My First Website

My first website is now live: Kupon (This is the name I am using in place of my own as a brand thing).

The brief was to design and build a portfolio site for college work (and additional work if you wish to include this), and the guidelines specified it had to built with HTML and CSS. This was a big brief, and many elements needing attention; research was undertaken into the various types of websites out there (for example, I never really knew when a site was HTML/CSS, Flash, where Javascript was being used), the way they are organised, web-fonts, optimization, all things that were admittedly restrictive in the initial stages of this project.

The next stage was the design: a few initial ideas were rejected. I wanted a groovy pop art type thing, possibly inspired by this site for Masa in Venezuela , and set out to borrow some of that vibrant, colourful and drop-deal coolness. This didn't work out for various reasons; Masa's site is Flash based, their content is ridiculously good and the whole package is well balanced and rings true. My initial design (based on theirs) was never going to work, and a rethink was needed. I had researched many sites for designers, especially motion graphic artists, and found the best ones were very simple. This could be as simple as a page with some branding, contact details and a link to view or download the showreel. The sites of Lawence Zeegan, Ugo Nonis and Neil Grunshaw are all good examples of this.

The design was reworked with this in mind, but based around my college work as a portfolio. I feel that that this will change, as I think I would like to include other work in future, or more things I fell are good, however this site needed to get done, so I put together an understated and site. The idea is meant to be that the site itself takes a back-seat, and the work shines; although I don't really have work of that calibre (yet!) Particular attention was paid to the grid, typography, web-safe fonts, spacial harmony (and all those other things you get for free when you do a blog). The design was specifically built around the college work I had at thetime, however I have plenty of space within my grid to change this in future, guarenteeing that this site will be good for another year.

The next stage was the coding. HTML and CSS was initially intimidating. It looks like it will be really difficult, but I now realise it's just a case of problem-solving. I think if tweb becomes a speciality there are loads of 'rules' that need to be adhered to, such as accesibility, content-management systems, minimal coding and web standards. This was our first sites, so all of us in our group have tried to incorporate 'good practice' and the latest web-trends. The practical lessons for this brief were very good, comprehensive enough to get thinking CSS, but as an added measure and on the recommendation of NWSAD's resident web-geek in residence Tim Makin, I purchased Patrick Griffith's book HTML DOG, which is very good, and is less than 6 months old so has most of the latest web-fads in.

I think it could have been possible to get other people to do little bits of the coding for me, but I want to be able to keep doing websites. I have my label and club night, Curfew, which urgently needs attention, and over the summer I plan to use this as my muse, with plans for a customised word-press blog, a portfolio type site (possibly in Flash) and plently of graphics, web banners etc. This will keep my hand in with web, as I will not be specialising in web-design. My mate Andy Olley at Bruce Dunlop doesn't do web, and hasn't done for the last 6 years for his day-job, but he is not adverse to knocking out the odd site on the side for a bit of extra cash and to keep his hand in. His sites are simple, but look great as he is good on the design side, and it works for him. I like the idea of this, and plan to do the same.

To conclude my feedback on the site, I would say that I was basically happy with the site as first attempt. The site hasn't been tested in IE (any version) yet, and there are still a few bugs, but I know I will be able to fix this. I also plan to adapt the site to incorporate more flexibility for adding more content over the next twelve months.