What a week

Ok for one, my computer has been down since Thursday night. I come home and whats this? A blue screen of death? Its been 5 years since I have had one of those. So I have been having to get a “borrowed” copy of XP to get everything up and running again. Heres the fun part, I lost half of my files! and some of the others are corrupted. This is a web designers worst nightmare. So heres what I have, tell me what you think?
PS I hate technology. Also, when you look at these layouts, right click and click view image, that way you get the whole layout and not the cropped version.

As you can see its nice a purrty. Let me give you the lay down.
Anime News = whats new in the anime world
Meetings = When where what time and what to bring
Featured Anime = Just a description and a small picture will go here of a random anime of the week
Meeting photos = pictures of meetings and such.

Anime: A History = Short history of Anime and where it all started.
What We Have = List of everything that we have. List is a link information about the anime will be displayed in….
Anime Display: where the “What We Have” links are displayed.

Now layout two.

Very easy on the eyes right? Anyway heres the break down
Club Photo = Easy one right?
Meetings = same as above
Featured Anime = again the same
Past Meetings = a quick recap of what the past few meetings were
Video Links = Hosted videos on the site that were what was watched the previous week.
Meeting Photos = Same as above.

All sections in this are the same as page 2 of the first layout.

Sadly thats it, like I said before files corrupted, I hate technology blah blah blah, ok so tell me what you think.

How do you solve problems with interactive media design?

The topic here is one we as designers must ask ourselves. While the world is changing at an alarming rate, we are always evolving to meet what our customers want.  I look around at our fellow classmates at the school and realize that what they do is in a way set in stone. Once an animator finishes a project, thats all she wrote(I don’t count directors cuts) But web designers can change there final designs with a few quick key strokes. I never did notice this till now but even after I graduate, I will continue to learn everyday as the web changes and we must keep up with it. Just two years ago Adobe put out CS2, and then last year CS3 was released. True they just threw in a bunch of bells and whistles but still it in a way has become its own entity. Almost as if it had its own life. The same goes for the web. Coding evolves and it can sometimes seem impossible to ever know enough. To solve any problem with IMD I think you just have to do your best. You can never know everything but you can keep learning and getting down what you need to know to make your customers happy. even if you are not happy with your design, if its what the customer wants, then thats what they will get.

Site Research

SO I have been looking at different sites that would give me the ideas and maybe a little copy jobs to get what would work.

First we have Retro Junk. Take note of the simple layout but with the characters that are in the corners of the divs. This idea would bring my site up more with a nice design feel and maybe a sense of nostalgia.

Second we have Homestar Runner. While it is in flash, the amont of time the creator put into making this site can blow your mind. I like the feel of bringing people to the site and they stay there, ever if it is just to goof off. So I must find something that will entertain people while they are there.

3rd site is Schnitt Show. It is a radio talk show site that is updated daily. I like the ability to keep news updates up front while also having an archival area of the site for past topics and older news. That way new people can see what you have done and see if they have anything in common with your site.

4th we have Photobucket. A great site for people to put up photos of whatever they want. While I would have to moderate what people would put up since this would be a public site, people could put up there own photos from cons and events along with there comments about it. So some way to make a public photo gallery where people can add what they want would be what I am looking for.

Finally we have #5. And don’t laugh but i wantto be able to host videos like You tube. That way I could put up samples of what we watched in the meeting or keep a video blog of whatever the club needs. I am still working outthe details but I hope these will work for now.

My Site Idea

OK for one… you miss a day, you get too far be hide so for those of you who think you can miss a day and be ok, screw that. Unless its unavoidable, like mine was but thats beside the point.

Ok so My site idea hmmmm. Well I like where i am going so far with the Anime Club’s website. If you have not looked at it go here AID Anime Club .

I like the layout I have but for some reason I am not satisfied with it. I want to be able to have it update automatically with new episodes of shows that we watch and at least other ideas that can be kept up with. Like news, more events, ect.

I don’t know, I just want it to be flashy and eye catching.
Any ideas?

A Design Process Revealed

I would like to say this article was very informative. Researching and planning can help out a design in the long run. I don’t know how many times I have sat down at the computer to design a site and drawn a complete blank or I have hundreds of ideas but now of them would work for the design. It helps to put the work down on paper with the ideas both good and bad of what you want.

I also liked his idea of checking out the competitions sites. Where you can get the plans to surpass the set ups they have and be able to blow the out of the water.

With all the steps he put in, I can say that I will be referring back to this article from time to time to help with what I need.

Week One

Welcome one and all. My name is Luke and I am a web designer/coder in training.  While I have been making small websites on the side, I am interested in learning more and more about coding and designing.

In this Class I hope to learn as much as possible because everytime I look at a job listing for a web coder or designer, I want to be making that nice $40 an hour fat check!

So here are 5 things I  want to learn in this class.

1) Create a forms-based web page for the collection of information.

2) I want to learn to create a forum!

3) Create  and RSS feed so peope know my site is updated.

4) I want to be able to get feed back from my vistors on what they like and dislike about my site.

5) I want to be able to build a site that works in all the browsers.  Because even though I hate IE, I have to except the fact that there are still people out there who still use it.

So there you go. Not that much but I can’t wait to get it down.

Ummm

Check it out… I can blog!