GRC 175 Learning and Discussion Forum

For this first design I wanted to use the colors, brown, orange, and green because I have been attracted to those colors lately. I used a type of script font to present my name to give it an artists feel. I also added a hand drawn image from GRC 110 of my tree house that I antiqued to make it match better with the site's color scheme. I used different colors from throughout the site to create the font colors for the 'GRC 175, Web Design & Publishing 1, Spring 2013" portion of the site. I am not exactly thrilled on how my buttons turned out after i was putting the finishing touches on the site, so any recommendations would be appreciated. I'm thinking I could take the button part out and just have the brown font directly on the orange paint then have it change color when I apply the rollover...
For this second design I wanted to have a much cleaner look and also eliminate the use of most colors and only focus on one a few colors to highlight the site. I chose to do red, white, gray, and black, and tie in a photo of downtown Reno. I took out all of the saturation and then used a layer mask to apply back in the red lights from Reno's natural lighting of the buildings. To create some balance I added my bio block into the portion of the photo that was lacking a dark shape and eliminate some of that empty real estate on the page.
Thanks for the comments and time, I can't wait to read them all.
(I still have to add in my resources tab on both sites)

2 LInks Inspirational links:
I found this designer Mark Hobbs' website to be very inspirational from a graduating student's point of view. He does a very good job at selling himself and presenting his design as a product for employers. His website is easy to navigate and his use of color works very well throughout the site.
http://markhobbsdesign.com/v1/index.html

Betsy Smith's website I found to be inspirational for similar reasons as I did Hobbs', but she is presenting herself as an already established graphic designer. She uses several different logos as buttons for her site, yet she ties it all together with her color choices and uses typography to perfection. She has a very clean approach to her web designs that is much more difficult than I thought it was going to be coming into this class.
http://betsysmithworldwide.com/

Hi Justin! The second rough is really cool! I think I am just way too into the negative web designs that have one color to make things pop. The type needs to be played with a little more. I think the middle "Web design & Publishing1" needs to start ascending from top to bottom, than bottom to top. I like how "design" is in red. Good job!

Justin! you always do great work. really. anyway, I like the second one best, I think... if I HAVE to choose! i'm partial to the black and white and your design feels really cool and modern. very dynamic. awesome work!

My prefer is the second one over first layout. I think if you could add more complimentary colors, first would look more cool. For the second one I dont know what to add, everything looks great.

Justin-
Great work on BOTH of your roughs. I feel torn between which one I like better. I love the Halloween vibe I get from the first one and second one’s color scheme is striking a.k.a amazing! Great job on both!
jen

as you said the buttons need some work but if you can find a way to make the navigation work stronger navigation. other then that its really solid

Hi Justin - I'm drawn to the craziness of the first design, and I think it could be even better if you take your illustration out of the box and make it the focus of the page. Everything else could build around it. It's so fun and creative that I can't get enthusiastic over the second layout.

your grayscale design is a knockout, I like everything about it. just alot of nice touches like the red shelf for the nav buttons and the red colors in the photo. pretty sweet!

Great job Justin, you've made it too hard to choose.

Both designs are great and well done. I like the red, white and black layout, and the orange artistic one... Which one do you like more?

Heya Justin.

On the first one, I really enjoy the artistic look of it. It looks kind of playful and inviting with the orange sketching kind of look and how it almost bleeds on the sides. Excellent choice of fonts, and you blended in the TMCC logo very well. It has a very fall feeling to it, which is fun because it literally says "spring" on it, haha. You are right about the buttons though; they're a little blah. Maybe try giving them that same sketch-y edge instead of just buttonized ovals, because I do think having that layered effect versus just the brown text on the orange background adds depth to the design. And while I absolutely love the picture in and of itself, I'm not really sure it adds anything to your page. It feels like you could've chosen any random picture and stuck it in there and gotten the same effect. I almost want something more personal, if that makes sense.

On the second, your color choices are amazing and bounce off of each other so very well. The shading is excellent and the red accents are just about perfectly placed. It also feels very simple while not really being that, which is cool. I'm not a huge fan of your text box, because it makes an otherwise clean design feel crowded there. Maybe shorten the picture to get rid of some of that white sky, and have another shaded area below it as your copy box. Also, the red (pink?) accents on the El Dorado look really fake to me, along with that red smudge right beside the globe. It might look more natural to just have the El Dorado's logo in red, instead of each floor. And I think having just one of the icons at the bottom in red and the others in black and/or gray would work better as an accent, because between them and the bold red line under your links, it's almost too much red.

Personally, I like the second one best! And I've actually seen Hobbs' site before; you're right, the way he sells himself is wonderful and delightfully creative, I think.