I was inspired from Douglas Bowman’s article, “A Design Process Revealed”. I realized that planning out a project before picking up a pencil has always helped my work tremendously. I admit, sometimes I jump right into a project without much planning and I can also remember falling short of some desirable projects.
He talks about brainstorming and creating lists of relevant words and phrases related to the topic. This is something that many students learn early on in high school in forms of word bursts and other forms. Before attending this school, I only associated word bursts with writing a dreadful writing assignment or research paper. Now I realize that it is also helpful in many designs problems.
I found it interesting how he says that imagery is not necessary in design. Up to this point in learning about web scripting, I assumed imagery was somewhat a priority. I had planned to explore and use it to strengthen future projects. Although he does say that it can enhance typography in a website, I think I may have been focusing too much on imagery.
April 11, 2008 at 3:49 am
dude i am totally guilty of the iamge thing as well. I always thought a website should be visually stimulating, but never thought about how the info was presented or anything else that goes along with good layout. I always thoguht if you had good eye candy people would come back and keep hitting your site. Batchelders class along with others have given me a rude awakening, but i must say they are teaching me the proper way to good and make sure that they are up to standards. One thing though what do you think, do you think he is write about not having to use pixs to make your design better? I would think you need a little something to make it pop dont you think?
April 15, 2008 at 5:12 am
Yes I do agree with you that you need a little something to make it pop. Here at school, they teach us that “too much” of one thing can distract the viewer’s eye from the message you are trying to send( whether it be on a brochure, logo, etc.) In the past I always thought you NEED tons of images to get the hits you want on a website. But now I am gonna be careful not to distract my message and try to use tasteful images only to strengthen it.
One thing I think is pretty cool about css is that you can make manipulated images in photoshop and bring out the “beauty of css”. Have you experimented with much of this before or are you a beginner like me?