In this evaluation I have done it from two points of view, I have covered it from the creator of the website point of view and the methods of capture that went into the creation of the website, and then I did a paragraph from Shakerz point of view and the methods of capture that was used to create the artwork featured in the website.
For this project I planned a website using Photoshop, using different techniques to express my own personal work in one neat order. My subject was my own business called Shakerz Designs, Shakerz Designs is a graphics design company who work around things like flyers posters album covers ect, based in Plymouth, England Shakerz Designs is the latest up and coming local artist doing work for people and places such as HD3 Records, 45 Degrees and lavish, basically what I needed to advertise in this website was like a portfolio of Shakerz Designs work so people could go on this website and check it out and get in contact to get some work done. At first I struggled to get a website together as soft ware like flash and Dreamweaver I couldn’t get my head around, so in the end I began to use Photoshop which I have a good knowledge of, I began by creating my homepage with SHAKERZ DESIGNS written on it and with the company’s logo, I also made tab buttons to get to the different pages buttons named, Album covers, Flyers, Posters, Wallpapers and 3LIVES, 3LIVES being Shakerz Designs own clothing label, so as well as advertise Shakerz Designs work I had to Promote the clothing as well., next I began to create the different pages, keeping the same sort of lay out but with the images in plain view so you can view them and enlarge them to see them in better detail, before I did any of this I created a proposal for Shakerz Designs explaining my ideas and how I wanted this website to look and work.
In this project I feel what worked well for me was the layout of my website, I feel I go a simple plan so if people were to look at it they wouldn’t struggle to use the site they could easily use it and navigate their way through the different pages, with 5 simple links you can go straight to what you want to see, this I feel is a great feature for a website especially when you mainly want this website to work as a portfolio for other people to view your work and leave comments and get in contact, Shakerz designs has a sort of style which he uses in a lot of his work which is neutral colours and 1 feature colour which really stands out, I feel I manages to create this effect with the website having neutral colours like greys black and white, and having a very bright baby blue as a feature colour which I feel really compliments his work. I also feel using Photoshop worked best for me because I found it easy to get a look that I wanted and I could use different techniques that I already knew in Photoshop to get a certain look that I was going for. Although the technical detail isn’t amazing in any way I feel that a simple look, like a modern look looks well and is different from maybe a website which is amazing in technical detail but loses its simplicity to use, its all good having all these graphics and things but people won’t be going on the site to check out the website, they will be going on to check out the work of Shakerz Designs.
I enjoyed working with neutral colours and then having one feature colour, I feel that his is a great technique that Shakerz Designs uses, I would most likely be using this style of working in the future for future work and projects that may come up in the future of my career. Also the minimalist look really worked out for this project, just stripping things down to their bare minimum but so u can reveal the facts and basics of a project or event or artist, also just creating a website is a new thing for me, although I really found it hard, working flash and photoshop I feel with a bit more practice I can learn and begin to improve on my website creating ability and then maybe create better things as I go along, different web techniques like banners and things of that nature also different button techniques and layouts.
By looking at Shakerz Designs own work, I picked up on a technique of taking plenty of neutral colours and working with one feature colour for the piece, so evan the artist I was doing this project for influence my work and my final piece for the website. Also looking at work from another local Plymouth artist who I still haven’t managed to find out who is , I picked up the idea to use the 3 lines with a glow fade on them to just sort of create a feature and something different that would standout, I did research on artist such as David Carson and Banksy, David Carson is an amazing typography artist who uses text to create piece of art which I found fascinating, although I didn’t use this technique as such it helped me pick what font would work great with Shakerz Designs work, Banksy is an artist who is really out there, very abstract, I saw this in one of the pieces I has to put into Shakerz Designs website, because a lot of work Shakerz Designs does is for clubs and artists, he has to keep in touch with the latest things to hot the local social scene, clubs like 45degrees and lavish predominantly play music relating to hip-hop and rap, shakerz identified this in a lot of his work and managed to get across that feeling in his work for them. Also this being a modern time with new things like the ipad and thing coming out, I had to keep in touch with this is it what you see look, what you see is what you get, people now like simplicity. Straight to the point, these days work is very simple and abstract, straight lines and simple shapes, that the simple look I wanted to get with the website, I used 3 straight glowing lines and kept the simple banner with text going along it for the buttons, and for the name Shakerz Designs, I used a simple Arial font which is so simple but works so well with the look I was going for.
What I may do differently next time is maybe, trying to use a soft ware which is out of my comfort zone like flash and illustrator, that way I could have animations in my website things to get the viewers attention, and maybe to help get a more advertising purpose over to really shove Shakerz Designs in their face, I would maybe next time use maybe a little bit more technical looks like using boxes with the opacity down or more things that pop out with more actions and maybe more information to view, this website was created with the intention to get across Shakerz Designs work, and I feel I managed that, but I feel in my next project I will get across more information on the artist at a personal level rather than just their work, and maybe for the website I would use more ranges of capture, in these piece I mainly used a bit of illustrator, Photoshop and some typography, also using Shakerz Designs images to view, maybe next time I would like to use maybe some photography in the website, some firsthand photos that would work well the represent the artist I am working with, also I would like the use, some tracings, which is where u take a pastel and rub over paper on a piece of surface, there is a lot of things you can do with different textures maybe overlaying it over a page can really give it a great effect and it would work really well, let’s say if the artist was a street artist, having a texture of a wall to go over or behind the website page can give it that street look, that is maybe another form of capture I would like to use in future projects, also I wish I had used sounds for my website for when you click buttons or even some background music that you could listen to or turn off depending on weather you wanted to listen to it.
Because I did my own company Shakerz Designs, a lot of my forms of capture was used in the piece of art which were featured on the website, texture grabbing was used on one of my wall paper images and I feel I used it to great effect, most of my images and pieces were done using online images and image manipulation, I also used illustrator to great my logo of the SD and also used it in some of the feature on my other pieces, one of my pieces on the website used a photograpy of me that I took using a stand in my garage, so in this project I feel although I didn’t use capture directly on the website I made up for that by using different forms of capture on my featured work in the website, methods like photography, image manipulation, typography , photoshop and illustrator, were used in many of my pieces, my success was finding my own particular style, using neutral colours and one feature colour was a technique I picked up by looking at art from sin cities where they use black and white and use red as a feature colour, the flyers and posters I did for HD3 and 45degress were using this technique and I feel I used it to great effectiveness, and using this style to create the website I feel worked really well in complimenting my own work with my own website, I will defiantly use methods like texture grabbing and photography in future work for clients, and I will defiantly be using my style of using feature colours again for future projects, illustrator I am only just starting to get used to , to manipulate my text and to create logos for other people as well as my own. My research into sin cities and David Carson has a huge influence on some of my work and final pieces for clients, also what I mentioned earlier about living in a futurist social time, were simplicity is all the range, I feel this hugely influence my website and some of the featured work also, next time I would maybe use better detail in my work maybe move away from the simplicity approach and maybe work a bit harder on little fine details for people to look at and admire, but other than that I am pretty happy with my overall work, my website as well as my featured work.
My overall evaluation of my work it that I have done well in this project, although directly I didn’t use all the methods of capture in creating my website I used them in my featured work, which I did partly on the site to put into the website, some for clients that I have been working with and some I already had stored away and some with the tutorials we did in class for this project, were I could have improved is maybe keeping on top of all my work and my blogs, also I changed a few ideas around from the proposal I originally set, but I feel they were the right decisions and I am over all happy with what I have ended up with, and that is a plan for a website, that I feel would complement the work that I have created, I would maybe wish I spent more time on the website so I could have more animations on it and more things to play with, I wish I has worked more with sounds , little effects for when you scroll over the images or when you click a button to go to another page, I feel I have enough work and evidence to cover all of the criteria for this project and overall I am confident that I will get a good grade for the work I have produced, I just maybe need to work on my organizational skills a little better , but that is something that I have learnt from and I will try harder to do in my next project.
Health and safety regulations I kept to in this project was regular eye breaks every hour and 15 minutes, also if I went out to capture an image, I wouldn’t take any risks to get that image, I also kept the correct posture in front of the computer so ensure I didn’t begin to suffer with, repetitive strain syndrome, other than taking images I feel that what I did for this project didn’t really come into any unsafe situations so I feel I have worked well and have managed to work whilst keeping myself in a safe environment.
