KIACS Online - New Design

Here is the latest design for my website.

If you compare the new design with the current design, it's clear to see how much my design ideas and quality of design as developed in just under a year.

Originally, my logo had 4 different colours and the font wasn't very modern looking. I've decided to stay with the layout of the logo (the words under each other) but I've decided to use a clear, funky font and just the green because it looks more slick, more fun and less rough.

The logo on the far right is my official logo, the arrow with a blue circle underneath, reflects the cycle of design, development and deliverance. By crossing it over with an arrow, this connotates a different "direction" in my work, and reflects my approach to design being clear, simple and effective.

I've continued to use the green and blue as the main colours for the website, dropping the red and white as these offered too much variation and detracted from the website development as I was trying to work with too many colours.

In terms of content, the website will house my graphic and website design work I've created over the last 2 or 3 years. Not only will there be a portfolio section with live previews of my work, but the blog will serve the purpose that this blog currently does. This will all be backed up by my twitter page, where users will be able to access my latest tweets, straight into the website.

I will be using HTML, CSS, PHP, MySql and probably (hopefully) jQuery where I can.

Overall, this new website design is sleek, modern, clean and effective. It will serve its purpose to a great standard and will be a design I am happy to keep for years to come hopefully.

Carphone Warehouse - UNI Mobile

I've finally finished my website project.

Here's the website I've made for UNI Mobile as part of a promotional offer from the Carphone Warehouse store in Nottingham.

UNI Mobile is a fictional company I've made as an illustration purpose. The Carphone Warehouse store in Nottingham, however, is real and therefore fits in with the retail establishment as stated in the brief.

I have used CSS, Flash, Javascript and HTML to create the website. I'm very pleased with how it's turned out. The colours are very eye catching and the site is simple to use and serves its purpose.

KID IN A CANDY STORE: New site design

Well after having my current website online for about 6 or 7 months, I've decided it's time to give it a refresh to fit inline with my new portfolio, so that I create a new brand image and have business cards printed along the same lines.

Here is my new design for the site. It will be made in HTML and CSS as I feel my new skills in these areas will be able to create the site I want, which is an exciting opportunity for me to put my new skills into a design that will actually be used online. Also, producing the website in HTML and CSS will make it a lot easier to update and change when required, unlike using Flash, which takes a lot of time and concentration when adapting it to fit in new content.

However, I may still use Flash elements, depending on how the website forms over the coming months.

Markeaton Park Website: First Product

Here is the first version of my Markeaton Park website online and fully functioning!

To say I have never done ANY HTML, CSS or Javascript before, I think I've done fairly well! Just don't look at my coding, it's a bit of a mess! ;)

It's not EXACTLY the same as my initial ideas that I produced in Photoshop as the opacity effects across different browers is occasionally quite tricky. I managed to get around this in IE by creating a seperate CSS file and removing the opacity, and just maknig a plane white box instead. Not a big issue really, but none the less, a bit annoying.

Almost everything else is exactly as I wanted it, except the links, but I quite like it layed out how it is at the moment. If I had longer to work on it, I would spend longer adapting the code and being really perfective over the whole design.

CSS Fixed and Floating - Reviewing Websites

Landau Forte
Derby Yamaha Music School
The Sims 3
Facebook
BBC

I've been looking across the Internet at how websites act and respond when the user resizes the window or maximises etc.

I looked at some mainstream sites such as Facebook and BBC and Sims 3, as well as more niche sites such as Landau Forte and Derby Yamaha Music School. My research can conclude that the way most of the sites move around are relative to a position. For example, the Landau Forte and BBC websites are positioned to be central to the screen and when the window is made larger, nothing happens, other than all the content staying central to the window.

Some sites, such as Facebook and Sims 3 are still central, but having moving objects. For example, on Facebook, if you resize the window the blue bar at the top will resize to fill all the way along the top of the site, however the whole website is still centrally positioned. The Sims 3 site also works in the same way, with the Sims 3 logo staying positioned absolutely top left, making it always visible.

Having done this research, I've decided that I am going to create my Markeaton Park website in the same style, using CSS to configure the site to be central, and remain central on resized windows.

Ill aim to keep the site's dimensions with in 800x600 to keep it accessible to a lot of monitors and screens.