August 17th, 2011

Today we spent our class time working on our projects. Mr. Sampson spoke with each of us individually regarding our current progress and helped us with whatever he could. I had a few questions mainly regarding the gallery, which he was able to help me out with. I fixed the shadowbox options to have a continuous skip-style counter, as well as ended up with just one page for the gallery instead of two.

He also gave me a link on how to create your own WordPress theme, it turns out that we will be using WordPress to create any blogs our page might have/need. I didn’t end up working much on the blog page, since it seemed like my Sister ran into a lot of problems along the way. Mr. Sampson was able to help her out some, so I should just be able to ask her about any questions I might have while following through the guide for theme creation tonight.

Finally, Mr. Sampson gave me files that I could use for a “contact/submission” box, so I added that into my “contact” page. In order to view the contact from properly, we uploaded the page to the server; everything seemed to work fine for my Sister, but for whatever reason the coding had somehow altered the style for my “contact” page… I’m not entirely sure what happened, it seemed as if everything was in place correctly. I didn’t actually have time to ask Mr. Sampson about that today, so hopefully he’ll have time to help me figure out the problem tomorrow… >>;

August 15th, 2011

My goals regarding my project for the next three days;

• Monday: For tonight, I would like to finish re-sizing any images that still need it so that they will all fit on a browser. I will also ask Kristen about the necessity of the ‘Sketches’ portion of the gallery, since it seems that thus far there are no images for it. I would also like to look a bit more into javascript, considering that I might end up adding a shadowbox.
• Tuesday: On Tuesday, I would like to take the time to ask Mr. Sampson about a few questions I have regarding the ‘Gallery, Index’ and ‘Contact’ pages. I would like to spend most all of Tuesday with the ‘Gallery’ page since, thus far, it seems to be the most complicated one. With the answers to my questions, I should be able to fix up the minor problems I am currently experiencing with the “Index” background image border and “Gallery” page sections. This is a little dependent on how the site looks thus far after having the answers, but if I still have time, and I deem it necessary, I will work a bit on the shadowbox as well.
• Wednesday: I am assuming that by Wednesday, Mr. Sampson would have given us the tutorial on blog sites. With that said, I plan to work on the ‘Blog’ page all of Wednesday. I’m not entirely sure how much work it is to make a blog, so I would like to leave this whole day for that, just in case. If time permits, then I will also fix up the ‘Contact’ page; adding in the contact-submission box, if I am able to get the coding from Mr. Sampson by this time. Any questions that I run into along the way, I also plan to have answered by this day. I would like to plan to get mostly everything done by the end of this day, whether it be in class or at home, just in case an extra day is necessary for whatever reason.
• Thursday: With this plan, I should have mostly everything done by the beginning of Thursday. If, by Wednesday, it seems like we will be using Thursday for another work day, then I will leave the ‘Contact’ page until this day. As well, if Kristen has any new drawings she would like me to add in by this day, I will do as such. If it seems like we will be using Thursday to start the minor adjustments based on feedback, then I will be sure to spend Wednesday working on the ‘Contact’ segment, at home if necessary.

August 11, 2011

Today we spent all of our class time working on our final projects, once again. I was able to get the basic layout as well as navigation bar finished for each page, so now from the main page I can navigate everywhere around the site. It’s pretty exciting in my opinion! It isn’t much, but I would say that it’s a start. It also makes it a lot easier for me to check how the pages are coming along; any changes made in one file can be checked in the browser, if I make changes to another page right after I can just click the link within that same window to preview the latter page as well.
With my Sister’s help, I ended up making a few tweaks to the main page. I’d like to say that I believe I am officially finished with that page, though I am considering adding some sort of footer(“all images copyright…” sort). I’m not entirely sure how I should word that, nor what name Kristen might want to use… so, I will have to think on that during the course of this weekend. I ended up changing the text links on the index page to images, but I am starting to wonder if maybe it would look better just as text again. I will have to mess around with that some other time.
At the moment, I believe I lack the knowledge for about one particular style of coding that I would like to use for my page. I have a sample page that uses that particular coding bookmarked at home, though, so I plan to check that… Hopefully it won’t turn out to be particularly difficult. So far everything is going smoothly! I also hope that I won’t run into any major problems in the future. With that said, I guess I offer best of luck to myself and my fellow classmates for this project.

August 10th, 2011

Today’s class time was spent working on our final projects, yet again. I was able to grab the images that Kristen wanted to use for the site, so I made “final” mock layouts for each page in the site using Photoshop. I was able to get that finished pretty quickly since I had already made mock layouts with random images from the internet before today. With these “final” mock layouts, I also messed around with the colours on different parts of the site, so I think I have just about everything decided. I should be fine to move on to coding now.
That being said, I sort of already started on the coding today. I was able to finish the main page, though I had some problems with an uncalled for white-border on the right-hand side. I will have to ask Mr. Sampson about that sometime soon… I believe my Sister actually ran into a similar problem during the work time. Most of my time had been spent fixing and adjusting the main page, but I did get the chance to work a titbit on the gallery page as well.
I think I might try to pester Kristen again tonight about giving me more images to add to the gallery, as I haven’t many at this point in time. I think that is about all that I need to do this week in order to be caught up with my plan and be ready for the following week. At that, I already have a bit of a head start since next week is supposed to be coding; though I do have a feeling that the coding might take a lot of working out.

August 8th, 2011

Today in class, we got to visit the Microsoft building to speak with one of the employees. We spent a few minutes with her to ask any questions we had, though our group all seems a tidbit shy; no one actually spoke up. In the end Mr. Sampson ended up asking her the questions we had thought up earlier in the day, before we left to Microsoft. She made it seem like a lot of fun to work for Microsoft and the internship she mentioned seemed worth checking out sometime. Given that I would sort of rather work for a company than for myself, I think I really ought to try to find out more information about the internships that Microsoft offer as well. I feel that would be a good way to try to actually get into the corporation. She said that they sometimes take the interns out to places like the zoo, I don’t really understand how that works out, but it sounds like fun. Generally speaking, it sounds like Microsoft is a pretty nice company, laid back but still efficient; it sounds pretty ideal to me!
After she was finished talking to us, we got to explore the Visitor’s Center for awhile. It was really neat to see all of their products in one place and test them out. I haven’t gotten Windows 7 yet, but after messing around with it on one of the computers they have out, it is something I would like to invest in, especially since I currently have Vista.
Once we returned to the lab, we spent a short while doing an HTML/CSS refresher. We just did some general coding, I thought it was helpful. To end the day, we spent a few minutes working again on our individual projects. I’m excited to make more progress for this!

August 4th, 2011

Today we spent most of our class time working on our individual projects. We got into groups of two and relayed our paper prototypes to each other, asking for suggestions and such. The first group I was in was with my younger Sister, I thought she had some really good advice for me, actually. I’ll definitely have to implement some of the things she suggested to me into my site. One of the main things she stated that I thought would be a really good idea was to use javascript to have a sort of shadowbox to view some of the images in the gallery… It’s a little difficult for me to explain in text, so I guess one would have to see it to fully get an idea. After working with my Sister, I was moved to work with Emanuel, or Manny. He told me that he really liked my site so far, which was encouraging. I’m excited to keep moving forward with this project!
After having worked in groups of two, we continued to work on our projects on our own. Kristen is still working on pretty much the only text I need on the site as well as the logo, so there wasn’t too much that I could do. That being said, I decided to just work on the content/layout during that time; just to get a general idea of how the site might look. I feel that’s a really good step to make, as it will help you to spot any changes you feel you should make before actually getting to the coding aspect of the page. I had enough time to finish a general idea for the gallery and main page as well as start on the blog page. Over the weekend, I’ll definitely have to ask Kristen for the image and text content of the page so that I can do a better job of getting an idea for the page’s layout.
Towards the end of class, we worked a bit with javascript for the first time. We learned how to make a simple shadowbox, which is exactly what I need for my project. As well, I decided to take down the name of the website that we were using for guidance; Shadowbox.js. It has a list filled with various javascript(I’m assuming all “shadowbox” types) examples as well as coding, which is really nice. There is one shadowbox in particular that I am thinking of using for my project, hopefully it will come together well.

August 3rd, 2011

Today in class, we started out by speaking with another web designer; this time a friend of Mr. Sampson named Matt. Matt, unlike Fred, was a freelance web designer, so it was interesting to hear the differences between the two. The way he spoke about it made it seem rather interesting, though it seemed like it was/is difficult to start getting work. I guess one of the bigger advantageous I see to this is that you can be self-taught. I’m sure that requires a lot of work, determination and self-motivation, but it is a plus if for some reason you can’t attend classes to get a degree in designing.
After that, Mr. Sampson told us a short bit about Javascript. He showed us a few examples of what it could potentially make on a page. After seeing that, I think I would like to incorporate some Javascript into my web page, it seems like it would be useful. If anything, I might use the slider in the “about” page so that any visitors can change the view from the actual “about the artist” to the information on commissions.
Lastly, we spent the rest of our day working on our individual projects. We were allowed time to either work on the prototype or the logo. I had already sort of finished a prototype, but I won’t have it completely finished until tomorrow; I would like to spend tonight to go over the prototype with Kristen, to see if everything is OK with her or if I should alter/add anything. Since I had already the rough draft of the prototype, so I spent that time browsing other websites for inspiration. A few of the websites that I saw had an actual form for the contact segment, which I thought would be a nice, easy way to lay out the contact. I think I would like to use a form for the contact as well.

August 2nd, 2011

Today in class we got to speak with one of Ms. Lovely’s friends, Fred, who is a web developer, through Skype. He orated to us a bit about what it means to be a web developer in comparison to a designer, what a “typical” work day might look like, what his work generally involves as well as how long it typically takes to finish one site. He also answered a few questions that we had and gave us a bit of advice on our projects, though I didn’t ask him about mine in particular. He also spoke to us a bit about the different requirements to get a degree in web design/development, I think it sounds like an interesting field to get into, overall. I would like to look into it even more, in particular, I would like to try to find out what other Universities offer such programs and how it might be advantageous/disadvantageous to take the course in one University or another.
To jump back a bit, before we spoke with Fred, we spent a bit of time checking various websites on Web Creme. We looked at 3 or 4 different sites, pointing out things that we liked or disliked about each page. I also spent a bit of spare time looking through other pages that were displayed on that site. Generally speaking, Web Creme seems like a very useful site, helped me with inspiration as well as figuring out things that I would not like on my site. I think that I might spend some more time browsing through Web Creme when I get home.
Lastly, we also spent some time relaying to the rest of the class our logo designs and/or site designs thus far. Since I decided to have my artist create the logo, which I am still waiting on, I decided to talk a bit about my site’s design/feel. I, personally, did not get much feedback for my site, though I can’t say that I really relayed much either. My Sister told me that she liked what I planned my color-scheme to be, that she had imagined my site to be in similar colors before I had even mentioned the colors that I planned to use. Douglas said that it might be neat if my site’s gallery had some sort of page-flip animation between each image… I’m not entirely sure how well that might work out, but I will take it into consideration.

August 1, 2011

Today we started working in Illustrator for the first time, continued with Photoshop as well as planning for our individual projects. I found Illustrator rather interesting, I hadn’t used it before today. We learned how to work with some basics for Illustrator such as creating shapes, using the brush/pen tool and placing images and altering them within”live trace.” After that, we were given some time to mess around with Illustrator to our liking, I found out how to use the “symbols” as well as the different shapes, there were quite a few interesting ones. The eraser in Illustrator sort of caught my attention as it worked differently than most program’s erasers. I’m hoping that we’ll get to continue working in Illustrator sometime, as it particularly piques my interest.
As for Photoshop, today we went over the lasso tools. The only one I hadn’t really known about in that was the magnetic lasso, which I found to be potentially useful. Magnetic lasso tool is something that I would like to continue to mess around with, as I’m sure that if I continued to use it, I would eventually get the hang of it. Generally speaking, I had never used the lasso tool much before, probably partially in due to the fact that I didn’t know much about it, but with this overview, I feel I might be more prone to using it sometime.
Lastly, we spent some time working on the concept work for individual projects. We were asked to design a logo during class, though since I am making a site for an artist, I felt that I would just ask her to create the logo to her liking, so I spent the time making a paper prototype of the site. By the end of this week, we are to have our paper prototypes finished; I’ve done a rough draft already, but I would like to speak to Kristen more about the design before I make a final prototype. During this week, I also plan to use Photoshop whenever I can to transfer the prototype to a digital work; seeing the general layout on a computer screen might be nice before I actually start working on the site.

July 28th, 2011

Today in class we had a speaker come in to talk to us a bit about what other ways we could use technology in a career. More specifically, he spoke a lot about the DX Arts program as well as showed us some of his past work. Given the prerequisites to join, I would say that DX Arts sounds like a rather interesting course, though I can’t say that I completely understand all that it entails. With that said, I would like to look more into it.
We also spent a lot of time playing around with Photoshop today. Although I do have some past experience with Photoshop, it is very little experience and there are a lot of things that I can’t really remember how to do, so I find this to be a nice refresher as well as good learning experience. After messing around with some of the tools, I learned about this “gradient” tool. It’s a lot of fun to just play around with, I wonder if I would ever find a good use for it, though.
Lastly, today we spent some time discussing our individual projects again. We had about a 5 minute presentation of sorts to the class, after which others could ask questions about the site that they had or any suggestions. It was brought to my attention that I ought to have it so that you can’t right click on the images that are posted in the gallery, which is a really good idea. I hadn’t actually thought of that before, so I was glad that it was mentioned… I’m not entirely sure how I can work that out, so I will have to do some research.