Portfolio Site

Posted on August 1st, 2009 by bstine20.
Categories: ITGM 353.

When thinking about my portfolio site, a lot of things come to mind. Most important of all is what would a potential employer think? Like somebody put it there on purpose, thanks Prof. Spencer.  Jon Jones’s blog has a very intriguing new post called “Your Portfolio Repels Jobs”. It goes through the gauntlet of things for artists to run through when building their portfolio sites. I feel as though most things he says are true, however there are a few things I must disagree on.

He says that the first page you come to cannot be a splash page or a “news” page, “forget it if it isn’t putting your art in my face”. Then he goes on to say that if it isn’t helping to sell your art faster or sell you as an artist faster, then don’t include it. I agree with that if it doesn’t help sell you or your art then forget about it, but a splash or news page may have details or art that gives a great glimpse into you as an artist/your art. Even a news page that doesn’t include anything like “I think I had Wendy’s twice today” but more like “I just added to a section or an entire section of new art” then it really is new-s that someone would WANT to read.

I look forward to creating a flash site that appears to be a straightforward HTML page, but hidden underneath is a flash site. Much like the example again from Prof. Spencer’s post. I found that site to be direct and very useable in a way that most flash sites miss. It functions like a very awesome moving HTML site.

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In a Flash

Posted on July 26th, 2009 by bstine20.
Categories: ITGM 353.

Flash is becoming a standard for interactive media websites around the world. Weather or not the page is entirely flash based or flash embedded into an HTML page, it heightens the user experience (hopefully in a good way) so that the user walks away feeling as though they have participated in the web rather than being assaulted by the everyday text based websites.

I believe that Flash sites are most successful when they immerse the viewer in a whole experience that has sound, motion, and most important of all: content. A flash site is nothing without content. I believe that content is what is missing from most flash pages. They are forgetting their roots!

On the contrary, Flash sites are most unsuccessful when they are all “bling” and no guts.

Flash sites as i mentioned before can be most useful as media driven sites such as portfolio or media based company sites. However, if a site can never lose the flash portions to elegantly slip into an HTML site then that site is unsuccessful to me. A quick glance at digital domain’s site reveals that the intro and main navigation is flash based, but then when the content needs to take center stage it does in an HTML way.

I think flash is going to stay in the forerunning of site design for quite a bit of time to come, until technology pushes past it.

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The Web is in My Pocket!

Posted on July 26th, 2009 by bstine20.
Categories: ITGM 353.

I have found that having the web in my pocket is something that is one of the most useful things about today’s smartphones. However, the one drawback is that the majority of surfing still happens on the desktop. Thusly most companies still haven’t designed an alternate page like 101 cookbooks has or google or bank of america. The most ironic part is that Apple doesn’t even have a mobile page.

I guess this bring me to the point that Apple hasn’t created a mobile page because they want to show off exactly what the iPhone can do on it’s mobile browser as a marketing technique. It doesn’t take long to notice that Apple’s page, unlike most home pages out there, doesn’t have any flash content. Flash is one of the last things that the iPhone cannot perform. I digress…

Websites that perform a certain function like a cookbook site, a banking site, or a car directions website are all almost at their MOST useful when away from the desktop. Because for most people they don’t remember to check their bank accounts at home, only when they are about to buy something…not so small do they realize “Oh $#!^, I think I am broke!”. Then a quick iphone banking site reassures them of their purchase. Or when you are at home you may search for directions before you get going, but when those Mapquest directions fall apart (which you know they always do) you’ll be wishing you had gone to google maps and then you realize that it is available on your smartphone!

In summery, the creation of mobile portfolio sites and other pages that have an alternate mobile site have always sprung from the mother of invention: Necessity.

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Web Typography

Posted on July 15th, 2009 by bstine20.
Categories: ITGM 353.

For today’s web browsing public, typography is often times thought of as another word for genre. However, for today’s web browsing designers and other artists typography is becoming more and more of a nuisance of the visual senses. For those artists and designers, stumbling upon a site with glaring text/typography issues can be a frustrating experience. Whereas the general publics visit to the same site is much less annoying.

Smashing Magazine has a great article about typography that goes through the good and bad, of web typography as well as a small tutorial.

Things like contrasting colors that blur when reading, having good margins and kerning.

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How big do I make it?

Posted on June 30th, 2009 by bstine20.
Categories: ITGM 353.

While looking at some sites on both a desktop and an iPhone, I have found a few things:

First, most sites tend to lean towards the older standard resolutions of 800 px as the max width of information. However, to keep these sites looking slick, they also tend to have design elements that allow the boarders of the site to blend nicely into the background color of the whole page when the window is enlarged. This is most often found when a page keeps a white color scheme that allows the page to resize to a larger window without having abrupt changes in color. A good example of this is Motionographer.com.

Second, some sites have thought about their target audience when creating their site to have an alternate page for a mobile platform like an iPhone. These alternate sites are most commonly surfed while the user is away from a desktop. An example of these sites can include banking or social networking sites. The mobile sites are often times simplified and can even offer less features than the desktop version. One advantage that the mobile site has over a desktop only site is that the navigation of a non-mobile site on a mobile device can be harder and more tedious. That means lots of scrolling and zooming in to find where i need to go. Whereas the mobile sites have easy to find large buttons to click on and larger typography as well.

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The good, the bad, and the awesome!

Posted on June 22nd, 2009 by bstine20.
Categories: ITGM 353.

One of the best websites as far as the quality of user experience and ease of navigation would have to be Adobe.com.

The technical aspects of this site are responsive and increase the ease of navigation. I believe this is achieved through the color palette, typography, and good organization. It is an overall great site that is clean and a breeze for the user, and keeps everything simple and organized for the developer.

A site I believe to not provide a successful user experience would be webwizz.net.

Actually, everything about this page is frustrating to use. Everything except for the navigation bar. It is always accessible so the user can move quickly through this migraine machine!The colors are overall too saturated and there is constant motion everywhere on the screen. This site also contains text fields that are hard to read because their backgrounds are very busy in terms of color and content. The text is also saturated in bright colors most of the time that when combined with the backgrounds makes for a terrible user experience. The best part is that they offer web design services!

A site that is awesome in  layout, navigation, and content would have to be motionographer.com.

This page provides a wealth of top notch animations and visual effect short films from all over the world. Then they place them in a blog style fashion that make it easy to see the new stuff while leaving permanent links easy to navigate with.

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