Wednesday, April 26, 2017

Studio Tour: The Industrial Resolution

On Monday, April 17th a group of us went into Lancaster City to take a tour of The Industrial Resolution office and talk to one of their members, Bri.

When we first got there, Bri went over a bit about what they do and the layout of the office. One thing I found really cool was the fact that their office space is completely open, no cubicles, just open desk groups they can move around. They have an open floor plan so that all of the workers there can communicate with each other about projects they are working on. Also, almost all of the walls of their office are whiteboard, so at any time you can get up and draw stuff out. Pretty cool! Before you get to the actual office space of The Industrial Resolution, they have an area for free lancers to rent out and work from.

After the tour of the office, we all sat down and talked to Bri a bit more, asking her questions mostly about post-graduation. She gave some really good advice about networking. She talked about getting out and meeting people, not necessarily "networking," but getting to know people in your field and keeping in contact with them. That's the advice I took in the most and definitely something I'm going to work on.

Overall it was a pretty cool experience and the office space is super cool!

Monday, April 3, 2017

Week 9B

Today in class Pannafino started out by quickly demoing a new software we will be using called Axure. We will be using it to create wireframes for our website.

After that we had the rest of the class to put together wireframes for our homepage and one subpage.

Before starting the wireframes, Alina and I went back to the Pet Guardians website and took notes on the important facts and then decided what pages we wanted to create and how to break them down. Once we did that we got started on our wireframes.

The six pages we decided to do are:

  1. Homepage
  2. Adoption
  3. Volunteering
  4. Fundraising
  5. About us (a bit more info)
  6. Contact

In class we started working on the home page and just about finished it!

Desktop view:






Tablet view:







Mobile View:



Monday, March 27, 2017

Week 9A

Today in class we started out by going over CMS (Content Management Systems) and how they are used.

Next we had in class work time to get started on our homework and meet with Pannafino to talk about our Visual Inventory.

Alina and I started working on the Personas first, we came up with three different ones; two that are looking to adopt and one that is looking to foster.



When we talked to Pannafino about the visual inventory he said

Wednesday, March 22, 2017

Week 8B

Today during class we started out by going over a few terms and then watching a short video that went along with our reading, "Visual Inventory." After that we had the rest of the class time to work on creating our own visual inventories. Alina and I both worked on finding different sites that are what we are going for as far as tone, color, and concept. Below you can see screenshots of some of the sites we found along with the links to see more.


Tone:

https://littlepudsandco.co.uk/



http:/packdog.com/preview




https://www.whistle.com/




Color:

http://www.postable.com/



http://originalterritory.com


www.departika.com


Concept:

http://www.onehappycampernj.org/




http://www.nolowenenowak.com





http://www.drap.agency/

Week 8: Outside the Classroom

Homework from 8A:
  • Read Visual Inventory by Dan Mull
  • Call non-profits and ask about site

Calls:


KPETS:

I called KPETS to talk about their site and the person I talked to did not directly design the site but helped with the content that appears on it but even then I got some pretty good answers. At first I asked who visits the site most often and her response was that most of the time people who are looking to volunteer but they also get a good amount of people who are interested in what they do because they want to use their service, a few people who contact us are also interested in signing their pets up to become a therapy pet but that doesn't happen too often.

If you could change anything about the site, what would it be: she had to think about this a little but then told me she feels it could be organized a bit better, there is a lot of information on the site which is great but it could be better organized.



Pet Guardians:

I couldn't find a number for Pet Guardians so I sent them an email (only form of contact I could find) but I haven't heard from them yet so I checked out their website again and made a few assumptions based on what I saw.

Who uses it the most: people who are looking to adopt animals or volunteer

Why: they want to know more about the organization and how they can help, even if it's in  a different way than adopting a pet

What would you change: create a more structured layout and use better graphics (mix of photos and illustrations)


Homework from 8B:


  • Visual Inventory in InDesign (Alina and I split the work, we are each doing six)










Monday, March 20, 2017

Week 8A

Today in class we started out by going to Jerry's 144 class and mentoring a student for about 20 minutes. The student I paired up with was named Brenna. The project they are working on is creating their own trading cards. Brenna is creating her's around natural wonders of the world. Along with her cards she also created a little box to put them in. As we were looking at her cards she did have a few questions on how to make her images better. I suggested adding a few gradients here and there and maybe some more line work to add in detail but also keep the graphics simple. We also talked about when kind of paper she should print on and we both agreed a then card stock style would be best.

After that we went over  the next project which is creating a website for a non-profit organization.
Alina and I decided to work together for this second project so instead of three pages we need five for the final project.

We looked up and researched a bunch of different local organizations and finalized it to couple different ones to choose from:


  1. Aaron's Acres
  2. Marietta Restoration Association
  3. Pet Guardians
  4. KPETS
  5. Leg Up
Now we just have to decided which one we want to design a new website for!

Wednesday, March 8, 2017

Week 7B


DAY OF FINAL CRITIQUE

For my final critique, a lot of the comments were what I figured they would be. Changing the font faces on the header and adding in the 21+ age limit to the header. I knew the comment about the font would come up. I'm not very good at picking the right font or pairing fonts up.

I also misspelled Donut on the original header...but I fixed it!



On the header the date and time are a bit to close to the side so that's just a matter of bringing them in more.

I also had a few comments on incorporating a little more creativity to my page such as creating my own map for the Contact page, adding color to the graphic on the homepage along with the icons.

I also had a comment about using the cursive font I used for headings a bit more throughout the page but also watching the different colors I used. I colored each header differently to sort of play off the colors of the sprinkles in the header but I can see how it didn't work as well as I thought it may.

I think I am definitely going to keep playing around with my webdesign for this event. I had fun playing with it and the comments I got during my critique helped me come up with some new ideas for what I have.