principles of design

for BIS 2400 I had to read these chapters of The Non-Designer's Web Book a few weeks ago, so I thought I could easily get away with skimming them this time. I understand the principles of contrast, repetition, proximity, and alignment fairly well. How well I am able to demonstrate them in the design of my electronic portfolio remains to be seen. With practice, I'm sure it will come fairly easily. It is the less aesthetic details which worry me. What do I know about screen sizes and various types of browsers? What do I know about how to make a webpage compatible with all those different setups? Not much. I guess that's what I'm in this class for. The word 'technologies' is in the course title, after all.

So, I need to discuss a poorly designed website... that will take some finding. One moment please.

Alright, after a bit of following a trail of miscellaneous links all over the Internet, I have found this: http://doctaj.hokuten.net/

The first thing that strikes me is the utter lack of contrast. The site is way too green and way too crowded. All that tiny text crammed up in the top left corner hurts my eyes and makes very little sense. It isn't easy to tell what or where anything is, much less why it might be important to me at all. The randomly placed tagboard at the top screws up any sense of balance the site may have had. There is no proper spacing between segments, nor any clear organization. Few of the sentences are capitalized. While the humongous graphic (lovely sketch, I guess) does create a sense of repetition, its size is unnecessarily exaggerated and it overwhelms the pages of the site. The way the entirety of the site's content is displayed in a narrow column on the left is annoying. The fact that most of that content seems overly abbreviated, hopelessly disorganized, and pretty much meaningless is even more annoying. The whole presentation makes the site seem like nothing more than somebody's weird artistic clique. There seems to have been no real thought put into this design at all. If I were in charge of it, I'd first of all add some more color, space everything out and do a thorough overhaul on the content, cutting out half of it and organizing the rest into something purposeful and clear that visitors might possibly be able to get something out of.

Okay, so much for that. In other news: Our Basic Dreamweaver presentation is coming along. Jamie and I met up yesterday (Kate was otherwise engaged and couldn't come; otherkid who was in our group chickened out, ran away, and hasn't been seen by any of us since two weeks ago) and planned out what we want to include and how we're going to put it together. I got my first chance at playing with Power Point, which was rather fun, and hopefully before too long we'll be well on our way to getting the whole project overwith. Which is not to imply that I don't expect it to be an enjoyable process, because I do. I hope to learn a great deal, and I expect having to teach it to the rest of the class will help me have more confidence in the skills I do acquire while working on this project.

Now, was there anything else worth mentioning here at the tail end of this entry? I hope class tomorrow is worth the two and a half hours I'll have to spend in there. It usually is, so I have no real cause to worry.