Wednesday 12th March 2014

Today I spent the day working on the website for Secure By Integrity. I managed to finish the home page quite quickly so I looked at completing other pages. I have always found that I am better off completing drafts of work and refining them rather than trying to produce a piece of work that doesn't need developing, so I decided to just come up with a simple home page that would need to be tweaked, before doing the same for the other pages. Today the most important thing I have learned is what layer comps are and how to use them. The PPP handbook by ustwo suggested that I use layer comps, but didn't really explain why, so I searched online for more information and discovered that they are used to show different variations of things. As I was designing inner pages of a website where the header, navigation bar and footer would remain consistent, I thought it was an ideal time to try to use layer comps. I managed to create a layer comp for each page which is now making it a lot easier for me to flick from page to page to see how the layout of each one compares to the others. In addition, because I am using layer comps I need to be organised with all of my layers, meaning that it is motivating me to group all of my layers and specifically label everything and put it all in the correct order to make it easier to turn layers on and off when it comes in updating the layer comps. This, in turn, is keeping my layers panel very organised which is a lot easier to work with.
By the end of the day I had got to the stage where I had something on each page, but I still don't think that it looks right. Tomorrow I would like to learn how to save all of the layer comps and individual files and get opinions off Julian and Adam in order for me to move forward with my design. I think it might also be an idea to go back to the web and research more website designs that I really like (or don't like) to try and inform my design a little bit more. At the moment I have create a flat design, but a lot of the modules have coloured photography in and they don't quite tie in together. I either need to make the background and skin of the website more interesting by adding gradients and textures, or replace some of the photographs with simple illustrations to match the style of the skin.