Thursday, April 26, 2007

Colour Frustration

This week has been a busy week for most of the people in our class. There is now only 3 weeks until the deadline day and the list for things that need completing is getting bigger. The time for getting things completed and online has come. I will have to make sure that my online style guide is completed for next week, as well as some cd ideas. I feel that I am back on track with the work now. Although I have some sketches to create still I feel that most of my corporate identity elements are at their final stages.

I feel that things started out quite a slow process, with the main layout to create and the rules to state, but I feel that now these are in place all our corporate identity elements use the same layout. This makes the design process some what faster. I spent days creating my logo and a suitable colour scheme. I then spent days creating the business cards but once I had the layout sorted, the rest of the elements adapted to the layout. This meant there was no need to design everything from scratch.

I feel that my website is looking a lot more professional now. When you are viewing a page, that page title will be written in blue in the navigation bar. This shows what page the viewer is looking at. I feel that this is necessary to a lot of sites. It also makes it easier for people who find themselves lost within websites easy. I decided not to create buttons in Photoshop like I did before as it increases file size and loading time. Instead I simply added a rollover colour. I feel that this method is much better and I think people should reconsider this method if they have images as links.

The feedback meeting with Steve on Thursday proved to be very useful, like it usually is. I received some feedback on my letterhead and continuation sheet. I also need to make some adjustments to some of my other corporate identity items. I was glad, however, to find that my logo and header for these items was at a professional size. The size I used for my logo was 15mm x 15mm. I also used a 21pt font split across two lines for my header.

I was not glad to hear that my corporate blue needed changing, as I had already completed elements with this in. I will have to change all my digital work so that they contain the new blue. I need to think about colours more carefully. This was something I had trouble with the last time. In future I should turn the colours to greyscale and find out if they have enough contrast. I wish I would have done this sooner. I guess it is my own fault for not doing this properly the first time.

Over the next week I will be working on my corporate blue, and applying it to all of my work. I will also be making sure that my content (apart from the release sheet) is completed and loaded onto my website. I will also need to start some work on my cd designs. I feel that it will be a very busy week at home. I really want a good grade for this assignment. I feel that it is the most important one and I feel that it is the assignment that I have tried the hardest with.

I am looking forward to John's session, like always, which will be taking place next Tuesday. I always find some way of improving myself in these sessions and I am quite proud of it. Steve has even mentioned how much I've progressed with the help from John. I recommend him to anyone who doesn't see him. I also want to see John so that he can look at my referral work before I hand it back in for marking.

My website has had some moderate changes made to it so here's the link again: www.marcpugh.co.uk/corpid/index.html. Feedback on my website and corporate identity elements is always welcome. I will be working on them throughout the week as well so changes may take place often.

3 comments:

Craig Allington said...

A good website so far, I have noticed that a few of your pages seem to jump (most notable is the divide) if you hadn't already noticed that.

I do agree with the image buttons being changed too. I have gone for a similar roll over approach with the current page highlighted also.

Dean said...

The divide that Craig says is jumping around from page to page does so in Internet Explorer but is fine and dandy in Firefox.

Your homepage picture needs resampling for web but a nice clean looking website overall.

Marc Pugh said...

Thanks. I dont know why the site is jumping though. I have also noticed it but the site was a template so every page is in the exact same spot in Dreamweaver. I will have to look into it more.