So the results of submitting my design mockups are in!-- and it looks like a bust.. well, not really a bust, but I'm sure it would not have been very successful. And I say "would not have been" because we didn't even get to take a look at my design. As a group, our entire team presented our ideas to our supervisor, as he gave immediate feedback on our choices. One of the first stipulations was, "no dark backgrounds!"-- oh jeez, that's great, my whole theme is based on a dark background! I guess it's time to scratch that idea and go back to square one, or rather, square zero. What seems to be the common issue in all of our implementations is that we don't exactly understand the functionality of the website. Many of us omitted important components that we did not know were necessary, and as a result, no matter how nice we could get the color scheme and layout done, we'd still have to redesign it in the end. And that's one particularly challenging part about web design-- you can't just be a designer. You have to know the ins and outs of each web page and the site as a whole. But, that's also where this rapid feedback system comes in handy. I've seen far too many times where an idea or design gets criticized and ultimately shut down by a supervisor, and I always feel bad when I see the designer-- who put so much effort into it-- get told that it wasn't good enough. Well, now it's my turn to be in those shoes, but the fact that I've only worked on it for several days and not several weeks or even months makes me alright with it, because it prevents me from putting in any extra, unnecessary work into it.
So what I have done this week was go back to the basics and work carefully: strip out all the styles from the HTML and place them into a separate CSS file, then slowly start customizing it to make it look beautiful, yet still completely functional with all its intended purposes. I've also been thinking a lot about design choices in general, and have been looking for nice examples of color schemes. In fact, one site that I particularly like is actually Google. Looking at GMail, Google Docs, and Google Calendar, they all use a very clean palette-- whites and grays for most of the components, with vibrant but soft colors for buttons. Even Blogger, the site that I'm using and looking at right now has a very simple yet appealing taste to it. The buttons are geometrically nice and the layout is very simple, which makes for a very modern, simple look.
With all the talk and thinking about design and color choices, I find myself constantly looking at things and analyzing their design choices. Just the other day, I was walking by some modern-looking fashion stores, and found myself staring at it for a long time, not to admire what was inside, but rather its color scheme, use of space, and layout. I suppose it's a good thing to be paying attention to such detail, but at the same time, I feel like I've become some sort of design-analyzing robot! All in all, however, it is really interesting to notice these qualities that most people walk by without even noticing them.
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