Project 3 Preliminary Critique

[kaycee_weddell]

Hey everyone, these are my roughs for project 3. I wanted the overall design and color scheme to match with the rest of the tmcc.edu site so i stuck with that TMCC green and the logo. I wanted a modern look and feel so I tried to keep it very professional and organized on one of my concepts and the other I had a little more fun incorporating some design elements. It is hard to tell but I want to incorporate a slide show in my final concept so to show that in used the little dots in the corner of the pictures to indicate a single slide of the slideshow. Let me know what you think!

[lornrocks]

Looking good, Kaycee! I think I like the home page of the second design (with the lizard) better than the photograph with Dan, simply because most people who don't know a lot about the program aren't going to know who Dan is. But that's a great photo you can use for one of your inside pages.

I like the classes page in the first design, the one that has the big green script in the background. It's very hip and trendy and I like it.

The second course offerings page you have is okay but the white square the text covering the kids' faces is a little weird to me. I feel like if you were going to have a background image there, you should do something like buildings or landscape or something.

Love the font and color choices and everything looks clean and easy to navigate. Nice job!

[raoki]

I really like both of your design! I'd say the first design looks more "your own" style. I mean, your second design looks so similar to actual tmcc web page.
Not the main web page but I feel like I've seen it before... Maybe not.ha

If you go with your first design, you should put some more space between titles and body copies. Especially, the third one looks too tight.

[Joe_Morales]

Kaycee,

Both your designs look very clean and easy to navigate and nice little nod to the Addy Award winners in our program. I like the layout of the lizard design slightly more. The image of the students on the second page of your lizard design is a little distracting so id play around with a different image. nice job!

[rmiyashiro]

Both are well-laid out. I like the layouts with the picture of Dan on the front of it best. The font choices are good. Everything is easy to read and find.

[dbranby]

Really strong design work ... I particularly like the award show version, as that is a real highlight in any designer's career, and helps the viewer see his/her future in the field. I'm excited to see you build it out!

[dnorwood]

I really like the awards page, it shows what could be in a students future...and it is happy. No, not everybody knows Dan...but they will by the time they have completed a semester or two! The concept for your classes page for that set is good, but I think the items listed should be on your degree page. The second set is just too generic for me. Except for the GRC name and 'Learn more" box, it could be used for any other TMCC program.
Good luck,
Denise

[ravens.way]

I really like both of your design! I like the design with the lizard the best. Your design are easy to read and have a nice use of space. Your colors work well together on both of your designs.

[Instructor]

Oooooh! It's time for me to be that guy again. I love it when I get to be that guy! Here we go ...

I like a little bit of both of them and think they should be combined!

Ah, that feels better.

But it is true you've got great parts here and I think if you stitched 'em together you'd have a design that's better than the sum of it's parts. The home page from your first design is very eye catching with a large, bold, "Graphic Communications" that grabs the viewer's eye bulbs and doesn't let go. I like the photo of the award winners and drunk Dan, but a caption is in order. Someone said earlier that this is a good illustration of where students might be if they take the program and a caption might help them make the connection. The only real change to it, I think, would be to introduce the transparency from your second design.

Now for the other half of the monster. I think you should use the inner page from your second design. It's much more visually interesting than the home page from your first. I like the transparency, it allows us to see more of your photographic background without compromising content. Your navigation is well placed and easy to use. The photographic background tells a story and you can use that from page to page. Your smaller image can be used to reinforce your background image or to contrast with it as need be on a page by page basis.

Both designs could definitely use a bit of leading in their bodycopy. The type is rather crammed together and difficult to read in a lot of places. Also a bit of tracking and kerning as well. It gets a little blobby here and there.

Excellent work!

[gr8ful1]

I like both of your designs, but I like the first one better. It has more of a graphics vibe to me than the frog does. I like how you put "classes" across the back of the course listing too, it adds much more visual interest than just linking to the catalog. I like the three column layout at the bottom, it's easy to read. If you do go with the frog one, my only real suggestion is to move the heading of the first paragraph up to the first line where it is on the other page.