for a client be it an individual or company there is usually a brief to adhere to and they also may have an idea of what they want in their heads but lack the ability to communicate this effectively or even better want something that may look or interact terribly. These problems add another phase to development which involves either producing numerous concepts then amendments until you get close to what they imagine or having to tentatively coerce them away from their not-so-hot ideas with the proverbial carrot all the time resisting the temptation to declare "Thats Shit, You Shit!". Well without digressing too far, back to my point. Any designs or even possibly art produced is affected by the creators will and in this instance as I tried to follow the brief and produce a website (as this is the most relevant medium to me) I found myself considering the purpose and the audience. This is intended as a presentation. A presentation to a student audience. I could understand big business dudes sitting through a monotonous clicking through web pages presentation of their new website but for this purpose I would either have to devise a much more entertaining website or (as I chose) veer slightly between the lines and create a somewhat hybrid. The final piece is a very graphically heavy (albeit somewhat roughly edited) site, intended more as a interactive online presentation aid which communicates your message while leaving the option to follow up with the recipients.

I feel this would be an effective way to present even to a professional audience as it gives the presenter the chance to go fishing without overselling an idea and losing the recipients interest.