Beautiful websites

Today i had a brain wave.  I thought, why not just type in 'beautiful websites' in a google search.  Great idea!  First result was a page called Very Nice Sites (http://www.verynicesites.com).  The first site it showed was for an app called Pomodrone, which appears to be some sort of scheduling app. 
This site is small, but great.  It uses the downward scrolling gesture, which is a natural thing to do, to change pages, but there is an animation to do so http://www.pomodrone.com.  As you can see from the screen shot, simple pastel shades are used, with no overly complicated graphics, giving a very modern feel-

Im very drawn to this style, not only for its contemporary feel, but also as a beginner on html, it doesn't look too complex! Albeit, the swipe animations are probably a bit of a nightmare.

The next site i looked at was Mixd (http://www.mixd.co.uk).  This is actually a web design company's own site.  Again its style is very contemporary, with bold background colours, in more standard colours like yellow and red, with black or white type-

This style continues throughout the site, apart from the section on the team, but even so, its still very simple and modern looking, and fits with the rest of the site very well-

This page reminds me of a site i looked at for the ibooks project, image on one see, with text on the other, which i really like.  The quality of the photography is also very good, obviously done in a studio, which is important for this type of thing.

The next site was interesting to me, as it was for a mountain bike brand, which if you didn't know, is one of my main hobbies.  Its for Juliana bikes (http://www.julianabicycles.com).  This site goes with photography being the main theme, with minimal text over the top, which i again think looks great.  Like i said in my previous blog, simplicity is the key in my opinion to a successful, and aesthetically pleasing site.  The home page looks like this- 

You navigate through the site, with the obvious white arrows at the bottom of each page.  Each page also has a link in the middle to take you the more detailed parts of the site-

And the link takes you to this-

Again, still simple, with all the bikes pictures being shot at the same angle, which gives some uniformity.

All this has certainly given me some good inspiration, and kind of wish i'd thought of this before i done the ibook, oh well, better late than never!

Day 1 website design

So yeah yet again, not too sure how i feel about this one.  Definitely interested how to build a website, but the coding thing just looks like I've got to learn Japanese!  
I also didn't do anything over the easter holidays, for various reasons, one of them being that i just did not have a clue what i was meant to do!  But alas when i got in to the classroom yesterday, i was put at ease by realising we had more time to do the project than i realised, obvs though Barcelona is gonna get in the way a bit!

Yesterday though i thought i should start doing something that i was a bit familiar with, which is analysing existing sites that i think work well, or don't as the case maybe.  I started off with the one that for me, stands out above all others for sheer simplicity; Tumblr.  I love the simple interface, and lack of clutter.  So i sketched out the page layout, marking with arrows where all the places of interest were, e.g. navigation, log out etc.  It was quite interesting to look at a website in so much detail.  There is very little in the way of things to click on, and where they are, they are just big icons, which clearly indicate what they are designed to do, like a small silhouette of a house to designate the home page, and a silhouette of a camera to designate the picture posting facility.

I then looked at another site which i use a lot, that i never have a problem navigating, which is DeviantArt.  This is a fairly similar site to Tumblr, but is definitely busier to look at, and has ad banners.  But still easy to use, with navigation across the top, and down the left hand side, which stays the same on any page you go on.

In the afternoon, we had a lesson on coding from George.  I learned a bit about what tags mean what etc, but as the afternoon went on, and i started to tire, i really struggled to keep up.  But i think over the weekend i will look at youtube and see what i can figure out myself, and maybe talk to a friend of mine who is a web designer.

Final Day

Over the last week i have been fine tuning my ibook, double checking spelling etc.  I done some use testing on a friend, which went well.  She didn't have any overwhelming issues, only the size of the fonts on some pages which are slightly inconsistent, which i will look at.

The last thing i needed to do, was put in some google maps widgets.  This turned out to be a fairly complicated process, as the exact location of the glaciers is not on google maps, so i had to find them via info on some web pages related to the glacier itself.

This is one of the pages with a google widget on it-

Overall i'm happy with what i have created.  I have put in a fair few interactive items which work well.

Nearrrrrrly done.

Biggish update, still keep forgetting to post, but heres when i am at the mo.

Got all my content sorted and re written in my own words, loads of cool pictures sourced, and learned how to use Bookry properly.

I researched some videos on Glaciers, most of which i found on YouTube.  I saved all the URL's to a pages document, which linked nicely to the website.  Also i used this page to store URL's for just general info sites on glaciers.

So most of my pages are now done, and just need some fine tuning.  Today i decided to up the size of the Sverige Script font on most of my pages, and put a dramatic gradient on all the blue boxes (i do have a bit of a fetish for gradients!).  This is how they are looking so far-

This is the final layout for the majority of my info pages.  There are some exceptions, where the picture just won't work in portrait, so i put it in landscape, but it doesn't interrupt the theme of the ibook.

I was having a bit of a mare with my main interactive picture of a cross section of a glacier. It wasn't appearing on the ibook, as it was appearing on IBA, but Andrew helped me remedy that, and in the process make it better, and full size, as before it was portrait, but now landscape-

Over the course of the day, I've managed to basically finish my ibook. Im going to go over it in the next few days with a fine tooth comb, but I'm fairly pleased with it as it stands.

Messy day

Today was a bit of a write off.  We were told that the BBC was coming on to do user testing, which i was fine with, but it ended up causing a bit of confusion, and distraction, especially on me.  We were moved to another room, and the ethernet cable i plugged in didn't work, plus i wasn't sure when we were going to get called, so didn't bother starting up something, only to get distracted.  Then i managed to get wifi by calling network services, but still couldn't really get into my work due to commission in the room etc. And after 2 and a half hours of waiting, i gave up and went home.

All moaning aside, i did get a few hours work done before all this!  And so far have all my chapter pages done, and the body text is all ready to go in.  Still need to find more pics which i shall do tomorrow.

1st few pages

Had a pretty good productive day today.  Initially i thought i would do all the pages on illustrator as i have more free reign to do what i want on each page, but i think i was just being a bit afraid of Author, and when i sat down and had a good few hours on it, realised its not so bad after all.

So i'd decided previously that i wanted my pages to be consistent throughout, and i really like the layout of the Procreate manual as shown in a previous post, so i was going to use that style, albeit with different colours, colours more representative of the subject, i also don't want too much text on each page, which i think will make it easier to digest.

This is my 1st page so far, not necessarily a finished piece, but I'm happy with it as it stands-

You can see from the similarity to the Procreate manual-

With the chapter pages, I've used one of the pre existing templates, as i think its looks very stylish and contemporary, but added my own typeface choice of Futura medium, and Sverige Script-

But as you can see, it fits well with my 1st page as well.  Ats thats where I'm at, at the moment!

Picture gathering

Had a pretty productive day today, still maybe not as much done as i would have liked but hey ho.  Got the majority of my text content sorted, and got the front cover done.  I wanted the cover to be quite graceful as the word glacier to me is quite a graceful word.  This is the end result-

I'm really pleased with this.  The picture i used was obviously a bitmap image, which blown up to the size that i wanted would have looked horrible and pixelated.  So i done a live trace of it, which inadvertently made it look a bit like a painting up close-

Also managed to gather all my pics for different types of glaciers, which turned out to be a time consuming process, but also quite educating!