In undertaking my design of a mini-zen garden, I wanted something that was vibrant, and yet simple; complex, and yet not confusing. With my design I feel I encapsulated my goals very well. I feel I have created a page with a lot going on, without it being overwhelming. Additionally, I used a layout that was unique in shape and placement, but that didn't distract or confuse my readers I tested it with. With the balance of simplicity, sophistication, and complexity, I feel I have embodied the very spirit of the Helvetica font.
In brainstorming my website, I decided to to have my entire garden be inspired by the Helvetica font. The famous, controversial, and simple font inspired my entire design. In choosing my colors, I decided to base my pallete off of Helvetica's country of origin: Switzerland. This led me to the ever attractive, and also high contrast, combination of black, red, and white.
For my background, I used a complex mashup of helvetica fonts and famous logos. I chose my background as the perfect example of how ubiquitous Helvetica is in today's world. Everywhere you turn, you can find helvetica font, and I feel my background illustrates that well. Despite the complexity of the background image, I think it very clearly fades into the background, because of the super high contrast of the body of my design. Additionally, I made sure to drive home the point that it was a background by including a space between my requirements and sidebar. My reader's didn't find the design choice distracting because the sidebar was non-essential information, and their eyes led them down the left hand side of the page.
In my design, I relied on the contrast of colors between my headers and body text to separate my text for me. Including too many boxes would have made the design cluttered: distinctly un-Helvetica like. I separated the needed infromation on the left, from the additional sidebar info on the right with a gap of my background design. I felt that the gap clearly showed my background to be a background, and also served to make the body of the text roughly "H" shaped, and unitentional, though appreciated design quirk. I tried various other combinations of sidebar alignment, but none of them looked quite right, and the odd shape is complemented by the text mash-up background
Overall, my design process went smoothly, though I must admit it was largely a process of trial and error. I would try one thing and like it, then try it in combination with other things. Eventually, I amassed enough "liked" elements that I was able to craft a cohesive page. The elements I picked lent themselves well to making an eye cathcing, easy to read design. My favorite part of my design are my mini-Swiss flag bullet points which I created using the design element:
list-style-image: url(Swiss_Flag.jpg);
and my specially colored links, which I created using the design elements:
a:link {color:#FF0000} a:visited{color: #660066}
