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Nadril

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http://www.zackcerny.net

 

Just doing final touches on blog. The widgets aren't scaling like I want them to so I need to figure out a way to get that fixed. Other than that just about done other than I'm going to add some more photography to the portfolio.

 

[hide]Got a bunch of it coded and uploaded.

 

www.zackcerny.net

 

Tell me if you're having any issues in any of the browsers. (Any browsers that don't go by the name of IE6). Also it's worth pointing out that I don't have all of the images I want to show yet in the portfolio and the blog is currently not up.

 

 

Looking for some feedback on how you guys feel about the fading thing, it was a pretty cool javascript piece I found that was super easy to set up and use. Also I slightly changed up the layout in order to more-easily scale between monitor resolutions. It should work from 1024x768 all the way up to whatever (1920x1080). Hell it almost will work on an 800x467 or so resolution (cell phone) but the first paragraph text goes beyond the "box" a bit.

 

Also the writing is temporary, I'm going to work on getting it fixed up probably next week. I need a break this week, spent a TON of hours coding. I showed my progress to a bunch of instructors and they all really liked what I had so far, so I'm pretty happy. Especially because a few people in the senior project class got kind of grilled by what they did. [/hide]

 

 

[hide]So in an effort to keep both myself motivated I thought it would be cool to sort of chronicle what I've been "doing" so far. I also think this might be interesting for people to see sort of how I work and do things and how I spend my time doing design.

 

I have my senior project this semester and I've already started to get some ideas out the door. Right now I am in that phase where I am just tossing ideas out left and right. Some might be fully formed, some might just be a few random boxes... but mostly I'm trying to figure out what I want to do.

 

As always I'm doing a portfolio as I'm not happy with mine still, plus I want to do a blog as well. So here is sort of the time table so far. I'll try and keep this updated whenever I make changes.

 

 

1/29 7:19PM to 8:11 PM

Research. Pretty much just looked around a bit tried to get some ideas.

 

1/30 9:50PM to 10:24PM

This I started to do some layout ideas.

 

[hide]cPCXV.png[/hide]

 

As you can see, a really rough idea. Text is pretty mucked up, not even aligned correctly... ect.

 

2/1 6:00PM to 8:18PM

This one I tried some more layout things. I was really stuck at this point and only thing I could think of was this "links" idea.

[hide]ONdK9.png[/hide]

 

It was kind of a cool idea but I couldn't think of anything to work it into.

 

2/1 10:50 PM to 11:19PM

This is what I"m up to right now. I have a bit of an idea of what I want, and I really liked the style of apaka.com and sixpoint.net.

 

[hide]fTyE2.png[/hide]

 

This one is still very layout-oriented and I kind of decided I'd do the home page as the blog. (still gotta update those links lol). Biggest thing right now is there is a lot of empty space, I'm not sure if it's working well for it or not. I'll probably have to swap font too on the body text. I also need to get to work on a logo, which I'll do once I decide sort of on what the "style" of the site is going to be. The logo would probably go to the right of the links.

 

 

 

So yeah probably don't expect crazy huge updates, probably the first couple of weeks here will be me figuring out what I want to do.[/hide]

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The new design seems a lot more cleaner, in my opinion. Though I feel like it lost a lot of the cool parts of the old one.

Then brown just doesn't appeal to me. Neither does all the open space to the right... hahaha

 

Looks nice right now though.

 

Didn't know if you wanted c/c or not, so there we go.

I Support TET!| If you want bunny PM Me.|Click For My DevArt

musics.png

^ Cowboy is the Best ^

IT'S A TRAP SHINY JUST WANTS TO STALK YOU.

Hell yeah I do. Whats your msn?

That's how it all starts.

 

Next he's going to ask you what flavor of candy you enjoy and whats your favorite color van.

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Yeah none of these designs are really final right now. Still trying to figure out what I wanna do lol.

 

Just spent a good 2 hours trying some things, nothing to really show for it though.

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Do you have any sort of timeline for when you expect to have your project done, or are you taking it one step at a time with just the idea of having it finished by the end of the semester?

 

One step at a time right now.

 

I need to have something sort of presentable by half way through the semester. The project needs to be done near the end of it when I'll present it.

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Will you be thinking of something flash-heavy, like Apaka.com? It was a really cool website.

 

I don't think so really, not a huge fan of flash. It was a really cool website though.

 

 

 

Some of your images are broken.

 

They all work for me.

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I don't have enough time to do full critique, but I'll kind of abbreviate it.

 

First of all, although the sites you are inspired by are very cool and flashy, they use "mystery meat navigation" and are not something that I would want to see as a client. It is a portfolio, which by definition is supposed to be different, but there are certain design and interaction elements that should be preserved no matter what page it is.

 

About the first design: in this case I would say that it is OK to stray away from standard fonts and use images of unorthodox fonts for headings, see http://webcreme.com- It's full of them. As for the colors, I think that the colors need to be slightly more homogeneous, colors that contrast too much in lightness and/or saturation can be confusing for the eye.

 

#2: This is one of those blah de blah interaction elements that should be preserved things. The path that the eye takes to read the different links is not logical, a zigzag path kind of breaks the dreamlike state your visitors should be in. :razz:

 

#3: Although two color sites can be very effective, I find they should be used with care. If you don't have colors or different shades to make the website relatively conventional, I find it's best to give the website a really solid grid foundation. At the moment, I think this design feels unbalanced (Obviously towards the left), which is a bit distracting and makes the website feel incomplete. Balanced doesn't mean that everything is in the center of course.

 

All in all I think design #1 is the most successful so far. Here's a website to confuse you.

C2b6gs7.png

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Thanks. As far as color goes I've been checking out kuler which is a pretty cool site. And I agree about the navagation, usually when I see a site I like I like something specific about it. In that case I decided I liked that navigation where it was a menu in the top left. Weird, I know :P

 

As far as balance goes I feel like I might be pigeon-holing myself into this 960 grid idea too much. I mostly just use it as an easy way to make sure all my readable content stays within 960 but I end up having a ton of blank space (especially when I'm working in 1920x1080). I'm going to try a few things tonight maybe that use the full screen.

 

 

Agreed as well on a grid formation. I think another issue I'm having is deciding what, exactly, I want to do with the front page layout.

 

 

EDIT:

 

Got some more inspiration:

 

http://tobiasahlin.com/#/Everything

 

Also read up on

 

http://sixrevisions.com/web_design/five-popular-design-portfolio-website-styles/#more-1389

http://sixrevisions.com/web_design/five-types-of-effective-headers-in-web-design/

 

Which is a pretty interesting read.

 

Finally I found out about

 

http://code.google.com/webfonts

 

which is pretty cool. :thumbup:

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Ok this time I think I'm onto something. I think I almost can settle on this layout, it's more of design-wise that I'm debating.

 

[hide]seniorproject5.png[/hide]

 

 

So the boxes on the bottom are just placeholders right now, I'm planning on those being "content" boxes. Right now I"m thinking one of them will be an "about me" thing, one will be sort of a "hey this is what I do/can do" and the other maybe one of those things that is a feed of your twitter :P.

 

 

This is just the home screen of course, when I get to the portfolio part I"m not sure what the hell I'll do yet. I'll try and think of something cool maybe. Thoughts though? And yeah, I did have the image a bit lower on purpose. Always easy to move it up and down though.

 

 

Also I really love this font, Gautami.

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To be honest, I think having three boxes on the front, all with text in it will be somewhat overbearing. I like the top banner bar, but I think you could maybe strip the 3 boxes to one, with the user switching, going from 'About Me' to contact. Maybe a bit of flash.

lampost_sig_stark.png
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One problem- It doesn't even fit on my 20" screen. I think you're almost forced to make it fit on 1280x1024. Or maybe this is a fluid layout?

 

Yeah I was hoping of having it scale. It's the problem of developing for my screen as well.

 

To be honest, I think having three boxes on the front, all with text in it will be somewhat overbearing. I like the top banner bar, but I think you could maybe strip the 3 boxes to one, with the user switching, going from 'About Me' to contact. Maybe a bit of flash.

 

They're not necesarily going to be boxes, thats just where I was thinking of putting content. (text, ect.)

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Your current design looks really, really good Zack. Not an incredible amount of work that needs doing, I've always been a fan of your minimalistic-ish layouts.

2257AD.TUMBLR.COM

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Thanks Sam.

 

Tried to start doing some typography ideas. Typography is really where my weakness lays currently in web design, I absolutely [bleep]ing suck at it.

 

[hide]seniorproject4v2.png[/hide]

 

Type is a little off-set right now I just noticed. What do you guys think of the highlighting? Too overdone? I've seen a hell of a lot of designers do it and I kind of think it's a cooler way of grabbing attention than bolding something.

 

 

Also is my leading good? using 18 pt leading with a 14 pt font right now and 30 pt header. I can't remember the golden rule for header : type ratio though, I think it was dsavi who told me it before.

 

edit: I realized the last line of the first paragraph was accidently a different leading, changed it. Too lazy to reupload though.

edit 2: I still don't know what I'm doing with that other box haha. Still tossed up on the twitter feed idea. On one hand it could be kind of cool, on the other hand it's sort of silly to go a minimalistic route and then throw unnecessary [cabbage] like a twitter feed in.

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Not a big change right now.

 

[hide]seniorprojectfhome.png[/hide]

 

Made the background gradient a little brighter, aligned text a bit and decided to keep the "contact" thing on the front page in that empty box. (because it really doesn't deserve an entire page for it). I'm pretty happy with the home page right now, wondering what people think though.

 

If you guys are good with it than I'll probably end up working on the portfolio page next. I probably won't go too crazy with it but maybe I'll get a cool idea. If not I'll just use some sort of grid method for showing stuff. I also still want to do a logo (probably something simple involving my initials to put next to my site name).

 

 

So right now it's looking like my goal is:

 

 

- Finish final touches on homepage

- Do and finish portfolio page

- Design the blog page which will be the same style but I'm not sure how I'll do it yet.

- Design my logo (Maybe before/after portfolio or blog page)

- Code the homepage and portfolio and have that ready and done by midterm.

- Code the blog (since I'll need to use PHP for the template. Not hard, I've done it before, but still might be tricky because its new for me)

- Create business cards (might do this before coding the blog, I don't know, depends on when I start coding really. I want to get them printed a decent bit ahead of time)

 

 

And for those curious of the total time worked so far:

 

1/29 - 7:19 to 8:11 (1hr)

1/30 - 9:50 to 10:24 (30m)

2/01 - 6:00 to 8:18 (2 1/2 hr)

2/01 - 10:50 to 11:19 (30m)

2/02 - 9:29 to 11:06 (1 1/2 hr)

2/03 - 7:18 to 8:47 (1 1/2 hr)

2/04 - 10:30 to 11:30 (1 hr)

2/05 - 7:00 to 8:23 (1 1/2 hr)

2/06 - 9:10 to 9:36 (30m)

 

So a total of roughly 10 and a half hours so far of research and work done lol. Mostly research probably >.>

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