Week 15

This is a final shot of my splash page, it contains all of the websites that I have done for the semester.  I placed a screen shot of the header to my word press site with no explanation.  I felt that the header was a very strong piece by itself, and may cause curiosity to the person viewing the splash site.  With just the header, "lets play 18" and the photo of me.

It's interesting to see the contrast between a golf site, which is clear, sophisticated sport, mixed with the grunge look of not only the splash page, but the website itself is actually "elegant grunge".  For me I believe the transition is quite smooth and works.  I think there is a good balance of golf with grunge, style with functionality.  No one element really stands out, which for me at times is a little upsetting, but for this particular site it really doesn't bother me.

This is another snippet from the splash page, introducing a link to my blog site through blogger.com.  Again keeping the same grunge feel I used the graffiti letters to explain the blogger website. I did this to keep the splash page in uniform to make it looked like it was part of the whole, instead of just a seperate portion or piece all by itself.

This is a screen shot from my splash page right now showing a link to one of the iweb sites that was created on my laptop.

I drew this figure that I enjoyed using alot, it had a grunge feel and look, and it is in the background of the splash page that all my sites are on.  I used the graffiti type font for the explanation of each site because i believe it lended itself the grunge feeling of the layout and feel of the splash page.

Using photoshop I did some editing and customizing of the website to give it my own feeling.  I like the rugged look of the template, but really only wanted two columns.  I figured with the content being type, video and photos, the simplicity of the website would take nothing away from the actually content.

I took the picture with a pencil behind my ear which is how I normally golf, the pencil being to keep score and track of the putts and other things.  I again like the handwriting font that is in the header, that was done in photoshop to give the site a natural feeling, like the RSS feed and everything else including the photos which look like polaroids.

This again, is a small piece of the wordpress site that I, in detail, customized.

It was just your basic orange RSS feed button, I turned it into a green with a different color, and made it look like there was actually grass on the button to replicate a natural grass surface, like a golf course.

I than change the actual type to replicate handwriting, and the paper reminded me of a scorecard, so it made sense for me to put the handwriting type there, which brings back the real, live feeling that I wanted for the whole site to have.

I have also decided with all the video that I will be shooting that I will have a video of the week.

Basically this will be a video of great triumph or dispair, which lets face it with me and my friends, look for the humorous tragedies a lot  more often.

Should be very interesting.

This is just a snippet of the video library that I can now upload my videos through youtube directly and than put them in the widget that I downloaded from the wordpress site.

I first thought of doing some brief editing maybe some background music, which I still may, but for some reason I like the raw look of the youtube videos without any editing at all.

Since, like I said before, most of the people I play with have bad tempers, as well as I, there is some swearing which I thought would be funny to bleep as if it were on tv...

So instead of doing that, just beware when watching the videos..

My last post exclaimed that I can now post a video library to my website.  Golfing with a different group of people with a wide range of skill, should make for some pretty interesting video.  Their and my lack of skill along with our anger problems should definitely make for comedic videos that will capture the moments only 4 people would normally see.

It's a nice little window, I think, into the golf world where for me some of the funniest things happen.  Im glad using the iphone 3gs, and flip, that I can share this information.

This is a portion of my wordpress site. This plugin that I downloaded connects directly to twitter and pushes any updates of statuses that I do to my website.

I figured this would be helpful since I can set up my phone where I can update my status on twitter while on the course to give my blog site about golf, a "live" feeling along with the video and pictures of each round.

After reviewing the look of my website as a whole, and not just individual pieces, I decided that it really wasn't portraying what I wanted my website to do.  I wanted it to be about golf yes but for some reason the grunge look of the website wasn't really connecting the idea of the web with golf for me.

I am starting now with a really plain template and am going to revamp the entire thing, which will give me more room to play around with and hopefully put more of myself into the design.

Week 14

     

I chose a blog that was more plain than the rest, in order to make it easier for me customize and notice the customizations.  I chose the elegant grunge theme, I liked the style of the photo's with the shadow, almost polaroid effect, which gave my posts a real grunge feeling, which I thought went along with the outside nature of golf playing against the weather and so on.  The header was customized to give it a handwritten effect, which shares qualities of the scorecards used during the round.  

I wanted to use a site that was golf orientated at first, but than decided that most of them were too green, or too "golfy".  I wanted the website to be about golf, but also about me and my own personal thoughts about current golf issues and my own rounds.  Not just an informative website loaded with as much golf graphic as possible.

Week 4

start the trouble here

_composition_
When asked to create another website we were supposed to create an opposite look for the site.  My previous site had several colors, shapes and other fonts.  In contrast, this site was made with minimal colors.  Usually only one central image on each page surrounded by the white spaces with text near the bottom of the page.  very simple. very clear.


_concept_
Actually the concept was thought of by Prof Peck in class, so I decided to do a short, brief website detailing some of my ex-girlfriends I have had in the past.


_craft_
Using iweb again, i created this website from a template that was fairly simple and used white space almost as the main design concept.  Once again I published this website to my MobileMe account, and am still trying to figure out how to purchase the domain name and put several website url's together.

Week 2

This week we introduced ourselves to iweb and made a website using one of the templates.  This website was supposed to be very simple and basically show how we can manipulate different aspects of iweb and put our own feelings and design into the website.

We were told to bring in 10 or so photographs with a surrounding concept in mind.  I went to the SXU server and took photos of mine off of there from a previous visit to the Sandwich Fair, in Sandwich IL.  Many of my pictures focused on Mack trucks and emblems that were similiar.

I put some of the pictures in, created a fun little story about how Mack got started, through some dates out there and made it have the feel of an original website.  I used one of the templates given in the iweb application.

Week 3

experience i.am.will. creations

_concept_

The concept behind my website was to create something that allowed me to create an identity for myself, using things I like accompanied with past design projects I have done.  In short, it was an attempt to help people understand how I operate in a sense and how I come to the conclusions for my designs.

_craft_

I have done some brief website work before using dreamweaver, but for this project I used iweb.  Part of my style is to go against the grain so using the templates was a little annoying, so I tried to put my own style and design concept into the website.  The way I went about publishing my website was a little different than most in the class, just because I have a mobileme account.  I published my website from iweb straight to mobileme, and when I did it came up with a url that I could put into any computers web browser and arrive at my site.  I plan on buying domain names from go daddy.com, so than I can forward many different sites to my mobileme application.

_composition_

The image capture above is of the welcome page.  I tried to grab a picture that states my overall feelings and behavior with a single image.  Nothing seems to be aligned just right, and that all ties into the part of my design philosophy.

Week 1

My name is James Williams.  I played college baseball and now can finally concentrate on my other passion which is being creative and using different techniques to come up with solutions to artistic problems.  I love music, design and computers.

I chose a picture that kind of shows that I have a fun outgoing side of my personality, because for the most part I am pretty laid back and soft spoken.

_my top visited sites_

salestraining.apple.com

google.com

lynda.com (no worries, not porn)

facebook.com

hulu.com