Course Reflections
Throughout this course I have learned several new skill sets that will benefit me long-term on a personal level and within my education and career. With regards to the web and design, I will never look at a website or advertisement in the same way that I had before this class. I have learned how to read, write, and publish on the web.....which is something I never really gave much further thought into before. In a sense, I guess I am more of a critic now! The section on photoshop also opened a whole new world for me; I guess I will no longer have to ask my 18 year old sister to edit all my pictures for me anymore =). The textbooks that we received in this class will be tools that I think I will constantly refer back to for future insight, especially the tips and tricks for photoshop! Mainly, this course got me out of my comfort zone and allowed me to explore and get some hands on experience with something I might have otherwise never learned about. Going through the stages of designing a website from start to finish was really valuable for me, I feel that it will allow me to create websites in the future for business and personal reasons....before this class I hadn't the slightest idea of how to do any of this!
Website Compare/Contrast
Ugh!! This was a long and tedious process for me. I had chosen to design a website for the new restaurant that my company was opening at the end of February; I think that it ended up creating more work than I had anticipated in terms of design preparations and the actual input of the data. The sites were comparable in that they each contained the same content; the exact same drink and food menu, and pictures. Those were the only similarities....how the content was presented was where you can see an abundant amount of contrast! When working in the Expressions program, I had more freedom with my design. I chose not to use a template and designed every aspect of the design on my own from start to finish. It allowed me to be creative in how I organized the information, color schemes, and the fonts, alignments, etc. of my text. It was a whole different story when I used the freeWebs. I was forced to use a template which completely limited my design. The only freedom I really had here was the size and font of my text. I was not able to change the alignment positions of my text, nor was I able to add pictures or text boxes in other places on the webpage that didn't coincide with the pre-existing template. I also had to create sub-pages in addition to the four main pages of my site in order to include all of the information I wanted to present. I faced several other dilemmas when working with freeWebs; changing or deleting content was much more difficult, inserting photos was harder, and I was also unable to add more than one active link with this template. When we first started working on our websites, I thought for sure that doing it from scratch in Expressions would pose to be more challenging than using freeWebs.....it ended up being the complete opposite! The website I created in Expressions is more visually stimulating and I had more control in how it was designed. The website I created in freeWebs created limitations for me that I wasn't expecting and I found it to be more time consuming and frustrating. If I had chosen to use this program first, I may have gone into working with Expressions with a negative attitude already! I must admit, that I personally feel that the freeWebs version of my website is rather plain, but overall the navigation of the page for users probably accommodates readers better than my Expressions site. I'm more partial to the Expressions site because I feel it reflects my personality and creativity more.
Storyboards
Expressions Site
The version of my site I created in Expressions closely matches the initial concept of my storyboards. I was able to place the content in the way I had written it down on paper (alignment, size, color, organization, and placement). The only place where it did differ is how I organized the information on the content page, I decided to change a few things around because the initial placement did not flow the way I had expected it to.
FreeWebs Site
This version of my site was very different than the initial concept of my story boards. Of course the content was all the same in both sites, but the manner that I was able to present it led to the differences. The use of the template forced me to keep everything left aligned, which didn't match my storyboard. I was able to change the font, size, and underline my keywords, but couldn't do much else. Also, there was the issue of only being able to include one link for readers. I was not able to include an active link for the business's Facebook page or a link for direction that would open in a new window.
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