Design Draft :(

I've been quite busy with work and haven't had time to refine a design draft just yet, hopefully I'll have something for next week.

Funny cats, money and all that other stuff

Hi guys, thought you'd like to know some of the sites that I tend to frequent while I'm killing time online:

• I can haz Cheezburger? is a website dedicated to lolcat pictures. It's updated every few hours, and all the content is user generated. I own a cat myself and he's crazy, and as such I enjoy seeing the crazy cat pics that are on this site. I highly recommend it.
• Gizmodo is a technology and gadget blog that is also update every few hours with interesting atricles in the gadget/tech category. I go there every few days when I've got 30 mins to kill at work, some fairly interesting stuff on there.
• Sitepoint is a one-stop place for webdesigners, with forums and articles to help you build your website. The section I go to most often though is the marketplace. Here people buy and sell websites. Prices range from $100 through to $500k+. Some amazing sites are available there, if you have the money to buy them that is! I've been meaning to buy a site for quite some time, but I haven't managed to find one that I like just yet.

Apart from that there's the obvious like facebook, youtube, hotmail/gmail, but I'll spare you the descriptions on those, I'm sure you've all been there before.

Design Reference

Looking over everybody's blog posts I've realised that almost EVERYONE is remaking the Stonefest website. I know how boring it will be for the markers to look at 100 Stonefest websites but well, the Stonefest website is simply the plainest, needs the most work and has the most room for improvement. During my crawl of the web looking for suitable sites to 'borrow' design references from I came to the conclusion that there are a number of things I want my Stonefest redesign to have:

• Use of colour: I find that the current site is very bland and dull, utilising the power of colour in the redesign could make a world of difference.
• Artistic Finesse: The Stone Fest website look like it was made in the 90's, no matter what you think you cannot deny it is boring and unpleasant to look at. Combining imagery and colour will make my redesign far superior to the current stonefest homepage.
• Simplicity: Websites can get overly complicated, espically those flash based ones. I think a festival website needs to be visually pleasing, but also simple enough so that anybody can look at it and be able to navigate it without having to think twice. My redesign will (hopefully) utilise simplicity.

Below are the websites that I've found for my Design Reference:

Artificial Studio:














Klipp og Lim:














Squarespace:














Rob Palmer:














Ten24Media:















These are the seven key design characteristics that group these sites together:

• Colour
• Logo
• Easy to access Navigation menu
• Use of space directly below or above menu to showcase vital imagery
• Simple design
• Fixed width
  
• Vertical scrolling

1. Colour: All of the websites utilise colour to create a visually pleasing experience for the viewer:
















2. Company Logo: Each website utilises a well known web convention: a logo in the top left hand corner of the site. It acts as a home beacon, linking you back to the front page of the site if you click on it:
















3. Navigation: Each website has a crisp, clean menu along the top of the page, allowing users to easily navigate to any page the site has to offer:
















4. Showreels: Each website takes advantage of real estate right near the top of the page to display vital graphic information and key concepts of the page:
















5. Simple Design: Each site is very simple, sleek and elegantly designed. The site's are appealing to the eye without being too complicated.

6. Fixed Width: Another design convention commonly seen around the web today is fixed width pages. This fixes a minimal width that the content will squash down to if the browser window is resized or if the viewer has a small resolution on their monitor. All of my chosen sites are fixed width.

7. Vertical Scrolling: Yet another convention that's as old as the internet is vertical scrolling. It's rare to come across a website that scrolls horizontally, simply because it's jarring to the eye. All of my chosen websites feature vertical scrolling.



All of these seven characteristics that my chosen website's share I will be implementing in the creation of my own redesign of the Stonefest website. The characteristics that define my references put them in the group of clean 'shiny' looking websites. This is the look I will be aiming for with my project.


The first five screens can be clicked on and they will redirect you to the relevant websites, but if you can't be bothered scrolling up, here they are again:

Ten24Media,
Rob Palmer,
Squarespace,
Artificial Studio and
Lipp og Lim.

New look Blog

I've customised my blog a little, I've changed the theme and made a little banner to spice things up a bit. It's a photo of a cat I took on my trip to Vietnam earlier in the year.

First Post

Hi Guys!
Here's my Web Production Blog. It's so lame I have to have a blog for each of my classes this semester, that's 4 blogs to manage! I haven't made up my mind about what site I will be doing for the project, but I'm thinking it will be the stonefest homepage.

I'm off to the ANU Fire Pit, more updates to come when I get back.