Goodbye blogger!

Hey everyone!

Thank you ALL for taking the time to read my blog!

I'm not going anywhere though, don't worry!

I'm simply moving homes. My blog is now accessible on my own personal website which you can find here.

Thanks for reading and I'll see you over at the other side!

http://www.samuelmarshall.com

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.

PRIDE: Tweeks and alterations

The NTU Pride website has been playing on my mind a bit recently due to some little flaws in design and it not being graphically professional enough for my perfective nature!

So, I decided to do a bit of editing!

I've changed, on every page, the navigation menu from individual pictures to a simple text navigation, which has cut back on LOADS and LOADS of code but looks identical. The sub-menus still need converting, but it's starting to come together.

To make the NTU Pride brand more accessible, I decided to create the "badges" branding concept. This is where there are individual "badges" or "tiles" which indicate each sexuality or each different minority. These are refelected through the NTU Pride logo and pick up on each individual colour. This has also enabled me to create continuity throughout the website and printed media, especially as next year's fresher's fayre flyers encorporate this design.

In the realm of cleaning up code, I've also made the background image MUCH smaller and just repeated it on the Y axis, so that it loads much more quickly and can be repeated, meaning that text no longer over runs the end of the website, an issue I've been meaning to change for quite some time.

The auto-image changer has also been on my mind due it the images being quite old and dated, I've decided to remove those images and replace them with the "badges" idea to maintain continuity and it also gives the space to promote that NTU Pride is now officially sponsored by Propaganda.

To come: redesign of the committee section and ideas to cut down text.

Trent Barton Review

Well well well! It's about time Trent Barton revamped their website!
Their old site was very outdated and was quite unfriendly to use, it felt as though it was stuck in the mid 00's with their simple drop down menus and confusing bus time tables, however the story is different now.

Their new site offers the user a modern soft design, with the use of sliding menus and databases to remove unwanted clutter. Their new features removed all the excessive and unrequired data, and presents the user with options to find what they're really looking for.

Diverse menus that are simple to use and easy to understand have turned this website around. Their graphics have been improved a sense of strong brand has been created through their graphic design and web management. Check it out!

10/10

http://www.trentbarton.co.uk/