Designing the actual navigation is a lot more frustrating than orignally concieved. Admittedly, the design itself looks basic and shows little effort when in fact I am just confused about what the heck I am designing.
Will not take complex navigation for granted again.
Having got caught up with what was happening, I created a few quick complex navigation that may or may not be the lamest things every but hey. I got inspiration for the designs from past Tumblr themes I had seen as well as some random ones I had seen prior through template searches.
I don’t know what went down because I had missed. However, I continued to just work on coding on our typeset page.
Doing the structure of html on the board was a good enforcement on making sure we know what to do. It was a nice reminder for me because I had already known at least the basics of setting up a website.
Critique was interesting. The fact that we hadn’t done exactly what was wanted of us. That was interesting to hear during a mini-crit. However, the examples from past classes was a great thing to see so that we did know.
Today was spent checking out websites as inspiration for our typeset websites. One of them was the category of the Top ten recommended websites by google.
Another neat thing was that we checked out color palette websites and there was a familiar site on the list, Coolors. However, I did add one or two other generators to my list.
Explored Google fonts to further our designs, granted mine was mainly only going to be Roboto because that was the font utilized in Material Design. I personally didn’t want to change that aspect because it’s what the subject is. That aside, I learned that there are a lot more fonts that the internet houses aside the typical Times New Roman, etc. Google Fonts also helps assist putting the font into our code which is great, because I typically forget a lot of things I’ve learned especially in coding.
Speaking of coding, CSS is really awesome and I enjoy spending my time on it ( though I have no idea what I’m doing ).
Beauty itself has utility…
Jon Wiley started out his college career in hopes of becoming an astronaut but switched to acting. An odd choice but today, Jon says it helps him with his design career. That’s right design career. It helped him with the ability to see through someone else point of view, to see the clients vision of the product instead of our own.
Prior to Google he had been design for web since 1994. One of his more noteworthy experiences having been a founding member of the Mars Society and helped scout a location for their research station in Utah.
Present day, Jon has worked at Google for a total of 9/10 years ( he began in 2009 ). He first began working on Google Apps, designing the sign-up form while adding his own humor into them. Those examples for companies like “…Tyrell Corporation, from Blade Runner. Somewhere else I put FrobozzCo, from the Zork games.“ From there he moved onto leading the User Experience, as well as Google Search, for design team, a group that designs all aspects of the search experience on all platforms. He has currently been doing that for 4 and a half year ( since 2013 ).
Jon was one of the instigators of Material Design. One of the design problems he thought involving Google Search was “What is this made of?” Of course there was an obvious answer, “pixels wasn’t a good enough answer,” but Jon didn’t believe it was enough. There was a relationship between physical interaction and user interface.
How will Material Design affect Google Search?
Google search has felt like a series of jump cuts that are actually continuous. Material gives framework that is continuously moving from one state to the next. One of the goals is for the “jumps” to be faster and provide clues where to touch in an IU.
To start off with, Chapter 2 caused me pain in a way that was unexplainable. There were so many different types of selectors with specific roles set just for them and it was a complicated mess. In addition, it threw pseudo -class and -elements which was a completely different world. However, made it through with somewhat legible notes. Bless. There was one thing about this chapter got me more confused which was why did it introduce a concept that web designers don’t use anymore?
Anywho,
Code may just be the bane of my existence, however, it is also enjoyable when it comes to seeing how everything comes together in the end. Partially why I had attempted to learn coding for Tumblr ( still am but low motivation too ). Having said that, I do know very little HMTL and hardly any CSS. It feel even more painful considering we’re using WordPress, which has never left a good impression on me so we shall see how it goes. Staying positive!
A lot of what was covered in class and in the first chapter I had already known/reinforced what I did know. There were a few items that were completely foreign to me but were quite easy to understand after a bit of reading ( Doctype creates uncertainty ). In addition, the reading did also help me understand how a blog comes to form, at least in a very basic formation like:
Another thing I found really useful was the small notes about how CSS would do more for you than going in with individual tags ( tried that and panicked ) that would have consumed too much time. It is because of that, that I am excited to find out what this class will give me and what I can make of it.