Project 2 Final

[hummela]

So i am having so many trouble with my dream weaver. hoping to figure it out this weekend. I have already talked to Michael said it was okay to just post my layouts so this is what i got.
personal site and redo of site.
Enjoy
http://donswansonracingschool.com

[Instructor]

This is acceptable for the purposes of making the due date. Though there will be a penalty for not having a completed website up obviously, and I would like to see a completed website up as soon as you possibly can withing the critique period. Thank you.

[lingling_chen]

Don't worry, Alexa. You are not the only one have troubles with this project. I like your homepage and your contact page, Keep going, everything will be fine.Good Luck. Lingling

[dboudinot]

Hey Alexa,

Don't feel bad, I destroyed my home page and spent a couple hours trying to figure what I did to it. I never figured it out; I just went to an earlier version on my hard drive before I destroyed the code.

I like your banner and layout. The font is a little hard to read especially the yellow "The Most Unique....", so I would play with it. I'm a really big fan of the gradient on your container. Good Luck with your dream weaver, hope to see the working website soon!

[aslychsm]

I feel your pain. We're all so use to coming up with ideas, and being creative with designs, but trying to weave it all together with code feels like something entirely different than what we're used to. Like it's utilizing a different section of our brain or something. BUT ANYWAYS, I'm getting carried away. I think your designs are lovely, and really reflect both you, and the website you redesigned. That flowing flag graphic is amazing, although I think it would pop out more if it was against any other color aside from white. As for your home page, it's adorable, but I feel like everything needs to be larger, especially your headline. Good start though!

[recordd]

Hi Alexa!! Great job on both of your sites! Your homepage is beautiful, I love the flower and the picture of you they both add a personal touch to your page. Your re-design is great! I really like how you designed the header with the checkered flag because it is the first thing I noticed. Your color scheme and layout are well balanced and overall your site is way more easier to navigate through than the original. One thing that I would suggest is to add contact information the header or footer for easy access. Good job! I can't wait to see your site believe you were not the only one having issues with this project...I did too I noticed that the more I did in Dreamweaver the more I got comfortable. You will get the hang of it just take time and practice

[rrodriguez]

Alexa Hummel,

I totally get it. Dreamweaver and css was extremely hard to figure out. Took me days just to do little things. As for your portfolio, I like it. It's clean and creative and fun all in one. I like the whimsical font choice. The colors work well too. The redesign page is a lot easier to understand as compared to original website. My only concern is the grey background. It's slightly hard to read the information, but other than that - I like the design and layout of information. It's gonna look killer once it's online.

[paula_b]

Hi Alexa! I think we can all relate to the challenges of this project! I love your personal page and agree that things could be bigger. There is a lot of negative space. The redesign is very good, so much better than the original page. My eyes have a hard time with the red on the checkerboard background, maybe a muted red would be better. The layout is clean and easy to follow, good work! Good luck getting things up on the server!

[Sierragirlnv]

Hi Alexa,

I sympathize with your technical difficulties I think we all had them at some point. I like your project two roughs you took complimentary colors and balanced them well with muted tones. It really has a racing and fast feel to the design which I think communicates the idea really well.
The only critique I would have is your home page the circles at the bottom don't seem to fit well for me. Maybe make them oval shaped like your profile picture and make them the same size and the lines should be the same stroke width as well. That would give it better balance and unity. Otherwise good luck getting it up on the server. Good job!

Sierragirlnv

[Instructor]

I fully sympathize with your technical difficulties. Building a website using code does use different parts of your brain, as Ashley mentioned. Feel free to ask me any questions about putting it together as well as posting questions in the Ask/Tell Subforum so your fellow students can lend you a hand. This is a cooperative venture after all.

As for your designs, I like some of the simplification work you've done on your Project One. The more muted color scheme seems to work, even if it's not quite as clean as the design you presented in your Project One final. I also think you need to make your top bar smaller and move your bodycopy up a touch to give it a bit more bottom margin.

You've also got a good layout going with your Project Two. It's got a solid nav bar that's easily visible and usable. I also like the use of the checkered flag background on your top bar, which really stands out and draws the eye in. The layouts themselves are clean, with well placed text and images that inform and supplement what's being communicated by the text.

Where I have issues is in legibility. I'm loosing your headline type in the header checkered flag. I also loose pieces of the bodycopy in the background gradient. I would pick a more subtle background gradient for your type areas. I think your bodycopy text blocks would be easier for the eye to follow if the were left aligned rather than centered. Also watch your margins. You sometimes have too much space at the bottom of your copy blocks, like on your About Us page. Or too little, like on your home page.

I also think the legibility would be improved if you simplified the color scheme a little. I get where you were going with metallic silver, red, green, and yellow, but I think you need to pull two of those colors. I'd recommend pulling green and yellow and sticking with red as an accent color. I find the yellow difficult to read at the top of the bodycopy gradient and the green seems to clash with the gray and red.

Finally, make sure your buttons are the same size and on the same baseline throughout your navigation. It looks wierd and jumpy seeing them all different sizes and alignments.

I think you have a good layout here that needs a little bit of cleanup to be great. Keep building and always feel free to ask me or your fellow classmates questions!