The Girly Boutique
I came across this The Girly Boutique website:
I like the design of the page, not because it is pink in colour but it looks simple and neat as the designer used tables to design it. The designer used a good colour combination to design the website, seeing that the title is ‘The Girly Boutique’ it uses Pink as its theme colour. However i noticed that a lot of the links especially the main links on the top banner are dead links, meaning that when you click it nothing happen. The only few links which is working is ’2 Girls Design’, ‘Simple Rules’, another two links below it and all the links on the lower right corner of the website. Even when i click the few links above, it only shows me to more blank websites.
Hence i learn here that when i create the website, i should be careful of the links that i put inside my website, i should make sure that the links that i put links to website which is still running. Viewers will feel frustrated and would not like your web page when you have dead links which lead them to nowhere.
Dokimos
One of the website sample which Mark showed us is Dokimos:
As a Christian i think it is nice of people to create a website solely to proclaim God’s word, however i think that the website would not be inviting for people to read or find out more about it as the way the website is design is not enticing enough to retain people’s attention. With the rainbow colour as the background, making the website look too colourful, furthermore i find my eye keep reverting to the sun in the middle of the website. While i scroll down the website i found this:
An all coloured small banner in the middle saying that ‘Accept Jesus Forever and Forgive’. I find myself having a hard time reading the words below as my eyes keep attracted to the flashy banner sign above. The more i look at the flashy banner the more my eyes ace and distract me from reading other parts of the website.
I learn here that we should stick with one continuous background colour and not try to put in all my favourite colours in it as it will make it too colorful. Sometimes some white is good, take for example Apple’s website.
It uses White as the background and stick to it for all its pages, making it look neat and tidy. I guess we should also try to keep it simple and not overdo it with multi different colour.
Girly Website
I came across a website which is title ‘Welcome To My Girly Website‘:
When i visited this web page, i find that it is very un-proportionate as there are a lot of space around and the information was not well organised even though she used tables to design it. The whole website has black background with white dot which is suppose to be stars flying pass; i figure that it is suppose to be out of space. with a shiny dot on the corner left next to the links button which has a welcome word which you cannot click on. When you click on the welcome page:
It still have the black background but without the stars flying pass, however she has two butterflies flying around her webpage. I find the content of this page very childish eventhough she tries to be creative by explaning what she like to do and arrange the start of every line with the alphebets of the word ‘welcome’.
What i learn in this webpage is that you have to organised your information and the way you design the webpage as if it is not nicely organised, it can look very unporpotionate. Furthrmore, you have to be carefuly with the content of your webpage as firstly you should not write something which will offend people as it will get you into trouble and you should write something that shows a little bit of professionalism. As i think the reason of this girl Carol creating her site to meet people or entice people to meet her, hence the content of her webpage should reflect her personality and i think she did it.
Looney Tunes
One of the animated cartoon website which i visited is my favourite childhood carton – Looney Tunes.
This is a well organised website which is arranged using tables and it is easy for you to get information or links which you want in a glance. They also uses Adobe Flash Player 9 to create the animated clip at the top part of the website, it is also design in a way that when people visit the web page their eyes will be drawn to the clip. However i also sometimes cant help but noticed that my eyes are also drawn to the pink advert on the right of the website, i guess it is design in a way that they also would want people to look at the advert on the side of the web page.
The negative side of this web page is that it is best viewed only in Internet Explorer as when you view the web page in Mozilla Firefox, it will show some missing pug-ins which is not available for you to install.
I noticed also when we click on the kids section, there is a change of background colour to orange:
Than when you click on the Looney Stars, the background colour changes to blue:
What i learn from this page is that I’ll have to double check and make sure that my web page is viewable in Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox so that viewers will not have problems viewing. There are also a change of background colours in different pages of the website just like Bebop Jeans hence i will also use different background colours for different pages of my website.
Mobile Website
In this post I’ll be looking at the 6 main website of UK mobile Company – Virgin, T-Mobile, Orange, My3, Vodafone and O2. I’ll be comparing the websites and discussing about it.
Theme colour
I noticed that most of these websites have their own theme colour which is:
For 3, it seems like the theme colour for it is white, purple and green.
For o2, it is a distinctive blue which is its theme colour just like its logo.
Orange like its name, the theme colour is orange
T- Mobile is pink
Virgin is red
While for Vodafone its theme colour is also red but it mix in with a lot of other colours like turquoise blue and light blue for a lot of its title banner, while there are some green and purple for other two category banner on the right.
Clutters and messiness
All of the websites main page seem to be nicely organised in tables/columns, however there are alot of information and links which people can click thru-out the page. I can be a little cluttered looking as there are a lot of information on it. However for 3 Mobile’s website, they try to put as little information or choises of links as possible and design all those with a white background. This will make it look neat and not so cluttered with things.
Start up Animation
All of these webpage do not really have a start-up animation before it reaches the main front page of the website other than 3 Website.
Before you reach the 3 main page, it will have a slight introduction whereby different coloured smoke will float around the no 3 in the page, it will aslo change color from yellow, to blue to green. At that page it has 3 box of links for you to choose, underneath the number 3; you can also choose the country you are from.
What i learn from all these websites that it is importnat for you to use a table or column to categrise your website to different segement of information as it will be easy for people to visit the relevent links which they want to look at. the tables/columns also helps to organise your website and make it look neat and not so messy. However that also doesnt mean that you can clog up the website with alot of information and words or not it will be a put off to viewers.
Atari Cool Kids
One of the blog which I’ve come across is Atari Cool Kids:
I liked the background of this blog as you can see different sorts of American superheroes comic, the good part is that the comic is fixed hence when you scroll your eyes would not get so blurred easily. As sometimes when the picture is not fixed, when you scroll down, it will make the background looked blurred and painful to the eyes.
Adobe Kuler
One of the website Mark showed us is Adobe Kuler, it is a website whereby it shows you colour themes which you can use for your website. I think that this is a very useful website as it can help you to choose the right combination of colours you can use for your website. As sometimes when you create a website, you might face problem of your colour combination is not good enough that it causes discomfort for users when they view your website. Hence this website comes in handy to help you to choose the colour combinations which best suit your website.After looking thru the website i finally narrow down the choices of combinations of colours which i would use for my website and they are:
1.The Pink Pop Princess
This is a combination of green, yellow, White, pink and red. I like it as the colour is sharp, girly and nice. I can use red as the words, with white, pink or yellow background and green as the border.
2. Women in Purple Dress
It is a combination of pink and purple colour, the reason i choose this is because it has the sweetness of the colour pink being mix with the colour purple. Making the combination looked feminine but yet with an attitude. However, i must be-careful with this colour as if it wasn’t mix properly, it can make the website look a bit dull and uninteresting.
3. She Leaves in Fall
It is a combination of green, orange, red and yellow making it look like the autumn season. it is so much better than the one before as this makes the web page look bright and happy.
4. Pi Artist
This is a combination of red, orange, yellow, white and black. This is a stunning combination of colour as it is bright and happy with a tint of blackness to it. I think this is good as you can have white background with black words and surrounding it with red, Orange and yellow combination of background and borders.
5. Orchid
This is a combination of white, purple, maroon and pink; making the whole combination looked sweet and cool. We can have maroon words with white background and pink and purple borders and main background colour.
6. Taper Jean Girl
I like this as it is another girly colour, with the combination of red, and different sorts of pink with a blue that contrast it all. I like this colour combination as it is feminine with a tint of masculinity in it, having that contrast to make it more stricking and cute.
7. Chocolate Mint Berry
This is a combination of red, pink, green and dark brown; i like this colour as it reminds me of my favourite fruit – strawberry. I can use the dark brown as the words and the backgroud as either pink or green with red and dark green as the borders.
After looking thru the colour combinations which i’ve chosen, i’ve realised alot of the colour combinations have red and pink in it. As a conclusion, i’ll make my website main theme as pink and red; than i’ll do what Bebo Jeans did whereby i’ll have different colour combination as shown above for different page. But all these colour combinations i’ll include pink and red in it as it is my main theme colour.
Heroes Official Website
Heroes – the hit drama series all over the world which was produce by NBC network has created their own official website.
I am a Heroes fan, i like the drama but i absolutely dislike the website! It is SO cluttered with icons, advertisement, information, animation and lots more. I think they are trying to put all the information in one page and not organise it properly. I think they can do better in designing the real life drama one side and its comic on the other because as you can see both the comic and real life information is all jumble together. When i look at the page, I’m drawn to the striking yellow 1000 dollars advertisement and also the white 9th wonders post on the right.
However fanatic fans of heroes might not be thrown off by the messiness of the website as they would like all the information being presented on the page, allows them choices and more place to click to check out more of the Heroes cast, episodes, interview and the comics.
What i learn from this site is that do not put all the information in just one page as it will make your website look very cluttered and messy. Furthermore it will also be a huge put off to people who visit this site for the first time as they are not able to get the specific information that they want from this website. You will also not be able to see whether the link is for the episode guide or interviews only without having to spend some time exploring the whole website.
Shaun the Sheep
One of my favorite cartoon characters is Shaun the Sheep which i might put in my website, hence I’ll look at the Shaun the Sheep official website and analyze it.
While looking at the website, i find that it is very neatly organised even though the designer used layers to design the website. It is a fun site with animated flash, pictures, information of the cartoons, fun and games. However i think that only kids above 10 would know how to use this website as it requires a more mature kid to play around with the things there. However parents are able to download and print some of Shaun the Sheep coloring sheet and also make-a-mask kit and lots more. They even have downloads for the clips, character artwork and even screen saver. I think it is a good website when you are stressed from work or assignments, it will be able to cheer you up with its games and clips.
Headers for the website
As this blog evaluation is to evaluate websites whi ch will help me in my creation of my website artifact, hence I’m looking at different headers which i can use to help me in designing my website header. There are different type of really cool header which other people had did which is shown below:
What he did was to make it like a postcard from a holiday spot with the title called In pursuit of a perfect bliss and his signature on the bottom left of the header. It even have a matching blue background, behind the card. I might not be able to use it as it is not suitable for the theme of my website as i want my website to look groovy with artistic design. But it is a good idea for me if i want to put picture of scenery on my website, i can make it into a postcard look a like.
2. Another header which i found in the hype machine website is this 
It is the hype machine’s user survey which they have created and post it in the website. I find that the header is actually very messy with words in different fonts, and with one look you would not know that it s actually a user survey. the pictures is everywhere, an so is the words, it also have a green patch of the poster list on the left which my eyes is attracted to.
In the website, it also shows another header which is called ‘The Impossible’, it may looked simple with just one flying pig and a few trees; but it was that simplicity of design that made the whole thing looked very nice. I think that this design looks so much better than the previous one. Even though this design looked simple, but it is attractive. I learn from this two header that the header design should be simple with consistent fonts for the words and not have different fonts for different words as it will make your website look messy. It is also important to try to keep your header simple and not too complicated with lots of design in it to make it look clean and nice.
3. Another header which i like is the Open Culture header, i like the concept of the title in the Liverpool road sign and the other patterns at the back. The design at the back seem to say that that is what which made Liverpool as a cultural city.
I think for my header design, i will use the similar way of design whereby i will use a road sign and put my name in it, behind the road sign i will put graphics which represent me (i.e. my pic, guitar, book and lots more). The reason i am going to use this design is that i personally like it and i think it fits the theme of my website. However i will have to be carefull with what graphic i put behind the sign, because i were to put too much it will have a side effects of the header being too cluttered with pictures.
4.This is another header which i found from Simply Jen blog.
I find that this header is very simple yet feminine, with a good combination of colours of purple, green, yellow, brown and white. HOwever the green ribbons of the flowers are covering some of the word ‘Jen’ which maked it hard to see.
5. This is another blog header from Shannon & michael:
Thier two main theme colour is orange and black, which not much people dare to use but they did a very good job in matching it together. The header is simple yet to the point as you will know that it is a blog about this couple called Shannon and Michael.
6. This is a header gotten from Duke Blog:
This look like a scrapbook page whereby the person design the header like a scrapbook whereby you cut out words and pictures and paste it on a piece of paper. At the same time it maded the header looked very gothic with the picture of him on the right, and the red heart.
7. This is the website called The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard:
The header is actually a flash animation; whereby when you play it it will buffer with a pencil drawn person filling a whole. Than it will start draw the story of stuff with Anne Leonard later with Annie her person talking about the consumption and production of patterns. It looked like the Mac website whereby it is has white background, simple and informative.
8. Another interesting header is from HeavyHand Design:
I like this animated header is from a web design company which creates alot of animated cartoon like the header itself. I find the header to be very feminine with the animated women in read sitting on a matching read sofa. Even the words ‘Amuse Bouches’ is in an italic font which matches the personality of the design.
9. This last one is called BLOG, whcih was dedicated to write about Paris Hilton being jailed:
I like the header as it is simple yet straight to the point, when you move your mouse to the link (home, pledge here, faq, blog and contact) you can hear the sound effect of the jail bars being closed.
There are also alot of websites which provides example of blogs and headers design which peopl can download:
It not only provide blog headers design but also design for blogs.
Free Blog Headers For Theme Designers, Background Desktop Images
This is a website which offers free web graphic headers for people to download. It has alot of example of header’s background which i can use for the background of my header for the website.
It teaches us how to make a blog heder graphic from skratch, by using photoshop CS2. This is good as it can help people to design thier own header according to thier own preference.
