What went well:
When first approaching the creation of the website I instantly found myself searching for the house style I wanted. Of course, I was considering what pages I was planning to include on the site but, for a majority of the time, I was trying to adapt the design of the website to fit my own, personal, ambition. In the end, the design was extremely satisfactory and I felt there were no improvements I could have made. Except for a small imperfection I only recently found which was the logo overlapping the coloured bars in the background design. The widgets proved to be extremely helpful as a method of advertising my early projects as I was able to use videos as well as galleries. This only contributed to the artistic approach I had taken towards the creation of my website.
Originally, I had set-out to have at least something on each page and, in the early days of production, this proved to be a challenge; I found that I had made an unreasonable amount of pages and therefore found it even more a challenge to fill all of them with something subject-related. When coming to an end with the website I found that it would only be fair to cut down the number of pages I had on the site. In doing this, I found that filling in each of the remaining pages was easier and therefore ensuring that each page had something to be taken note of was another aspect of the project that went well.
In the early stages we were each told to choose and create our own colour scheme for the website. The only challenging aspect of this was making the final decision as there is never a clear idea at the start of how you want your final product to look. There was an element of improvisation to begin with and this is often how I choose ideas; try different ideas and choose which one, personally, works best. As a result the colour scheme worked well and, when viewed after completion, seemed to achieve an up-beat and bright mood which was what I was setting out to achieve in the beginning.
Of course, we had to carry out research prior to creating our website. This consisted of looking over other individual’s portfolio websites and focusing-in on the features we enjoyed most. This process proved extremely useful as I emerged feeling more confident in finding my own colour scheme and house style as well as the set-out of the pages. Even though the number of pages were heavily decreased later on in production this was still an advantage as I had a starting point and knew where to draw-the-line.
What Could have been improved:
As an end result there was not a considerable amount of work on each page despite having cut down the sheer number of them. However, there was still something on every page. Ideally, I would have wanted to add more onto certain pages even if it only meant importing more images and galleries. This was one of the areas of the work which I could have improved.
In terms of imagery, I would have preferred to have imported more featuring the progression of the projects I had worked on and mentioned on the website. I would have also enjoyed using some images I had captured myself to add to the unique and personalized feel of the site. However, as a first attempt at making a detailed website I believe this was rather successful and had more positives than negatives.
I also would have been happier had I added my more recent projects to the website as well as those of which were made during the first term. This way I could have created more of a variety for people to view, perhaps even explain how I enjoy the diversity of projects and how each was different to the next. If I had added my more recent projects there would have been a clearer display of my progression throughout the different projects and even a demonstration of how I was able to use improvisation to my own advantage with the Foley work on ‘Safety Last’.
On such pages as the ‘Production’ page I found that, in the end, there was not much text present and therefore there was a very apparent blank space below leaving only the background in-view. This was disappointing as I had set-out to have a considerable amount of images and text on each page. However, I chose to move on to working on other pages as I began to wonder what else I could say without giving away too much about what was to come.
Feedback:
Luke:
Overall, I feel that your site is well put together. I really like the colour scheme that you have chosen, and also the layout of your website.
However, one negative point that I noticed, is that on the last page, “Past Projects”, parts of the text goes off screen, meaning that I can not read it.
Sonnie:
You have used a few colours to make a nice colour scheme as all colours complement each other.I like how you have used individual pages to show off your previous work as that will sell yourself to any visitors on the page and the use of the slideshow is very effective.
Only criticism is that I would have liked you to have writing about your title sequence explaining the process of making it.On your production page I would also like you to include a video or picture you have taken in the background.
Shannon:
- Nice introduction, makes a good first impression
- Professional look to the design
- Could do with a small amount of description for the videos featured but they are laid out well
- Nice use of behind the scenes, keeps people interested
- Lots of ways to keep in contact, makes it so that they will be able to be contacted no matter what
- Easy to follow work, has a current and previous project tab
Conclusion:
In conclusion, I can confidently say that my website it closer to the standard I wanted than being further away. Of course, out of the past three units I have worked on this, as the final project, was the least impressive on a personal level. As mentioned before, I would have enjoyed having more on each page but at least I achieved my initial target which was to have at least something on each page.
In terms of feedback, I am extremely pleased to find that many bare the same perspective as myself over the website. The most common criticism is that there is a slight lack of text and on other pages a slight lack of imagery. This proves that I achieved my targets and only have a small number of improvements to make.
I believe that the process of researching websites was extremely useful to me and I do not believe that, without carrying out the research, I would have been as confident in knowing what my website should look like. I was re-assured that I was correct in thinking that sometimes minimalism is best and I believe that I translated this into my final product.
At first, I found it difficult to sort out the issue with the scaling of the pages when previewed. This, however, was a short-term problem and I was able to fix it by elongating the margins in the editing mode. After which, the scale was exceptional and rewarded the website with a slightly more professional appearance. Despite some minor doubts and issues with the site I am still extremely pleased that I was able to divide information over each page and know that the next time I am asked to design my own website I will be more aware of what I need to avoid doing. This is all credit to the feedback I received.
Brandon Hobson 
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