Week One
Prompt: What do you hope to achieve in this class by the end of the term? Are there special projects or technologies you’d like to see covered by the end of the term? Is there a site (or two) that gives you butterflies in your stomach? What is it?
Response:I've never experimented with coding or really anything computer science related. As a graphic designer, I never really thought about needing to know those kinds of things. I thought that I would just be on the creative side of things, not building websites from scratch. This will be completely new territory for me and by the end of it all, I hope that I can put together something slightly cohesive. We've only briefly touched on it so far but I'd like to explore CSS and ways to make what I built look good by using different fonts, colors, and animations. One website I find particularly inspiring is Australia's National Maritime Museum. It's very colorful and organized and it fits the brand really well.
Inspiring site of the week: Sea Museum
Week Two
Prompt: What are you planning to do for project 1? What content do you plan to show? How will you make each page unique while maintaining a cohesive design across the project? How will your color palette, imagery, and typography choice complement your subject matter?
Response: My website for project one is going to be all about coffee! One direction I'm thinking of going is to have each sub-page be about a different type of coffee with an accompanying illustration/image. My other idea is to have each sub-page be about a different coffee shop in Portland, with location, menu, and popular drinks. I think no matter what idea I run with I'm going to use illustrations rather than photos. I want the overall vibe to feel cozy, so I'm thinking about simple sans-serif fonts paired with cursive/handwritten headers, and a color palette that consists of coffee browns and greens.
Inspiring site of the week: Eastside Coffee
Week Three
Prompt: In this week’s journal prompt, I want you to clearly imagine one user who'll love to use your Project 1 website. This user could be you, it could be someone similar to you, it could be someone completely opposite from you, it could even be a non-human animal or an alien or an amoeba. You get to choose. Really imagine what they are like in their mind. What do they spend their time on? What are their hobbies, clothes, music, favorite foods, books, TV? What's their personality like? Once you've imagined this person, write about them. Just a paragraph, three to five sentences. Try to have fun with it.
Response: Orion Briar Percy moved to Portland after watching the show Portlandia and realizing that they, as a 21-year old retired bike repairer, wanted to experience the ‘90s firsthand. After moving into their first apartment in the city, a first-floor studio (funded by their parents, of course), Orion wanted to get to know the city a bit better. As an avid coffee drinker who avoids supporting large corporations such as Starbucks, Orion only wanted to consume locally sourced, brewed in-house, handcrafted, vegan, keto-friendly, vegetarian, low-fat caffeinated beverages. That’s when they turned to my site, Portland Coffee, to see just what was around. Lo and behold, Orion found several local coffee shops through my site that catered to their needs. Orion ended up going to Either/Or the next morning for their daily coffee and loved it so much that they stayed there all day until the cafe transitioned to a bar at night, just to try the cocktails. Orion loved Either/Or so much, they realized that the person who built the Portland Coffee website was so wise that they had to try every single coffee shop mentioned. Orion was so inspired by the coffee they tasted, they ended up using part of their trust fund to open up their own coffee shop right next to the waterfront: Orion Briar Coffee. It was such a success that Starbucks went bankrupt and closed every location in Portland. And the hipster coffee roasters lived happily ever after.
Inspiring site of the week: Hipster Baby Name Generator
Week Four
Prompt:Considering these articles, make a list of 5 things to keep you going when you feel resistance or discomfort.
Response:
- Walk away. While it may seem counterproductive, I find that taking a step back and working on something else when I need to is beneficial for my mental health and it’ll help me regroup and possibly get some help.
- Having something to look forward to. Whenever I’m feeling the urge to procrastinate on an assignment, I give myself something to look forward to, whether it’s going shopping or getting lunch with a friend, or doing an activity with my mom and sister. By giving myself that I basically force myself to do the work now because I know that come Sunday, I’ll have plans and won’t have time to do it.
- Making lists. Lists not only help me organize my day but if I’m feeling overwhelmed and resistant, writing it all down tends to show me how manageable it actually is. Crossing things off the list also gives me great satisfaction.
- Reminding myself that others are just as uncomfortable. I have left Zoom calls in the middle of class because we were about to do something that I knew would be uncomfortable and stress me out and I didn’t want to deal with it. I’ve dropped classes and put them off for later for the same reason. But what I have to keep in mind is the fact that we’re all (or most of us are) new to this and it’s scary for a lot of people, but they’re not leaving class in the middle of the day because of it.
- Knowing that it’s not forever. Whenever I’m having an anxiety attack my dad always reminds me that “this too shall pass.” This internship, or this class, or even this gym session is just a little blip in the timeline that is my life, and while I may be stressed about it now, it’s not going to last forever, and I’ll have learned something along the way.
Inspiring site of the week: Tuesday's For Trash
Week Five
Prompt: No journal prompt this week!
Response: Even though there's no prompt I still wanted to share my response paper to the Omoju Miller talk. The PDF can be accessed below!
Inspiring *thing* of the week: Omoju Miller Response
Week Six
Prompt: Why did you choose the business/cause that you chose? Why do you think your redesign will be better? What area/content will you focus on in your redesign? Look at two other similar websites. What stands out about those sites? What bothers you about them? How will you improve things in your own design?
Response: For project two I’m going to be doing a website redesign for Koi Fusion, partly because it’s one of my favorite quick service eateries, and partly because I think their site could use an upgrade. While their website isn’t bad, I personally think there’s too much going on, especially on the homepage. You’ve got the order online, catering, and location options at the top, which is great, but when you scroll down in mobile view there’s a lot of poorly positioned text and images that seem kind of random. As you scroll further there are maps of all the locations, and then there’s a gallery of photos that are linked to their Instagram. It’s kind of cool but it’s also not labeled so there was a bit of confusion when I first looked at it.
For my redesign, I’m going to focus on simplifying the homepage while also emphasizing the menu and ordering options (since we are struggling through a pandemic with no endgame). I’m going to move the “about us” section they have on the homepage to its own “about” section while keeping the main blurb to get people interested. I’d also like to emphasize images of the food a bit more, maybe as a background image.
I looked up a couple of other Asian Fusion restaurants and found one called Hapa Asian Fusion. I really like how simple their website is. They have all the important information at the top and then they have their full menu right on the homepage, followed by a gallery of photos of their food. The only thing I’d do differently is change the order of the menu and the photos (but that’s only because I like visuals when I’m trying to choose what to eat). Another website I found is for Nudi, which I’m not a big fan of. I don’t see Asian Fusion when I look at their website. Each section is in a separate box with rounded corners with this ugly (I’m sorry Nudi) red color in the background. They do have their important information presented first but it’s very boring to look at and it makes me very uninterested in eating there (again, I’m sorry Nudi).
Inspiring site of the week: Here is both Hapa Asian Fusion's Site and Nudi's Site for reference.
Week Seven
Prompt: No design journal prompt this week!
Response:
Week Eight
Prompt: Read this article on mobile first design and share your thoughts on mobile first vs desktop first.
Response: When I think about which is more important when designing a website, re: mobile or desktop, I tend to think about all of the websites I’ve tried to access on my phone only for it to be very difficult to use. Websites that aren’t built for mobile or that are built as an afterthought are usually hard to navigate, hard to zoom in and out on, and aren’t as responsive. It seems almost obvious to me that you’d want to make sure your site isn’t just pretty but also functional on multiple platforms, especially since the use of smartphones has boomed and, according to the article, even surpassed the use of desktop computers. As much as figuring out how to code for mobile devices as well as desktop has been a pain, I understand why it’s important to get that aspect out of the way first. What the article made me realize is that by coding for a mobile device first, I’ve been forced to think about the design as needing to move and reshape itself rather than just staying at one screen size permanently. That can drastically change your design but it will ultimately save time in the long run.
Inspiring site of the week: Dinesh Dave's site from last week's Show and Tell
Week Nine
Prompt: Spend some time thinking about why you are pursuing a career in design. Really dig down, do the 7 "whys" tool in the article. OR If that's too challenging right now, consider people in your life or people who've inspired you. Think about what drives them, what their "why" is. Why did they work so hard to do XYZ, was it from past experiences they had, was it because they saw a need they were called to fill? What's their deeper "why?" Ask them if you know them, or look up some biographical information and try to figure it out. Write about either you or your inspiration.
Response: I think the main thing that drives me is the fear of failure. My first year of college was spent at Oregon State, where I also pursued a major in graphic design. I won’t get into how the programs are different because it could take a while, but at OSU you turn in your “portfolio” at the end of your freshman year. If you didn’t pass, you had to choose a new major, so the pressure was really on. And then I didn’t pass, and I didn’t know what to do. I felt like I failed, but I didn’t want to give up, so I transferred to Portland State, where I passed my portfolio review on my first try. I think the reason I didn’t want to give up was because my “why” was proving that I could do something I enjoy and be successful at it. I got the validation I needed when I needed it most.
Inspiring site of the week: The Portland Art Museum's Website
Week Ten
Prompt: Before the final, please write at least a few paragraphs on your design process and reasoning for the design decisions you made on your project.
Response: