Week 3
06/10/08
Grids & Typography
What are grids?
I never really heard much about grids before the lecture. I knew that sites are designed with a structure behind them but never really thought about the grid concept.
I typed grids into Google and came across Mark Boulton. He provides a helpful article called Simple Steps on how to create a grid and the different types, fluid and fixed. After reading it, I felt I understood why designers used it and wondered why they hadn’t used this technique all along.
While reading Mark's guides I found a link to a site called Stop Design. This is a small design consultancy. Founder Douglas Bowman provides a lot of good articles on design and structuring for web sites. His articles are also featured on A List Apart so they’re definitely worth a look.
Dynamic content......yes please!
After seeing Chris Colhoun’s blog in the lecture last week I set about creating my own dynamic content for my blog. I started by setting up a Flickr and Delicious account.
In Flickr I’ve started to add some photos. Throughout the semester I’ll add to these with photos of everything and anything really and will tag them with ‘des511’. With Flickr’s ‘build a badge’ option I am able to display the photos on my site. I’ve changed this badge feature a bit by going into the css styling of it. I’m not really 100% happy with it yet but I’ll hopefully get it changed soon to my liking.
In Delicious I’ve started to bookmark sites that are relevant to the course and modules. As I have never used it before it’ll give me an idea into the benefits of it for future sites. Again like Flickr, Delicious provides you with the code to copy and paste to your site. The look of this might also change over the coming weeks.
I’ve looked at twitter but I’m not a member yet so maybe I’ll join and start using it so I can include it in the site as well.
Research
This week I also took a look at a number of design resource websites.
Below are some of the sites I thought were good for inspiration.
cpluv.comThis site features work of lots of different designers. It allows you to share your work and to view the creative talents of its users. It is used by a lot of big companies to headhunt creative people for work. I found some of the work on this site really good. It shows a wide range of graphic design. Below are some things I found on the site that I liked.
The first one is an advert by Levi's. It takes the idea of butterfly collecting and applies it to its jean by shaping them all like butterflies and putting them in a glass case. It's a very effective piece of marketing.
Another advert that was in the same place before the jeans one was by Adidas where they made the shape of their new shoes out of plants. Very striking I think.
colourlovers.com
Been a member of this site for a few years now so thought I should mention it after we talked about colour in the lecture last week. Its a great free resource that lets you browse millions of colour combinations and palettes for inspiration for your site or project. If you plan and decide on a good colour scheme early you wont have to mess about with it later on.
Ffffound
I found this image bookmarking site through The Deck Network. It allows users to share and post their favourite images that they've found on the internet. Some of the work is brilliant. It's an invite only site though so maybe I'll get one soon so I can start posting on it. :(
Digital Abstracts
This is another site I regularly take a look at for latest ideas or a bit of inspiration. It is the website of the magazine that they publish. It features a lot of different design agencies that are worth looking at to get a feel of what companies are including in their sites and the type of work they are producing. It regularly has interviews with designers from various studios and has a newsfeed section where a lot of good examples of graphic design pop up.
