The purpose of this design report is to relate the goals, design process and strategies involved with this website. The report will also give credit to various sources used in the creation of this site.
This website was designed with the intention of showing it to potential employers. Therefore, the site has a résumé, an “about Bettie” section, and writing and design samples. The “About Bettie” section most likely portrays the most personality out of all the pages on the website. A light-hearted, friendly tone was attempted, hopefully making for easy reading, and an element of creativity was placed in it as well.
The inspiration for this theme came from the Truman Capote quote "To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the inner music the words make." It was decided right off the bat that the theme for this website should somehow fit in with writing, but deciding how to do about this proved quite tricky. The quote was an immediate fit because two goals for the website had already been pretty well established. The goals were:
Various design elements were utilized throughout this web design process, including contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity.
In order to make for easy navigation, a navigation bar was placed below the heading on each sub-page. The navigation bar automatically highlights the link of the page the user is already on, creating a reminder for the user as to where they are on the site. The homepage features a vertical list of links, as does the writing samples page. The background of these links is red, to draw in the user’s attention.
Although this website did not undergo as radical a change as the Mini Zen project, a few drafts were created before the final. The original draft had the same musical theme and layout, but the graphic in the bottom-right corner of the page was a lot more color. The colors were then matched in fireworks to use in the body of the website, giving it a very colorful and cheery feel.
After this draft, however, it was decided that too much color overwhelmed the page and distracted from the actual content. Having seven colors to play with in the website proved a bit overwhelming and made it difficult to establish consistency and contrast in the design. Furthermore, the goal was to have a sophisticated, elegant design, and the original draft looked more playful than anything.
The same layout was maintained throughout the revision. The rainbow-colored graphic was replaced with a simpler black, red and white image. The colors in this graphic—black, white, and red— were used throughout the rest of the website to establish a more consistent design and a more sophisticated look.
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