Week One
Prompt: What do you hope to achieve in this class by the end of the term? Are there special projects or technologies you’d like to see covered by the end of the term? Is there a site (or two) that gives you butterflies in your stomach? What is it?
Response: I hope to have a pretty good grasp of how websites work in order to help me design my own site more professionally. I guess I'd like to know how to create buttons and a nice looking drop-down menu. I do like Hulu. They've done a fantastic job making their interface intuitive. Websites like Amazon are bogged down with too much information, which makes it impossible for the average person to utilize their site properly without just using the search bar. Hulu uses concise menus to let you find what you're looking for without sifting through a massive amount of unnecessary info.
Inspiring site of the week: Coca-Cola
Week Two
Prompt: What are you planning to do for project 1? What content do you plan to show? How will you make each page unique while maintaining a cohesive design across the project? How will your color palette, imagery, and typography choice complement your subject matter?
Response: I am planning on doing project 1 based on Marvel's Spiderverse. I'd showcase the heroes, the villains, and additional characters as they're portrayed in different mediums (film, coimcs, and videogames). I would keep the design cohesive by having elements such as chat bubbles for buttons, the sound of Spider-Man's web being shot when you click a button, Spider-Man's symbol as the logo at the top-left to take you back to the homepage, and the layout of each page would be consistent. The pages will use different colors that represent the different characters (red and blue for Peter Park, green and orange for Green Goblin, red and black for Miles Morales, etc.). My imagery, color palette, and typography will display a knowledge of the characters and make it immediately obvious whose page you are on before you even read the body text by matching up with the characters themselves.
Inspiring site of the week: Marvel
Week Three
Prompt: I want you to clearly imagine one user who'll love to use your Project 1 website. This user could be you, it could be someone similar to you, it could be someone completely opposite from you, it could even be a non-human animal or an alien or an amoeba. You get to choose. Really imagine what they are like in their mind. What do they spend their time on? what are their hobbies, clothes, music, favorite foods, books, tv. what's their personality like. Once you've imagined this person. write about them. just a paragraph, three to five sentences. try to have fun with it.
Response: I imagine that the person using my website would be new to Marvel. All that they know about Spider-Man comes from his original trilogy from the early 2000's. They read how similar some of the circumstances are for the other characters in the Spider-Verse, and they want to learn more about them. They start to watch their movies, and then they move onto their comics, cartoons, and video games. They become such a big fan that they decide to share my website with other people to jumpstart their interest in these characters, so they can have this shared love for everything Spider-Verse.
Inspiring site of the week: Unsplash
Week Four
Prompt: Read this short article "Learning Is Supposed To Feel Uncomfortable" and this one on resistance "The Neuroscience of Resistance And How to Overcome It". Considering these articles, make a list of 5 things to keep you going when you feel resistance or discomfort.
Response:
- Remind myself that everyone has to go through it at some point, not just me
- Think of all the topics that I'm experienced in that others would feel similar if I were teaching them
- Embrace the resistance with a "no pain, no gain" outlook
- Speak openly about it with another person involved
- Think of some reward to give myself after I am done for the day
Inspiring site of the week: Apple
Week Five
Prompt: Respond to Umoju Miller talk.
Response:
Inspiring site of the week: Nintendo
Week Six
Prompt:What did you choose the business/cause that you chose? Why do you think your redesign will be better? What area/content will you focus on in your redesign? Look at two other similar websites. What stands out about those sites? what bothers you abut them? How will you improve things in your own design.
Response:I chose Tangier because it was the first restaraunt in Portland that my fiance introduced me to. I had never had Mediterranean food before, so it was a new experience for me all around. I think my redesign will be better because the site has some basic coding issues that even I can notice (especially on their mobile version of the site). I would focus on adding prices for everything on their menu and making the menu easier to navigate. This would help customers greatly during Covid where Tangier has to do takeout orders. Other local restaurants include images of their menu or at least add prices. Tangier only has images on their "restaurant" page, and the very first photo is the same one they use for their background on the entire site. I would trim this page since it seems to be redundant. These images could be better suited in the menu. Tangier's menu is split up into three pages too, but this is not immediately obvious on their desktop website or their mobile site. I would create larger headers that better differentiate the different parts of the menu.
Week Seven
Prompt: NONE
Response:
Inspiring site of the week: IGN
Week Eight
Prompt: Read this article (What Is Mobile First Design? Why It's Important & How to Make It?) on mobile-first design and share your thoughts on mobile-first vs desktop first.
Response:I grew up with the Internet before smart phones were a thing, so I'm drawn to designing for desktop first. Although, the fact that more people are using mobile devices for accessing websites than desktops means that the priority has already shifted to mobile. It made me consider how many sites I access using my phone in a typical day versus what I look up on my PC. I had actually not even considered features like hovering being inoperable on mobile devices, so I will have to shift my thought process when designing for mobile first.
Inspiring site of the week: Sony
Week Nine
Prompt: This one's about "why." Read this article (try to pretend it's not a cheezy article about business success). Spend some time thinking about why you are pursuing a career in design. Really dig down, do the 7 "whys" tool in the article. OR If that's too challenging right now, consider people in your life or people who've inspired you. Think about what drives them, what their "why" is. Why did they work so hard to do XYZ, was it from past experiences they had, was it because they saw a need they were called to fill? What's their deeper "why?" Ask them if you know them, or look up some biographical information and try to figure it out. Write about either you or your inspiration.
Response:I want to be a graphic designer. I love graphic design, want to be able to make money doing something I love, and have the possibility to work from home. I want my future kids to be able to see me more than I saw my dad as a kid, and I want to be able to afford to live more than paycheck to paycheck. One of my main reasons to move from Kansas to the West Coast was so I would have more opportunities to make this happen considering Portland and Seattle are popular locations for graphic designers. I was unhappy with where my life was heading, and I felt that I wasn't going to be able to live my dream back home. The graphic design programs back home were awful, but PSU has one of the top design programs in the entire country. Art was one of my biggest passions as a child, so I'm glad that I was able to turn things around and come back to the same field that I said that I wanted to be in way back in 5th grade.
Inspiring site of the week: Latinx Design Directory
Week Ten
Prompt: Before the final, please write at least a few paragraphs on your design process and reasoning for the design decisions you made on your project.
Response: