Week 2
29/09/08
Have I grabbed your attention?
During the lecture this week we talked about ‘Voice’ and how your site comes across but the style of writing. It can have as big an impact as things such as colour, typeface and imagery.
Clearly the decision on ‘Voice’ comes down to your target audience and what you aim to achieve or get from your site. A laid back, funny site might not impress all employers or clients.
I found that some big brands change the Voice of their sites for different sections or markets. Diesel for example has varied styles for their clothing and fragrances. They also use a different ‘voice’ for another section, DieselXXX. This section is for its worldwide Dirty 30 party which is to celebrate its 30th anniversary. Check out the video below but be warned although it is safe for work viewing some people might disagree.
Tag lines.......Just Do It!
A good tag line is a very difficult thing to come up with. It needs to sell you but needs to be memorable and catchy. This is a lot of things to fit into a few words. Coming up with a tag line is something I’ll have to try and do for my site. I looked on the internet for some catchy tag lines.
Below are some that almost everyone will read and relate the product or brand to it:
- 'Finger lickin’ good’ - KFC
- ‘Vorsprung durch technik’ –Audi
- ‘Probably the best lager in the world’ – Carlsberg
- ‘Broadcast Yourself’ - YouTube
I also found this one online and thought it was good:
- ‘Because you’re ugly’ - www.thesuperficial.com
CSS Trickery
I’ve spent a lot of time this week reading through the Web Standard Solutions book by Dan Cederholm. I never had much experience with CSS in second year as we never covered it. I knew about it but only began to use it a bit on placement last year. I’ve taught myself a bit this week and tried to create my blog in CSS. I think I’ve got a pretty good grasp of things so far and my blog is starting to take shape.
I’ve been trying to work my way through the chapters. The book is really straight forward and easy to follow so would recommend it to anyone who wants to learn about CSS and markup.
Major Project Dilemma
I also took a bit of time looking through the portfolio of last year’s work to try and get some inspiration into what I want to do my major project on. I already mentioned to Chris in the lab sessions this week how I was having difficulty coming up with an idea and he said not to worry too much so soon.
Easier said than done.
Dreamweaver & It's Rollovers
I have always used the swap image behaviour in Dreamweaver for making rollover images. The problem with this is that the images need to be preloaded for the rollover to work. This clutters up the source code of the page. Chris showed me a possible solution to this by using CSS Sprites. By using one image and playing with its positioning you can achieve the same effect. I haven’t had the time yet to change my rollovers but will be following this example from A List Apart.
Custom API's
When completing the homework for week 1 I came across a site that had Google Maps embedded in it. This is hardly uncommon but the icons on the map were custom to the site. So instead of the usual red icon it was in the shape of a book. We talked about API’s briefly in week 1 and thought I’d take a look at how to create these custom map icons. There was a huge range of options and things you can do to make the map custom to your site. Below you’ll find a link to the information from Google on how to go about doing it.
