GRC 175 Learning and Discussion Forum

Inspiration for website one:http://www.177milkstreet.com/ and http://blackestate.co.nz/
(as seen on 960 Grid System website) Inspiration for website two: http://interactionhero.com/ and http://lefarfallecharleston.com/ Hello, everyone! My name is Sarah Alvarado and these are my rough website designs for Project 1. For this project we were instructed to design a homepage for a personal website of ours that will host the other two projects for later in this semester. For my designs I chose to go with a creative forest style for my website's appearance. I think of myself as a creative person and a lover of fantasy/anything forest-y so I wanted to emphasize that in my website. Because of this, I chose to research websites with the similar appearances such as La Farfalle and Christopher Kimball's Milk Street as well as some funner, more interactive websites such as Interaction Hero. Thank you for all your feedback and I hope you enjoy my designs!

Hi Sarah:

Great designs! I enjoy looking at both of your designs. Your website_2.jpg design is the one that I keep defaulting to (I put them on two screens and kept looking at both of them, back and forth really fast). I think they both have fantastic color choices and nice layouts, but the dashed lines in that 2nd design provide some visual focus that makes me want to keep looking at that one. I really have no suggestions for improving your 2nd design.
The suggestion I have will be for your first design: Would you consider creating some sort of visual separation between your nav bar & the body? I think the two colors work really well with each other, but for some reason I feel like there needs to be a slight visual transition between them.

Hi Sarah,

I like both of your designs but I am thinking that the 2nd one is the one I would pick. Like the color combinations and layout. Like your fonts The first design the nav bar seems butted up to the edge and needs some separation from the body. I really have no suggestions for the 2nd one.

Hi Sarah,

I think your first design works better than the second. I love the antlers at the top, and the way your pictures will be displayed! I would only make the color of your navigation (texts) the color of the background of the body (the yellow or light brown).
Your navigation bar in the second design looks great, I would only put your portrait below your name at the top.

Excellent job establishing a style right away, Sarah.

Your second design has a really nice arts and crafts feel. Your earth tone colors are well chosen and reflect the warm homespun quality you're going for here. The nouveau type also reinforces it, without getting so artsy as to be illegible. Nicely done with the logo as well; having the roots and branches mirror each other and create a circle where it doesn't actually exist. Another mark toward that crafty feel. Your navigation is large and easy to use. Pretty good margins all over the composition too. That makes sure nothing feels overcrowded. I like the stitching effect that reoccurs all over the composition as well. It helps lock in the homespun feel. The use of shape and color really help conceal the straightforward, traditional layout.

I think what it would really benefit from is some subtle textures and patterns like this website here does: http://deda.me/. And some more ideas in that vein. You've got the layout here, I think some textures would really kick it to the next level. I'd also eliminate the second set of stitching on your logo and just let the first set wrap all the way around your logo and top bar. I'd also make your image gallery slightly taller so it comes down closer to your bodycopy and eliminates that gap.

Nice work.

Hi Sarah,

I like the second one better as well. I think the circle tree mirrors what you talk about more than the deer antlers and help the viewer make assumptions before reading. Additionally, the visual separation using the stitching helps to navigate the page. You talk about your interest in illustration and creating characters, is there a reason you haven't included any of them? I think it would help the viewer understand what your original creations are. Good job!

hello Sarah,

I like both designs. I think they are each different and well organized. I like the second design better. I think it is stronger and the image in the position make it look like a real, professional web page. I like the logo or that design on top of the page and the position of the bottom. I know you can play more with the design but I don't know what you could change, it looks good.

Very nice. I think I like number 1 the most. It does give off a nice woodland vibe. My only drawback is the lemon yellow though I'm assuming it would be covered in images slideshow-style? I'd probably also line up the footer text a little more purposefully, maybe centered and stacked. It might be cool to play up the woodland aspect, with a larger tree (either photographic or vector created in your unique style). I do like your self logo on the second design as well, so maybe that could be integrated. But not at the expense of the antlers on design 1. Love that.

I think that out of the two the second design might be a little more interesting. The first one seems to have a lot of extra space around the navigation on the left, and on the second it is nice and constrained. I also like the header on the second design, and using the navigation bar as part of the header design works really well. The way the preview of the link enlarges on the center with the description below makes it really easy to navigate (in my opinion.)

-Ivor