Good designers copy

As a graphic designer your pretty much taught the same way. The only way to survive and keep up with other designers is by taking ideas and manipulate them to your liking. Of course you need to be careful on what you take and manipulate since there are copyright laws. As long as you change something enough to your own design then you will be protected.

Its funny they mention Picasso since most of his cubism work is almost replications from Georges Braque. If you look at when the pieces were done Braque would come out with a painting then a year later Picasso would almost replicate it. It’s interesting though how Picasso became the more famous.

Web site ideas

For the most part I’m wanting to get across the style that I’ve picked up and carry it through the design of the site. It will mainly consist of the urban grunge style that will help display and aid my gallery.

The first one I call, “Indiana Jones,” carries the earth tones that I love to use in most my stuff. I also love vintage looks so I brought in a nice paper texture a used a lot of vivid light filters, masks, and lighting effects. For the site I will want an about, gallery, and a contact page for the 3 main pages. For the main page it will concentrate on news and updates. Updates being a nice flash animation that will do fades of the new works that I have lined up or have been doing in my spare time. The gallery will break off into 5 categories: logos, photoshop, illustration, traditional, and video.

My second one is “Dark alley” and is a more dark and grungy theme. The dark grays also give off class and simplicity.  This will have the same layout as “Indiana Jones” just a different skin.

Finally “heavenly rooted” is a clean style using a white theme with some root design in the background. Looping a more organic, circular toolbar on the left helps keep the design flow smoothly.

5 Web Site Reviews

1. http://www.csszengarden.com/?cssfile=204/204.css

Ever since I was thumbing through the sites on Zen Garden this one caught my eye. It has a lot of characteristics that use in my work. The way it is grungy along with the organic colors keeps me in the page. The main thing I would change in this site would be the main header image. The text is too spontaneous for me and it would be more organized.

2. http://www.leveltendesign.com/

Here I find the organization top notch with a simple 2-column design. They have all the key div elements in their site with a slick design encasing it. One thing I would most defiantly change would be that God awful fish animation at the top of their main page. It’s way too cheesy for a graphic design site. I would have a slick slide show of my main work providing visuals on which companies I did what for along with the companies logos at the bottom which they have already.

3. http://www.limon-art.com/

When I was searching for graphic designers sites I stumbled upon this one and the main page caught my eye immediately. Even though this isn’t a graphic designer his site is still nicely laid out…even though it isn’t built in CSS. The thing is built in tables and java script but for the design and concept it’s nice and simple which I’m looking for.

4. http://www.steverowlands.com/new_index.htm

Now for something that is completely terrible and needs a total re haul. The layout of the page, after it’s crappy animations and sound effects, isn’t all too bad. The layout of the buttons along with the bio at the top looks nice. Everything else…is just crap. And if you can tell this is the new site. It gets re directed from it old site to this “new_index” page. This one says it has CSS styles but there are none to be found unless I’m not looking hard enough.

5. http://www.computerarts.co.uk/

Last but not least is a European site devoted to many things that are art related. This place has a lot to offer which I really like in a site. It keeps the users attention by giving them several avenues to venture down. And with many sites that have several categories, this one does well on organizing it along with putting a nice design into the layout. The only problem I have is that the type in the main section is too small even for me. I would take the login section on the left and place it up top under all the sections so you can spread out the 2 main sections and increase the size of the type. Another thing I hate is that they have ads everywhere but sometimes that happens and you gotta just go with it.

Five interests

1. Since I’m a graphic designer I decided to take this class other than the Dream Weaver class because I just don’t particularly enjoy the layout that they use; it’s too clunky. I would like to understand and feel more comfortable with CSS so if I do get asked some questions in the future about sites I could answer them.

2.  I’m glad that Batchelder will work individually with the students since half the class is graphic design and the other is IMD.

3. I would like to know some neat little tricks that other people use but, for me, I mainly want to get refreshed on the basics of CSS and where it is at now since I took intro almost a year ago.

4. I enjoy hearing about the history of CSS and where it’s heading in the future.

5. I would really like to know how to actually upload and maintain a site that would be put on the WWW.

A Design Process Revealed review

Most of his views is pretty much a repeat on the steps of designing a project on which we have learned from the Art Institute.

A design process does take multiple steps and time which he explains in his blog, however, if you are in a bind or on a deadline you do not have this quality time to plan and layout for a project. Half the time you have no time to research a project and mainly go from experience of things you have seen or read over time. Sometimes you might draw out thumbnails but usually you will just go into roughs and comps if you have a strong idea on where you are heading with it.

He was dead on about type in a web site; it is very crucial. For that you should spend time on the right type treatment since it sets the mood for the entire site. And as for images he was saying too many images will bog down and ruin a site. I sort of have a problem with that. If that is someones style and they know how to layout a site with multiple images and make it look great then go for it. He just threw in his opinion and style into his blog.

The end statement is always going to be true since a web site is usually made for the public domain. You are always going to have critiques and statements about the site on which you can improve on. Same goes with any type of project or design.