Questions - Cheryl Ringer
What controls our lives?
Money? Sex? Drugs?
WHAT IS WEB DESIGN
Web design is the planning and creation of websites. This includes the information architecture, user interface, site structure, navigation, layout, colors, fonts, and imagery. All of these are combined with the principles of design to create a website that meets the goals of the owner and designer.
Design is a key part of web design. This includes both the design principles: balance, contrast, emphasis, rhythm, and unity and the design elements: lines, shapes, texture, color, and direction. By putting these things together, a web designer creates websites.
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POTENTIAL JOBS FOR WEB DESIGNERS
Lead User experience developer
VP of Enginerring
Senior Innovation Developer
Web Application developer
Interactive Designer
Front-End Developer
EllisLab Customer Advocate
Associate Digital Art Director
Game Development
Graphic Designer
Experience Marketing Manager
Art Director – Motion Design/3D Animation
Web designer
Creative Developer
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THE MOST COMMON JOB FOR WEB DESIGN : GRAPHIC DESIGN
Here is a job description for a web designer:
Graphic designers—or graphic artists—plan, analyze, and create visual solutions to communications problems. They find the most effective way to get messages across in print and electronic media using color, type, illustration, photography, animation, and various print and layout techniques. Graphic designers develop the overall layout and production design of magazines, newspapers, journals, corporate reports, and other publications. They also produce promotional displays, packaging, and marketing brochures for products and services, design distinctive logos for products and businesses, and develop signs and signage systems—called environmental graphics—for business and government. An increasing number of graphic designers also develop material for Internet Web pages, interactive media, and multimedia projects. Graphic designers also may produce the credits that appear before and after television programs and movies.
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THE DIFFERENT ROLES OF WEB DESIGN
•CSS
•HTML
•JavaScript (and Ajax)
•CGI programming
•PHP, ASP, ColdFusion scripting
•XML
•Information architecture
•SEO
•Server management
•Web strategy and marketing
•Ecommerce and conversions
•Design
•Speed
•Content
•And so much more
Most designers don’t try to cover all of it. Instead, they focus on one or two areas where they can excel and work with other people on the rest. But the good news is that there is always going to be something new to learn.
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TAKE A LOOK AT WHERE I FOUND THIS INFORMATION HERE …
http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos090.htm
http://webdesign.about.com/od/webdesign/qt/what-is-web-design.htm
It is important to understand the concepts of usability, accessibility, and sustainability when designing webpages today.
Usability is “a matter of designing to account for user behaviors.” A key question asked about usability is “whether a design is easy for its intended users to use, and whether it does something useful or valuable for those users
Accessibility is a web standard similar to XHTML and CSS and as stated by the WAI it “means that people with disabilities can use the web.” However, this description is not always extremely accurate. Instead, it is important to understand that user access is “determined by both human conditions, such as physical or sensory abilities, as well as technological conditions, such as computer equipment, network connection speeds, and so on.”
Sustainablity meeting the present need of the site designer and their users, without compromising both of their future needs.
If you would like to know more about these three components of webdesign today here are some websites that I found particularlly simple to navigate and understand.
This website gives a basic introduction to designing accessible webpages: http://www.hwg.org/services/classes/accessibilitydesign.htmlbasic
This website also gives a basic, and yet detailed description of how to design accessible webpages: http://webaim.org/intro/
This website creates a clear understanding of what usability (and accessibility) is: http://uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2009/02/usable-accessibility-making-web-sites-work-well-for-people-with-disabilities.php
Here is a picture that I created using photoshop! I can’t believe that I put these words on such a beautiful picture. I am very proud of my first photoshopping experience.
CSS Layouts may seem confusing or intimidating at first (as most web-designing element are) but with websites such as the ones that I have complied below can really help with creating a website that you can be proud of and that you can create without being nervous or frustrated.
After taking part in such a challenging, different, and exciting project there are still more aspects of web media content which we haven’t addressed. I particularly found the idea of cultural ‘meanings’ behind colors to be particularly appealing. I decided to research the meaning of two colors; blue and green.
I was first intrigued of the meaning behind my favorite color, blue. Here is all of the interesting stuff I learned about the color blue …
-It is related to calmness and coolness.
-It can be strong and steadfast or light and friendly.
-It is a universal color.
-Its cool, calming effect makes time pass more quickly and it can help you sleep.
-It is a good color for bedrooms.
-In many diverse cultures blue is significant in religious beliefs, brings peace, or is believed to keep the bad spirits away.
-It conveys importance and confidence without being somber or sinister.
-Medium and darker blues are associated with intelligence, stability, unity, and conservatism.
-“Feeling blue” or “getting the blues” represents the extremes of the calm feelings associated with blue, i.e. sadness or depression
-In Iran, blue is the color of mourning
-In the West “the something blue” bridal tradition represents love.
Check out this website to learn more about this color: http://desktoppub.about.com/cs/colorselection/p/blue.htm
I also decided to look up the meaning behind my Grandma’s favorite color. (I just called her before I started this so she seemed to be on my mind) Here is all of the interesting stuff I learned about the color green …
-It represents life and renewal
-It signifies growth, renewal, health, and environment.
-It can also represent jealousy, envy, and inexperience.
-It is a restful color with some of the same calming attributes of blue.
-It is like blue because time moves faster in a green room.
-It is strongly associated with Ireland, the Irish, and St. Patrick’s Day.
-It also has close associations with Islam.
-It is also reminiscent of Spring.
-It is also the color for “go” on a traffic light and now the “Go Green” campaign
-It is a Christmas color when associated with
- It has both a warming and cooling effect
-It denotes balance, harmony, and stability.
-It can represent a fresh, Springtime feel.
-It can have military overtones
-When paired with blue it produces echoes of nature - water and forest and can denote new beginnings and growth.
-When paired with purple it can be high contrast, lively.
-When lime green is paired with orange and yellow it is a fresh and fruity palette.
Check out this website to learn more about this color:
After reading about color tools, text/typography, image/web photography, digital art, and video links here is a list compiled of some useful websites to help understand more about Web Media Content. Included are a good color-matching tool, a web typography reference, a web graphics and image reference, a streaming video reference, and some other references to futher understand more about Web Media Content.
http://colorschemedesigner.com/
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/understanding-series/und_resolution.shtml
http://www.wfu.edu/~matthews/misc/graphics/formats/formats.html
http://www.flickr.com/groups/photoshopshowcase/
http://www.somethingawful.com/d/photoshop-phriday/
http://www.wpdfd.com/issues/23/typography/
http://www.mediacollege.com/video/
As I began my first steps in completing project 4 entitled CSS I immediately thought, “Seriously? Another jumble of letters that I know nothing about and that are going to cause me to feel instantly stupid. Great.” At first this was the case and CSS got the better of me, as most parts of this project seem to be doing in the beginning. But, as I got more accustomed to the actual purpose of CSS I had a better understanding of what I was getting myself into.
CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheet and its language governs the changes that can be made to the layout of a webpage. By using CSS you are able to change your font, font color, font size, spacing, background color, colors of links to other websites, image spacing, line spacing, alignment, and many more things! You are even able to create a border on your webpage by using certain coding.
Although all the possible changes that CSS can make may seem intimidating at first, if you understand its purpose and relationship to XHTML the process will be much easier and enjoyable for you. In order for CSS to have any effect, you must first have an HTML document. By placing this particular coding anywhere in your original HTML document “<link rel=”stylesheet” href=”project.css” type-”text/css” />” you are able to link your original HTML document to your new CSS document (in this case entitled “project.css”). What this coding does is it allows whatever you adjustments you make on your webpage come to life by affecting your original HMTL document. This process can be very exciting, and when your ideas come to life it can be extremely rewarding. Although the process can not always be what you are hoping for on the first try; when your coding works the way that you hoped it would and you see your webpage transform before your eyes, all the frustration, thought, and time will be worth it. I know this because it has been for me.
The trick to CSS is understanding how many tools are out there to help you. Making sure you fully understand what CSS stands for (Cascading Style Sheets), what it does (CSS defines HOW HTML elements are to be displayed) and why it is important (it saves us time! Which I know we all don’t have enough of). Here are some helpful links that could help you with the understanding of CSS and how to create documents using CSS successfully!
http://www.w3schools.com/cssref/default.asp
http://htmlhelp.com/reference/css/references.html
https://developer.mozilla.org/en/CSS_Reference
http://xhtml.com/en/css/reference/
http://htmldog.com/reference/cssproperties/
XHTML stands for “Extensible Hypertext Markup Language” which is an “HTML system for tagging text files to achieve font, color, graphic, and hyperlink effects on World Wide Web pages, incorporating user-defined elements.” It is intended to be used in the same places you would use HTML, which is used to create web pages, but it is much more strictly defined. Because of this it is a lot easier to create software that can be read, edited, and checked for errors. By creating a website with XHTML you can see where text is exactly placed and where you may be coming into problems, which then makes it easier to editing whatever issues you may be running into.
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