Project Strengths

In preparation for your final project, my areas of skill/expertise are as follows:

1) Web Development: I have a good handle on coding HTML, CSS, and some javascript. I also have a good understanding of web infrastructure and administration.

2) Writing/Editing: I have a degree in English with an emphasis in professional writing and can produce or edit copy.

3) Graphic Design: I have experience doing some graphic editing in Photoshop, but do not have a trained eye for design.

4) Video: I have very little experience with video production or editing. It's a bit outside my wheelhouse.

Website Design Justification

For Project 2 (http://studentweb.engl.wsu.edu/355/tlivingston), I used the Azure template from http://templated.co. I chose this template because I am pretty comfortable with basic HTML and CSS and this template uses more complicated responsive design techniques. The biggest technical challenges were tracking where changes affected one size of screen versus another. I resolved this mostly by checking code, making small changes, and observing what was affected. Also, while not a technical issue, one of the biggest problems I had was thinking of useful content to use across the site. I find that content is always the part that is most important and often most challenging.

Ideally, my personal website would be more responsive, perhaps with better blocking. It would also include parallax scrolling techniques for interesting visuals and connectivity between pages. Unfortunately, this was beyond the scope of what I could put together for this project and is currently a little beyond my skill set. My ideal site would also be able to communicate with content the various aspects of my life I find interesting in a cohesive whole. I'm a bit of eclectic, perhaps disjointed person, and trying to find a way to express that, but still make it interesting AND professional is challenging.

The site makes heavy use of the Linguistic and Visual modes. Text describes me and my interests, photos and effects help to provide the mood and feel of the site, and color choices are designed to highlight some of my interests as well. The Spatial mode is also important. First in terms of UI, the layout has to be effective on various types of devices and conform to principles of responsive design. Second, the spatial mode is used along with principles of layout to highlight certain pieces of information such as current projects and concert dates. If I can obtain the recordings before the project is due, I will also make use of the Aural mode by placing recordings of my lead trumpet playing in the music section of the website.

For design strategies, I wanted to create a professional website that will not only provide a method for me to share what I do for my position with the Carson College of Business, but more importantly as a platform to begin sharing some of the personal creative projects that I have started to engage in. To that end I tried to provide emphasis and organization to the hierarchy of these projects. This is done first through word order, choice, and placement, especially in navigation and headings. I have attempted to make my job secondary, and more of a supporting effort to the other things I am doing. Layout and organization of the different elements and pages reinforces this, with opportunities for news and event dates right as the first things a user sees, along with examples of a current project, in this case Project 1. Finally color choices exist to keep the page looking like a professional page, with some of the photo effects suggesting that some of my work might be functioning "out of the box."

Sample Website

The website tutorial we did in class, located at: http://studentweb.engl.wsu.edu/355/tlivingston/sample/.