Final EvaluationCreative Media

Alex Latham

Did I achieve what I wanted to?Story Board

Mission Statement:To produce a professional portfolio website to illustrate the different skills, interests and hobbies of an individual. It must have appropriate content, house style and layout and not violate any copyright law. The site must be accessible to anyone regardless of age, culture or disability.

When first designing my website we came up with a story board for each page, this would show how we wanted each page to be layout here is a before and after screen shot.

From this I can see that the main layout of my website hasn't really changed that much apart from the header and logo are now part of the same banner together to give it a more cleaner and professional look that will attract a wide range of viewers.

Overall my layout hasn't changed and from my original design its been kept almost exact meaning in terms of my storyboard I have achieved what I wanted to.

Did I achieve what I wanted to?Mood Board – background

Originally for my background of my portfolio website I wanted to create a grass texture to make it less plain and reduce the amount of red on the website as this could affect users eyes , but I would have also liked a natural background so that it doesn't look stupid with the other pages e.g. science and media.

To get this I came up with 2 different designs for my background:

Comparing them both, the one on the left (not original design) incorporates the red colour that I wanted and also has a more “funky” theme to it to illustrate my personality.

My original design on the right was the type of background I wanted originally but after trying with different reds it looks unprofessional.

For my website I wanted to display pictures of different stadiums and stoke city players, after looking at the copyright law I found this was not possible as I would need permission of the photographers to use their images. So with this in mind I found several photos that I liked and emailed the photographers and with no luck had no emails back and was forced to use other sources of images, I found these at different events I had done in the past that I had taken myself and images from friends that they allowed me to use. Using these pictures also meant that I could show of myself a lot more in terms of what I liked e.g. playing volleyball but also meant that I had to scrap the stadium gallery page as I didn't have the copyright permissions to use them.

Here are some of the images I used on my website on Google images

Did I achieve what I wanted to?Mood Board – Images

Here are a set of images that play as an embedded slide show on my website, non of these violate any copyright law as they were taken by me.

So this means that they can not violate any copyright law as they were taken by me. ‘Who owns the copyright on photographs? Under law, it is the photographer who will own copyright on any photos he/she has taken’

http://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/protect/p16_photography_copyright

Did I achieve what I wanted to?Mood Board – Font

“For my font I want to use comic sans MS, because it looks professional , is very easy to read for all target audiences this will be for my main body text. For my navigation bar I want to use Berlin sans FB this is because it is bold and easy to read. And for my different heading s they need to be big and easy to read so I decided to choose Calibri , this will be good for my audience because they will be able to tell the text from the heading . All my fonts go together well and should help to create a professional portfolio website.”

I didn't achieve this and their is perfectly good reasoning for this, My headers, Navigation bar and banner I decided should be the same, this was a good choice as if they were all different like I wanted them to be it wouldn't look professional as first thought. But for the title “my portfolio” I changed it to italics which would make it stand out so the audience would know the title of the website.

For my main body text I used standard Arial font, this was because after I wrote what I wanted to use for my font i found most other websites use Arial as their main body font.

Screen shots showing different well known websites using Arial font.BBC Sport Play.com

As you can see from this screen shot it shows my font style stays the same throughout my banner and buttons, this has created a professional looking website with a good colour scheme.

I changed the “my portfolio” and “Follow Me..” to italics to make them stand out from the rest to look different.

Did I achieve what I wanted to?Mood Board – Font

Did I achieve what I wanted to?Mood Board – Colour Scheme

My colour scheme was based on the different colours I wanted and when I tried to create the website based on them it was either to blue and green or too red, this created a dilemma because red didn't go well with green and green didn't go well with red.

The colour scheme I collected from a website that puts different colours together and ones that go well together, and I wanted red to be my primary colour as it would symbolise my favourite sports team, which is why I went with the design on the left.

I believe in the end I achieved a well organised and professional looking portfolio website with a good colour scheme

Did I achieve what I wanted to?Mock Ups – What the Audience said

The two designs underneath were the two i wanted to choose between, i asked around and asked people to tell me what they preferred and which one looks better and why.

Kim said, The one on the right looks more professional and more fun, looks better laid out and the colour scheme goes together better.

Friends said, The red one because the colours go better together then the one on the right plus they felt the one on the right lacked professionalism With this in mind and it was a

clear choice of which one I should have i picked the red one and made it more accessible to the user, this in turn making my website more professional.

Click Here for feedback of the Mock ups

For my logo I wanted to create something original, something that would symbolise me and my creativity. I found this very difficult to do because there was just so much to choose from and every idea I came up with seemed to not look right.

After much thinking I thought of a design using the keys of the Keyboard

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Did I achieve what I wanted to?Mood Board – Logo

I believe that I have created a good logo which is unique and goes well with the colour scheme, also it looks like it is embedded into the websites banner making it look like the logo has been cut out of the banner giving it a professional look.

Mission Statement:To produce a professional portfolio website to illustrate the different skills, interests and hobbies of an individual. It must have appropriate content, house style and layout and not violate any copyright law. The site must be accessible to anyone regardless of age, culture or disability.

Keeping to a mission statement that I wrote at the start of all the website making and designing was difficult, because you have so much to consider and you don't think that much about what things would violate copyright law. I did manage to do this though, I created a website that illustrated the different skills, interests and hobbies of myself with it having appropriate content.

Did I achieve what I wanted to?Mission Statement

I also didn't violate any copyright law as all the photos were taken myself, this mean that I own all the rights to the photos.

Another big point was that it should be accessible to anyone regardless of age, culture of disability. I believe that I achieved this because I have a very natural background based on my so it is suitable for age and culture, this also meaning that there is not to much writing for the younger generation as they may get bored reading, there is also plenty of videos to be watched. In terms of disability there is the option to make videos full screen and also make the font size bigger on all pages.

A mind map is a document where people would jot down all the ideas for what they are trying to create so for me it was a portfolio website and these were all the ideas that I wanted to incorporate into my website, I believe that i have used most of the ideas I came up with in my mind map into my website, but some were not possible e.g. the stadium gallery, this was due to copyright issues.

Did I achieve what I wanted to?Mood Board – Mind map

Why did you change elements through producing your site?

Colour Scheme – This was one of the biggest elements of my website that I changed from my original planning and this was because whilst making my website I decided it just didn't look right, it didn't look professional and didn't include the primary colour that I wanted which was red.The new design (left) looks more professional and looks superior to the first design in my opinion. I also decided to scrap the use of to much blue and green in the website because sticking to one colour and changing the shades gives the website more of a warmer feel.

Images page – On my interests page I had a stadium gallery that I wanted to put on but due to copyright issues this was not possible so I decided to remove it all together.

Font – When choosing what font I wanted I didn't realise how bad it would look, I wanted it too look professional so keeping with the same font with my banner and buttons made it look professional and keeping the main font style the same also helped achieve this

If you were to produce it again, how could you improve it, why?

Now I have my finished product, looking back there are certain things i would like to either improve or add to improve my portfolio site, these things are;

ResearchIf I was to produce my portfolio website again I would do a lot more research then I did, this was because I don't think that my website has the same spark as some others do, maybe that’s because of lack of animation in my site or content. I could have probably done more research into the CSS of a website so I knew how to use it effectively through out my website.

If you were to produce it again, how could you improve it, why?

Animations:On a lot of portfolio websites that I have looked at many have included some type of animation.

I think that I could have made a good animation for my logo in flash, where my name would warp into my logo, this would be an animation that would stay consistent through out my site and also keep my site looking professional. Adding an animation to my website

wouldn't only make it look more professional but give it a better feel to the website user, they may prefer the website more and may make it more suitable to my main target audience.

If you were to produce it again, how could you improve it, why?

Audience:If I was to produce my portfolio website again i think i would make the audience range wider.

As you can see by looking at this I have based my target audience on a younger generation, with people who have a general interest for sport, to widen the target audience range I would change the age range so that I could expand who I made the site for, I could also make it so the website was split into sections so it would be about my whole life not just based around my sporting side.

“The application of my website will have one distinctive target audience. This will be demographic group 16 – 24 for both men and women that have a passion for football. There will be a secondary

audience that would consist of both older and younger age ranges that may be interested in football and other sports.”

If you were to produce it again, how could you improve it, why?

Content:if I was creating my website again I would defiantly like to add more content to my website, by this I don't mean more text, I mean more videos, images and moving text, e.g. a scrolling marquee underneath my navigation bar, this would add movement to my website so it wasn't so static.

Here is an example of a scrolling marquee on the BBC website it doesn't look static and adds different dimensions to the site, this meaning different news and information about the site that people can click on to get a more in depth knowledge about what its talking about, this could be useful on my website as it could talk about my trip to Wembley or one of my volleyball matches.

Adding images and more videos could be a good one, for example in my media course last year I created documentary's, short films and adverts, with bigger disk space i could have used these.

What do others think of your site?To get the opinions of other people about my website had

to create a feedback form; I used a site called jot form to create this and here is what my feedback form looks like:

What do others think of your site? Looking at the feedback that I gained from my feedback form I

found out that my colour scheme worked very well, apart from one user did pick out that the colour of the hyperlinks didn't look good with the background colour, but I wasn't will to change the colour of hyperlinks because I wanted my site to stay as conventional as possible. I also found out that everyone thought that I achieved and met my mission statement well which was very good.

Another point some people picked up on was that the embedding of the FA cup highlights, it doesn't play with in my website because of copy right law and directs you to YouTube, to sort this i could use a third parties highlights of the match meaning it would play directly inside my site and wouldn't violate any copyright law. The video tends to work on some but not others, but i would prefer to have it working on all computers.

CLICK HERE – For evidence on jot form (opens as Excel)

Production Schedule Stage of Website Time it will take to complete each stage

AnalysisMission statementTarget Audience

Technical Considerations

2 Hours½ Hour½ Hour1 Hour

DesignCreate page layouts and storyboards

Make a mock up of the website on flash or PhotoshopSite Map

Mood BoardMind Map

4-6 Hours2 Hours2 Hours¼ Hour½ Hour½ Hour

ImplementationBasics of Dreamweaver

TemplateCoding (CSS)Main Pages

ImagesLinks

Embedding

8-10 Hours1 Hour1 Hour2 Hours3 Hours2 Hours1 Hour½ Hour

Testing W3CSEO

AccessibilityImprovements

1 hour (2-4 depending on improvements)1/3 Hour1/3 Hour1/3 Hour2-4 Hours

Development 1 Hour

Did I keep to my time schedule Looking back at my production schedule, it was very hard to predict how

long each one would take, this was because I had not created a website before and the steps like testing and sorting out the problems were un predictable.

In terms of keeping to the schedule I think I did the first half quite well and stuck to it. On the other hand, when it came to the coding and the CSS and also making the pages this became a problem as there were technical faults with Dreamweaver, the CSS wouldn't load properly and there was an error that deleted my site twice so I had to start again. This meant that I took and extra two hours on this part.

The testing and development stage went well, because there wasn't many problems in my website just a few image errors that internet explorer didn't like but they were easily sorted and time was made up.

The last part, writing the evaluation dragged on more than 1 hour because its just a lot to say and I don't really like the screen shot explaining method of evaluating.

On the whole I think that my production schedule was quite accurate and I did well to stick to it.