Evaluation

Overall I feel that I created quite a successful website. It is visually appealing without being too in your face and contains quite a bit of information about me. I feel it is professional looking and simplistic and shows the skills that I have aquired in dreamweaver and coding html, css and javascript over the past couple of weeks. I am very pleased with how the website has come out considering I have only just learnt how to code html and have never done any coding before.

The site passes level one compliancy tests that are available on the internet and complies with the specification points named in the brief as you can see from my previous posts.

If I had to improve on the site I would rethink the layout and try to code something a bit more challenging. There were a couple of websites that I found on the internet that I really liked such as http://www.kevadamson.com/. I love the way he has tied illustration into the layout of his webpage and I may try something like this in the future. Hopefully as I become more compitant with using html, css and javascript I will be able to develop my website further and produce something more technical and aesthetically pleasing.
Another website I found is http://www.matthamm.com/. Again he is a designer and illustrator and has incorporated this into his website, but has made it look very professional. I like the menu system he has used with the pictures of the work he has done and the link to his twitter feeds. When looking at his website you can see that it has a very simple layout but it looks professional and creative. When I next come to creating a website or improving the one I have made now I will try and be more creative with what I can produce and push my skills to the max.

Overall I am very pleased with how my website has come out. I think it shows all the skills that I have aquired over the past few weeks and achieves level one compliancy. Although there are a couple of areas I would change I think overall it is a well made professional website.

Level One Compliancy Tests

To ensure that I met all the requirements of the brief I needed to make sure my website met all the requirements for the level one compliancy tests. First I tested my each of my pages with the W3C validator. After a few error messages that I managed to correct my site passed:

 

Next I used the 'cynthia says' validator. 

And finally I tested my website using the CSS validator at level 3.

Website Planning

Planning: 
When I was first given the website brief I had a couple of ideas in mind of what I wanted to create. I knew from the start that I wanted my site to look professional as it would be my future portfolio so I designed my site to ensure my pages had continuity and all looked the same other than the content. Before I started the proper designs I made a mind map to ensure that I knew exactly what was asked of me and the information that I need to include. Below you can see the map I created:

I then made some sketches and layouts in Adobe Illustrator to give myself a clear idea of what I wanted to website to look like so I could then code it from these designs. I tried to copy my designs as much as I could when it came to making my website because I liked my designs and they helped me have a clearer view of what the end result would look like.

Here you can see that I have draw a basic layout and then written some notes around the edges to help explain my ideas and help me when I come to look at my notes again so I know what I'm going to code.

Close up of my sketches

Here is a close up of one of my sketches. You can see the notes that I've made around the edges to help me with my design and planning. 










After I had drawn my sketches I created a clearer outline in Adobe Illustrator of what my website layout will look like.

Reasoning:

As you can see the main colour choice for my design is pink. I chose this colour not only because it's my favourite colour but it makes it obvious that this site has been designed by a girl and being one of only a couple of girls on my course I feel it is important to me to stand out from the boys. 

I chose the white stripes around the edge of the page as I think the white and pink compliment each other and the stripes bring your attention to the main area of the page.

I chose to do a four page website as I wanted to include a page with information about me and my home and university life so anyone looking at the site can see who I am as a person not just the work I have done and I feel this is a more personal approach.  

I chose to do my name in a different font because I think this makes it stand out from the rest of the content on the page.