Up and running

Description:

After the long refreshing break I was able to start back and really crunch it on the site.  All the elements are working fine and the layouts and designs have improved greatly. I have given the site over to my friend and peer Jason to review it for me. I’m using him as a final set of eyes to check everything is in order for me.

Reflection:

With the break I was able to get stuck back in and see my mistakes and more to the point have the energy to correct them. The down time is such a huge factor and one I tend to forget pushing myself too hard at times in order to get the best work done. Passing it over to Jason is a great help as a fresh pair of eyes is always welcome and he has some experience in design so will have an eye for the details.

 

Aims:

To have the site up and running and registered by next week.

getting started (again)

Description:

Finding it hard to get back into it. I had planned that this week would be for polishing the site and focusing on the essay but to honest I just can’t bring myself to open the folders on my desk top. I’m just burnt out really. Christmas and a wedding have left me drained and I need to gather my strengths for the final push in January.

 

Reflection:

Rather than keep lying to myself about starting tomorrow every day and putting myself under stress I’ve decided to simply wait till I get back to Manchester and just push through till the hand up date. This has freed me up and allowed me to relax a lot more. There is only so much you can do and only so far you can push yourself.

 

Aims:

Hit the ground running when you get back Monday

Feedback

Description:

Got all my research and paperwork together. in order to present it to Johny. I wanted to get his opinion on what I have brought together so far. The site is functional but not completely there design wise. The feedback was good on the paperwork.

 

Feedback:

All the parts of the paperwork are there. Its just a matter of refining the layout a bit more. I need to add in more about the images and also really work on the development section bring all the elements together. The site needs more attention to the details and I should be looking at getting some peer feedback. Overall its a good report and I am boarding on a first.

 

Reflection:

I’ve been working too much really and have become somewhat annoyed with the project. As Johny was suggesting changes I was too tired to really listen. Normally I enjoy feedback from someone but all i kept thinking about was how much work it was going to be to change things. Snow blind is what he called it and to be honest its a damn good description. There was one bit of feedback that I will listen to and that’s getting some rest and taking a break from the project.

To be honest the board line first annoys me. Its kind of a running joke between college friends when a distinction was the only thing worth getting and we started viewing merits as fails. Its a great accomplishment but its not what I was aiming for. I can take comfort in that I’m not failing but it seems like a fail to me. A harsh standard but its one I have given myself and it helps me to push harder and to achieve more instead of just breezing through on merits and passes.

 

Aims:

Rest, unwind, refresh and start a new after Christmas.

Hell Week

Description:

I think I may have broken myself. I have been working 7 days a week pretty much all day and night trying to get the site up and active and functional. The reason behind the madness is that I am coding a 20 page site pretty much from scratch and designing the elements on top of that. Its a bit much to be doing all at once. Everything is falling by the wayside that isn’t directly related to the site, including the blog and the essay.

 

Reflection:

Too tired to think. I have just been lost in a world of code and pushing myself as hard as I can in order to make it work. At times its seems like I am getting no where and there is just too much to do. My body is stiff and sore and my brain is frazzled. Things are annoying me not least my own lack of skills but then I show stuff to fireds and they are impressed so at least I know I’m just too tried to care about myself at the moment.

 

Aims: 

Try not to kill yourself

Crooked Little Frame (Meetings & Musings 2)

Reflections:

While I stood in the kitchen during a meeting with my client I noticed that she had a selection of photos mounted in a frame with various windows cut out of card in order to frame them.

In two of the portrait slots she had placed landscape photos of people. As I craned my neck to see who was in them I kept think how odd it is to have these lop sided images in a frame. I also wondered if it had driven anyone who can’t stand crooked frames into a frenzy that didn’t end well for anyone.

As I was doing up the designs those photos were almost always in my mind. Especially as I shoved images 1 pixel up and down the screen in an attempt to line everything up or worried about the breath and spacing involved in a group of images and text.

I wondered how much the client would care or even notice that “1 pixel out” was littered through the site. Even to people with creative or artistic skills that 1 pixel shove of design seems incredibly demented. Its  like you have gone so far into the design all you see are little tiny squares that just won’t get it together. Its a weird relationship you have with a client. They can’t do what you do so you do it for them. Without the client I wouldn’t be making this design or site as I have little to no interest in beauty care (my hair is the biggest clue) but they have tasked me with it and so I create. But at each stage I must hand over the designs for them to look at, as it is after all their design and not mine. So they suggest and I change. But should you cater your design to their own tastes. If so can I get away with having lopsided and ill fitting photos. The answer is yes and no.

It all comes down to the “that will do” frame of mind. You can create a functioning site with images and texts and you can call it a site and it will do. Its all just a question of can you live with yourself, that choice and design afterwards. Personally speaking I can’t. If I’m not pushing myself creatively I feel I have let the client and myself down or worse still I’d get very bored of the job and do terrible work. As in any creative field when starting out you are only as good as your last job. If you keep thinking “that will do” your designs will reflect that notion and anyone looking at them will see safe and function sites but what they won’t see is a passion.

I have no great passion for beauty products but I have for designing and creating. By meeting my clients passion to their business and my own we can together create something new and interesting that we are both proud of.

In a talk John Cleese spoke of never stopping at the first answer your reach in terms of being creative. That first answer is the one everyone will arrive at in a given situation. To be creative you must push past that first answer break it apart and see what makes it tick and keep moving until you hit the next one, break that and so on. By doing this you are creating a host of ideas, each feeding of the last until you either hit the gem or run out of time. Either way you have a great well to draw on. And at no point will you be saying “that will do”.

Its easy to think of “that will do” in a bad light however at 4 in the morning when your brain is screaming at you and your body just wants to vomit up all its bones “that will do” is a tough bitch to say no to. However by that time you as so into the perspiration stage you probably need an aqualung and a lot of the ideas have been formed that you are just carrying them out. It can be disheartening to start thinking of short cuts (for that is what “that will do” really is) at this stage but some times its just a reality in terms of time or money.  The best you can hope for is that you have push so hard in the early stages that a slight slip now can be hidden until you have time to correct it.

In the end its what you can live with. Some people spend years painting a ceiling, other spend two hours with a roller. One goes mad, the other heads off early for a bit of relaxing. But only one is remembered and inspires others to do great things, always aware of the dangers of madness but the worth of sacrificing a few early days off.

Wind Down on Design

Description:

Well after a week of solid work I have pretty much broken the back of the work that needs to be done.

Over the last week I did up 10 webpages in terms of design and have coded up 6 of those pages.  The pages are simple just HTML and CSS.

None of the PHP (contact forms, etc) or Jquery (Gallery) has been added yet. I wanted to give Paula a chance to look over what has been done so far and let her have a chance to make changes before doing any unnecessary coding.

I have sent on the design work that I have done so she can see the pages in progress as well. On Monday (26th) I’ll give her a call in the evening so we can go over everything.

There are issues such as the cost of the stock photos I have included in the designs. If she gives me the go ahead I can buy them and use them in the site. Hopefully she will go for them and I don’t have to waste time looking for more.

Paula was in contact during the week with the font used by Daisy’s Beauty Room in their publications.  Its called “Amienne”. As soon as I find it I shall be using it in the site designs. If it has to be purchased I’ll pass it on to Paula.

In terms of design I am pretty much done bare any changes requested by Paula. I’m not happy with the Price List but I will tweak it later before building it.

All in all everything is going on track. I had the design phase winding down last Friday on the Gnatt and now I have two weeks of building scheduled.

Below the designs and here’s  a link to the work in progress site

Daisy’s Website_Layouts

 

Reflection: 

I am up against a wall in terms fo work. I have to simply do it or its not going to get down. Really feeling that I have taken on too much and worried that the whole project will suffer as a result. The essay has taken a back seat while I try and sort out the site designs.

 

Aims:

Drink litres of coffee and get stuck in.

Meetings and Musings (1)

Description:

Meeting with Paula went really well. She is very pleased with the designs and the suggestions I had for site. It was great to be locked in a room together so i could really hammer the details with her. She had a few suggestions for items but really she was asking more questions about what would be best to put in and leave out.

Reflection:

I find these kinds of meetings odd as I am being asked all kinds of questions about business online and in some cases online strategy. While most questions can be answered I feel uncomfortable as its not really my area of expertise. While I have gained a fair amount of knowledge over the few months of the course in terms of design theory, it is very limited to just websites. I can explain the need for certain elements but often. I am being asked about the bet way to launch sites and so on. Not exactly something that HTML can teach you.

Being the ‘web guy’ in the room I guess I’m just being asked out of convenience but it can be a little unnerving. The worry is giving out unintentional bad advice. If I encounter something I have no understanding of I’ll say so but I try to be as helpful has I can. I do this so it looks like I have idea of the larger picture. Even if its only an awareness of its existence.

As I alone am meeting the Clint and doing all stages of the project it is very different than say working in a company where everyone has a role to do. I have spent the last two years working on learning about the practical side of designing and building websites and this year will be all about the theory. Hopefully once I start working with a company I can really learn about the business side of it all.

Aims:

Start making the site and get working on all the elements.

Further Design Developments: Buttons

Description:

Got the buttons effect I wanted working on the main navigation. The background of the buttons when they flip over is being left a solid colour. I had intended to add photographs relating to each link but might leave it just a colour with a soft pattern on it to make the site a little less busy. Only with trail and error will be able to see if this works or not. Currently the colour is black which is completely wrong and will be changed. I’m also flirting with the idea of using some vector image behind like the outline of a flower or something along those lines.

http://www.kaotic-chic.ie/daisysite/index2.html

I also spent the day trawling through stock photo sites to see what I can pull from there.  My brain has gone numb looking a smiling women getting massages so I’ll revisit tomorrow and look through the 90+ images I picked in order to find exactly the type needed. After selecting I’ll work out the cost of the images as they can vary from £7 to £180. I don’t think I’ll be selecting the £180 ones some how, but you have to just look at the image and worry about the price later (or let the client worry about it as they will be paying). Once I have a rough idea of cost I’ll measure it against actually taking my own photographs  The idea is to pay a model/random cute girl for a beauty treatment so I can take pictures. There is a salon/beauty treatment place close by so I’ll approach them with the idea that they can also use photos from the shoot if they want.

Reflection:

Never use stock imagery is one lesson of web design. Which is all well and good but sometimes you have to. Given I am a student with feck all money in a country where I know very little people I have bugger all resources at hand. Back home there would be options like offering a sandwich to my photography friends in order to get images but the reality is I’d like to stage direct them. It would be far easier to do if I was in Ireland but needs must and so on. The site is also going to be a new development for the business and as such they don’t want to invest too much money in the designs in case they see no return on it. So paying a photographer and model is out of the question at the moment. As this is to be a prototype I can always come back to the design if they decided to invest some money in it.

Aims:

In order to add a little content to the site I’ll visit beauty sites and also get some brochures so I can start getting into the language and terms. I won’t being doing to much as everything is still in the development stage, even though really I’m knee deep in the design stage.

Onwards & So On

Description:

The whole focus of this week is to get a working model together to present at the meeting on wednesday the 14th. I want to be able to show the working design to Paula so she can start getting a feel for the site and see some of it in action. As the designs haven’t been signed off on yet or even the layout, I’m kind of going out on a limb a bit in terms of time and work. but I have confidence in my work and designs and know that she has liked other work that I have done. Hopefully the design and site mock up will be greatly received so she can see what work I’ve put into it and get her working on some of the content. Having a working model is always a great idea as it allows the client to see all the things you have been talking about and how its all coming together.

Today I created the whole homepage in HTML and CSS so I have a working model to start linking together. The only thing left to do on it is creating the main navigation buttons and the effects on all the buttons. I have place a smooth colour transition on the top nav. Its okay for now but will take some polish to have to looking great.

http://kaotic-chic.ie/daisysite/index2.html

The colour palette has been picked from the logo and I have yet to really extend beyond that range. I just want to keep the homepage calm and this means using a few select colours. As the logo was a given in regards content I felt it best to harmonise with it. Most of the colour on the homepage is from the photo with a nice splash of green from a cucumber.  The image itself was pulled from a google search which is bad practice as i don’t know what the licensing of the image is but I am trawling through sites to find a subtle match that I can licence. At the moment its just a placeholder for the design.

Reflection:

I’ve a presentable Homepage  designed laid out for Daisy’s Beauty Room. The only thing that isn’t totally fixed on is the font. Back in Ireland I have a book of fonts that are on my computer and drives. It has has become  bit of a crutch for me, something I only realised when I left it behind. Its great to be able to sit and flick through fonts and see them working. The book was an exercise for a previous course that forced us to take 150 and describe them without using font terms. While I had hated the exercise at the time it has become an invaluable tool. I have put together a rough inner layout that needs work, something that I have planned for the rest of the week.

 

All in all things are progressing well. I have cleared and planned the week to focus just on the meeting. Giving me time to work and also time to think about how to present the site. Lists will have to be made so I can go in with a clear idea of what I want to show and what i need to get from the client.

The research is developing nicely both with the project and with my essay as well but it’s one of those cases of scratching the surface and suddenly you end up in a mineshaft. I’m thinking the best way to relay all this information i am gathering is in diagrams. The diagrams can contain images of the site and its development with text linking to each section explain the inclusion of it and the reasoning behind it whether that be design, code, or psychological.

Aims:

Keep working on cementing as much as possible for the meeting.

IP

Description:

Elements in IP.

Photographs: lending agreements usage policy etc Vector Images: lending agreements usage policy, Make sure you aren’t infringing on any characters etc Designs: Creations of others, layouts(?) what elements of a design on a site are copyrighted? Would it be the image of the design or would it be the HTML and CSS? coding text/fonts logos privacy policy

 

Reflection:

How far down this rabbit hole do I want to go…quite far actually but I may have to reign it in. Elements like where the site is register (.ie, co.uk) should be mentioned s its an import feature. Ireland has a number of business sites registered there especially in creative media because of the tax break and in terms of IP content most cases in the courts side with the copyright holder. Not sure how much I should include as I do like reading about what’s happening in terms of IP. It could be an essay in itself but really all we have to produce is a brief breakdown of how IP effects the project. Shame really as this is going to be a huge place of debate and interest as the world becomes a blur online and file sharing increases faster than anyone can imagine.

 

Aims:

Examine some of the cases involving IP and websites, if not for the project then at least for yourself.