Week 4 Outside of Class

Outside of class, I had created a business card for Blaxican. We were only tasked with creating the front side of it, so I tried putting a lot of relevant information on the front. This included an image of their food, the name of the brand, and what it actually is. While it is simple, I think it's effective in the way that it presents information. Although I do think I could have added more information, I didn't want the front to be cluttered and be more aesthetically pleasing. Any other information would go on the back of the card in almost all situations anyway. In addition, I had also chosen the font types I will most likely use when creating the website. Below I had included both. I wanted to keep both of them fun and as close to the original style as possible while making it feel more modern and professional.

Week 4B

I've redone my mood-board to more accurately reflect the kind of feeling I got from the restaurant. While I did keep a lot of the images, I replaced a few that related directly to the location, such as food trucks and images of food. I find this to be way more effective, since it captures that feeling rather than simply retelling what the place actually is. In addition, I had redone my sketches on how my website would be laid out. I did it on a larger scale since my other sketches were way too small. To briefly explain my sketches, I plan on adding a slideshow near the top of the page that cycles through images of their food. On a website that advertises their food truck and restaurant, I feel like it's almost mandatory for it. I approached this thinking "If I were hungry and interested in a new place to eat, what would I be looking for?"

Week 4A

In class, we had went over our mood-board and sketches that we had created.  Unfortunately, my mood-board didn't accurately reflect that "feeling" I had gotten from Blaxican, but rather what it actually was. My mood-board didn't focus on that essence, which made me turn back and rethink what kind of place this actually is. This will allow me to be able to create a website that more accurately reflects what this place actually is. What I will definitely keep when I remake my mood-board though is the UI elements and colors. I wanted to keep the bright and energetic colors while keeping it related to fast food. Similarly, I had to go back and redo my sketches as well. My sketches were too similar to wire-frames, and should have actually been how the website would be laid out. I already have a good idea on how I will layout my website, though.

Week 3 Outside of Class

Outside of class, I worked on a mood-board that reflected Blaxican. After looking at their social media and images that they had posted, this was the feeling that I had gotten from them. When I think of Blaxican, I think of a fun and upbeat environment. A location that provides both a warm community and food. Although most of the customers at Blaxican are of color, a lot of the community is very diverse. Not only of color, but age as well. I tried to add images that weren't directly from Blaxican though. I included images of delicious soul-food along with restaurants and food trucks that screamed "fast food" to me.

Week 3B

In class, we had a short review on responsive web-design. Afterwards, we gathered in groups of two and took turns explaining how we plan to layout our respective websites. I had a lot of useful feedback, as I got creative ideas from three different people.
My first group member suggested a certain way that I condense a lot of the webpages since
I have a pretty clear idea on how i'm going to do the desktop version of the website, but I feel like designing for mobile is going to be a lot more difficult. I was thinking of creating a sidebar navigation rather than a top bar when a user accesses the website through a mobile device. When he/she taps on a hamburger button in the corner, a side menu would slide from the side of the screen. The reason I decided to do this was because it might prove to be a little more challenging if a user were to try and navigate through a navigation bar located at the top on their phones. I'm very careful in being sure that all buttons are easily reachable and the navigation is clear, as that was my main problem with the website.

Week 3A

For the first half of class, we were given a lecture on fluid vs fixed layouts, grids, and other elements related to web design. Most of this was review for me, although I did learn a few new things such as images being replaced based on the size of a browser window. For the second half, we broke into groups and took turns reviewing our personas and design objectives for each of our individual websites. My group had agreed that my personas and overall ideas for redesigning the website was going in the right direction. The biggest problem that stuck out for not only my group members but myself was both the navigation and how bare-bones some webpages were. They had also given me really new and neat ideas that I haven't considered before, such as a couple creative things I could do with their logo. I'm still playing with some of their ideas, so i'll post some of them in the near future once I figure out what i'm going to do exactly.

Week 2 Outside of Class

Outside of class, I finished creating the personas that I believe could be potential customers to this restaurant. After looking at various reviews and images of the Blaxican restaurant, I had a general idea of what the crowd there was like.
I've also tried to get into contact with them about the website using the number provided on their website, but I wasn't able to reach them for other reasons. I've sent them an email which I feel i'd find more success in and am currently and hopefully waiting for a response soon.
My design objectives for the website are ambitious. As I mentioned before, I do like the chaotic nature of their website, as it makes it seem more fun and casual, since it does advertise a food truck after all. I believe this will be difficult, as I want to keep this kind of nature, yet have an easy to navigate and responsive website. The website itself had a lot of web pages which were somewhat confusing to get to. For example, the landing page gives you a few web pages you can explore, but you have to dig deeper if you want to find something specific like their media page. I also want to completely redesign the background of their website. While I did say I enjoyed the playful and chaotic nature of it, a lot of the elements on the website makes it a little overwhelming to look at. A lot of the images, links and texts are unaligned along with the very bright red, white, and green flag makes it difficult to look at. There's a lot of blank space on the website, which I plan to condense and organize. A lot of their images, font choices and colors clash as well, which is my biggest issue with the website. I plan to find and stick with a consistent theme through each web page while also keeping it fresh and fun for any visitors.

Week 2B

In class, we reviewed which website would be the best to work with for our project. For this project, we're focusing on which would be the best to redesign. It was recommended that I redesign the Blaxican Food Truck website. Not only does it need a redesign, but it also has a lot of information that I could use when i'm working with it. We had also taken a vote on other student's websites to see which would be best for them. Before starting the project, we need to contact our respective website owners and ask the following questions:

• Who uses the website and why?
• What is the main reason for the website?
• If they could change or add anything, what would it be?

Currently i'm creating personas, the target audience for this service. After this is done, I will decide how I will redesign their website and my objectives in doing so.

Week 1 Outside of Class

Outside of class, I revisited some of the sites I mentioned in my last post to see which ones I believe needed a redesign. This could be for many different reasons, but i'll include them for each individual website below.

Quest Comic Shop

http://questcomicshop.com/

This is a website that I believe needs a big redesign. It has a lot of potential though, since it does deal with comics which I believe is a very fun theme to explore in design. Although the website includes a lot of the important details such as dates of events they're hosting and recently arrived items, it isn't too pleasing to look at in my opinion. On each section of the website, it looks very bare-bones and even has a few overlapping elements here and there. In addition to that, there's a lot of clashing elements and inconsistencies throughout the website. This includes things such as the font changing on different bodies of text on the same web-page and very aggressive colors used throughout. Since it is a website based around comics, I think they could definitely do something unique like having a comic-style layout or a slideshow showing popular comics that they own. I also think it'd be more inviting if they included different types of media for the events that they're hosting. For an example, when they host a game night it would be better if they had a gallery that showed images or videos of them participating. The absence of any kind of media along with this web-page makes the comic shop seem very uninviting.

Blaxican Food

http://www.blaxicanfood.com/

In a way, I sort of enjoy the wild design of this website. Although I think it could still use a redesign, the chaotic nature of it makes it seem like a fun spot to be at. I believe they could use this to their advantage while making it more aesthetically pleasing though. While being chaotic and wild in design, it's actually pretty organized as it has necessary subsections such as pictures of the restaurant, menus, media, an about section and more. Much like the last website however, a lot of these subsections look bare-bones and could definitely use a lot more content. 

In addition, there's also similar problems with inconsistencies in design, such as using different fonts for different bodies of text along with font choices. While I don't think using different fonts on the same page is necessarily a bad thing, a lot of them don't have any relation to one another, such as comic sans being placed next to impact. While this might seem nit picky, it does make the web-pages somewhat overwhelming as it includes many bright colors, clashing fonts and images that seem to be placed awkwardly throughout. Overall, the website does fulfill its purpose. But I do believe it could also do with a redesign.

Rhode Island Comic Con

http://www.ricomiccon.com/

This is another comic related website that I believe is overdue for a redesign. Much like the other previously mentioned websites, this one has a lot of information such as a contact page, event schedule, photo-op, and even a live animated countdown timer to the event. While having so much information readily accessible is a huge plus to any upcoming event, it's way too cluttered on the web-page. If a visitor were trying to find a specific page, I do think it'd be a difficult task for them. With so many images, links and other media so close together, it's pretty overwhelming for even a comic fan like myself. This website suffers the complete opposite of what "Blaxican Food" had. While I do think cramming so many images into a small column was a poor choice, I think there is a way they could keep their images while having an open and easy-to-navigate website for users. I think a slideshow would be extremely beneficial to them. I noticed that they do have a window that allows you to scroll through their guest celebrities, comic book creators and exhibitors, but I think they should do that with most of the media on their front page. This would allow them to keep their images while allowing the user to breathe. 

LuxRally

https://luxrally.com/

LuxRally is a group that hosts car rallies full of exotic cars. The website however doesn't do it much justice. While it does have a media section that does a great job in showing what the rallies are like, I believe the website should reflect that. While I do think it was creative how they had added an image in the background that scrolled with the user, I think the bodies of text on the sides are too blank. Along with the font choices and placement of certain elements, the website doesn't stand out and make me feel excited, which is the whole purpose of an exotic car rally. Interestingly enough, I also noticed that the website doesn't respond well on some desktops I had used to preview it. I've checked a few of the images in the media section and they couldn't open at all or took a very long time to. Even the homepage had made my browser lag. I would had believed this would be my fault if it didn't happen on another desktop I had tried to preview this on. I do wonder if the non-responsiveness was just on my end, but it does concern me. 

City of Irving Book Club

https://www.cityofirving.org/1113/Book-Clubs

While I believe this website does have a good choice of colors, fonts and images, the unaligned banner at the top is really jarring. This follows you across many of the other web-pages on the site, giving he illusion of all other elements not being aligned. In addition, the images just below the banner don't align correctly with the window just below it. This is extremely distracting to me, making me unable to explore the website without being drawn back to the unaligned windows. On a lot of the other pages, many bodies of text and links also appear to be awkwardly placed. When viewing other sections of the website, the banner at the top also comes too far down into the window also. With this being the case, it doesn't give the viewer much space to view the actual content on their website. 

Overall, I don't think this necessarily is a "bad" website in terms of aesthetic choices. While a lot of the elements are unaligned and a little overwhelming to a visitor, it does have good design choices. I believe they could use these fonts and colors in their redesign. 

Week 1B

In class, we had a lecture that explored concepts such as flexible grid-base layouts, media queries, flexible images and media along with a few others. In addition, we also learned about how different devices will affect a user's browsing experience when viewing web-pages. After the lecture had ended, we spent the rest of our time finding websites that we believe needed a redesign. This could have been a website that was outdated, nonfunctional, or even just aesthetically unpleasing. After finding a list, we viewed other student's websites that they had found and compiled a list of reasons on why they needed a redesign. Below are websites that I had found:

Farm Show Magazine

https://www.farmshow.com/

Blaxican Food

http://www.blaxicanfood.com/

Car Show Link

http://www.carshowlink.com/

Quest Comic Shop

http://questcomicshop.com/

Rhode Island Comic Con

http://www.ricomiccon.com/

Heroes Comic Books

http://heroescomicbooks.com/

City of Irving Book Club

https://www.cityofirving.org/1113/Book-Clubs

Vintage Car Rally

http://www.vintagecarrally.com/

Luxury Rally

https://luxrally.com/

Rivers Sweet

http://www.riversweet.com/