Project 1 Preliminary Critique

[Abused Oreo]

Hello, everyone, my name is Taylor Von Stetina and these are the two designs I have created. I wanted to keep my designs clean and simple with a modern look to it. I like having a landscape image in the design as it creates a nice warm welcome and a picture of me so the audience knows what I look like. I choose landscape shots because I love the outdoors. The links I used help me get an idea of what a modern website looks like and major things to look out for.

I used these links as helpful tools and inspiration ideas:
https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/10-websit ... ming-news/
https://www.nike.com/
https://colorlib.com/wp/news-website-templates/
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/elem ... esign-list

[katyroses]

Hi Taylor,
I like your designs. I enjoyed how you focused on nature/outdoors theme, plus the photos you picked are eye-catching. In one of your designs, the only thing I recommend changing is the all caps body copy. Using all caps in body copy can make things difficult to read and causes the eye only to focus on the group of caps rather than the design as a whole. I would also make the box that is holding your body copy a little bigger just to give it some breathing room. All in all, both designs look good!

[NalaniN]

Hi Taylor,

I really like all your roughs. Good photo choices!
One thing you might consider changing is it feels to me like the TMCC logos are a bit too large for the layouts.

[Instructor]

Looks like you've got a couple of decent designs here, Taylor. I think your first design is the better one.

My favorite part is that white top bar. It acts as a frame for the picture and for the overall layout. It also provides good contrast, which I'm a total sucker for. Your navigation is super easy to see and use because of it. I'm not usually a fan of mixing serif and sans-serif fonts, but here it works. I like the division of sans-serif type in the photo and serif type outside of the photo. Speaking of the photos, yours are extremely well-chosen. They are colorful, eye-catching, and say a lot about you. In fact, the imagery does all the heavy lifting in your composition in terms of color. The rest of the design does a great job of staying out of the way of your photos and letting them do most of the talking. Outside of your bodycopy box, you use margin well throughout. Everything has room to breathe and there is little crowding.

I'm not sure that your bodycopy needs the container box. Try your bodycopy in white against the background. If that doesn't show well, put an ultra-transparent dark box behind it and then slowly make it less transparent until the type becomes visible. Try keeping the box as transparent as possible though. Also, if you are going to use a box, add a bit more margin around the edges. Right now your box is way too tight. I DON'T THINK YOUR BODYCOPY NEEDS TO BE IN ALL CAPS, EITHER. It just feels too shouty to me. I think it'd help if it was the regular blend of caps and lowercase characters. Make sure your "GRC 175 Web Design and Publishing" has the same baseline as your TMCC logo.

Not bad, Taylor. Not bad at all!

[itsdrrlcarden]

Hello, your designs are very similar but i think I like the first one better. I think the type choices are more unique to the design. I think playing with size in text and imagery could improve both. Overall, great design!

[tandyg]

Hi Taylor,

Thank you for posting about your visit to the set of Dr.Who. Matter of fact there is kinda a resemblance to you and the original Doctor to the series. I consider your design to be clean and organized. Your navigation is prominent and I feel the need to have the ultimate user experience with the use of expressive type and color. Just to mix it up and freak out your viewer with heavy metal type with red stroke and green stroke. I hope for the best and will see you in class. Thanks for sharing.

[smartinez33]

Hi Taylor, your nature designs looks great, but I am having trouble reading your body copy, you should play around the fonts and sizes so it can be readability.

[adriannageo]

Hi Taylor, I really like all your roughs. I would say I like the second roughs but definitely could work with either. I think the top one the background photo and the picture of you are kind of combating each other.

[trixiapanda]

I really hate your username Taylor, and that's because my dog is named Oreo :/

On the other hand, both designs are really cool. I would say that your profile picture matches more with the background image on the first design. But, I really like the aesthetic of the background picture on the second design. I like the layout of the first design, however, I just feel like the text box is a bit in the way... So, maybe find a way to make it blend with the background a little more? (Maybe play around with opacity, or place the text box somewhere else?) I can't really choose which design you should do because I like what's happening on the both designs. Maybe you can combine them?? Overall, you did a great job! I just hate your username. (lol)

[cwalkerdesign]

great designs and I love the imagery. both designs can be easily navigated through and imagery is ee catching that will get attention
Charmaine