project_4_prelim_jcowan

[Meghna_Misson]

Hey James,
These are both really impressive designs! I really like the black analogous color scheme with the first concept, however, I enjoy the second one the most because it is more colorful and inviting (and totally not because of the staff being made up of Sesame Street characters, haha I love it!). I think what you can do to improve this design is by increasing the opacity of the transparent boxes behind all the text elements or by darkening the hue of the green text; for example, it's quite hard to see the green text in the navigation due to the green being a light color on top of another light color. But besides that, there is no other issue that I can find here and I am down with everything that is presented, great work!

[lilykmitch]

hi james
this is awesome i love the black and white concept the most. it looks so good and so detailed you always make some of the best work! the instructor page is great too. i cant wait to see your final webiste!

[Elle Barre]

Hi James, I love navigation that is COMPLETE, turn on a dime in any direction and be there in one click, so that would be good in any website imo. I like that diagram you made or borrowed to show that is the intention. Design 1, the black and white, is classy, very classy, and cold, it's stony to me, like engraving, and a snowy picture. I would hope for any of the neighboring pages you would click on would have a Wizard of Oz-like curtain opening to a world of color, cause college in freezing temps does not look inviting to me even though we are doing it here at TMCC sometimes. But it IS a beautifully designed layout, very appealing how you placed the college seal behind and partially blocked in there... The gods must have known these black and whites would take the wind out of my sails, because... COLOR and zaniness in Design 2! (this is all about me, right?)

With such an eerie likeness between your photo of the gang, and the actual GRC professors, teachers, aides, and, a few administrators, there is no question which design I cotton to more: color and photography, and PEOPLE is where it's at for me. Smiles: a HOME RUN. I have a little trouble with the contrast between all of your text elements and the background... and, on looking closely I notice the mountaintops "coming out" of Cookie Monster's head and it wouldn't hurt to raise that photo up over them, though that's persnickety, really. There's something bothering me about the word Faculty... I just don't like it, the italics aren't working for me, the first capital letter and lower case, too--suddenly I doubt whether that's how you spell that word (not really, but that's just how oddly it strikes me). Maybe it's because it does not feel right so close to the to the headline of the same color and font, but smaller and not italicized. I feel it should be either all caps, not italicized, MORE smaller than the headline, right of left-aligned, or as a caption instead of a title, or, add a modifier like "GAMT FACULTY".

I like your transparent and subtly colored boxes leaving the entire page to be a photograph you can see almost all of, it's beautiful.

Your preliminary sketches of the wireframes is real smart, very professional and responsible to not just jump in and start snapping elements onto a page willy-nilly, not that most folks drawn to this field can't do that with great results, but, it does set one apart as having the ability to visualize the whole of what you want, and prevent guesswork and lots of changes before you arrive at what you could have pre-designed and gotten to faster and with less throwing things, moaning and groaning. I am inspired by your thoroughness and successful results. :- )