Week Fourteen | LaSorsa

Danielle LaSorsa

Rationale: Interface Design

4/25/10

Design Strategy

When first thinking about my design for this web project, I immediately thought of one of the examples from class of a student whom did a web design for her sorority’s (Delta Gamma) Anchor Splash philanthropy event. Since I was doing a web design for an event for my sorority, I wanted to use similar design ideas. I started with a base that had a header container, navigation bar container and a container for specific information pertaining to that page. My header remained the same throughout each of my pages to keep everything consistent. It had the name of the webpage event, a brief sub-header and a picture representing the sorority. To represent that the sorority works with Prevent Child Abuse America, I placed the logo on the bottom right of each page. The viewers eyes exit a page on the bottom right and so I thought putting it there would make viewers recognize the image as they left the website. It also made the website more official because it was a distinct logo that many are familiar with. The toolbar also remained consistent throughout each page of my web design so that the viewer did not get confused when navigating throughout the website. However, to highlight what specific page one was on, I changed the color of the category. My main (biggest) container would hold the information pertaining to each page. I tried to remain consistent by using a feathered picture, a header and then smaller text explanations. However, on the Donate and Directions page where I found it necessary to use two pictures, I formatted it with two diagonal pictures and diagonal textboxes. I tried to use typographic hierarchy for each page by using a bigger size font for the header and got progressively smaller as I placed each textbox beneath. I tried to keep my design very simple and clean because I find that these characteristics lend to easy accessibility and navigation. My main concern was consistency because I knew if each page looked similar, then a person would become familiar with the ways of the website. They then would be able to find the information they need easily, which is most beneficial to the success of a website.

Typeface Information

I had previously made a poster for this event. In order to remain consistent to the event’s previous design, I chose to use the same font, Aachen Std Bold. I liked the font for this event because it represented the idea of building. It was also a fun (not so serious) font and this event was supposed to be playful and enjoyable. This font, however, had low readability as a body text. I had just watched the documentary about the font Helvetica and was truly inspired by the simple but powerful characteristics of the font. I chose to use it for my body text because it fulfilled my want of a simple sans serif. I didn’t think it was necessary to use more than two fonts because it would be too much of a distraction. I think the boldness of the Aachen Std and the simplicity of the Helvetica complimented each other while providing a balance.

Images and Color

Throughout my whole web design, I stuck to four main colors (teal, navy, yellow, white). The use of only four main colors made the web design extremely consistent, which I was aiming for. I chose to use blue and yellow because those are the colors of the sorority. I focused on the color blue because that is the universal color of Prevent Child Abuse America. I used the yellow for the text because as a lighter color, it would be more easily read over the background blue color. My background is a gradient because I thought it added some texture to my web design.

Most of the images I used were my personal images from throughout my past two years in the sorority. It was hard for me to find specific images from the event but I tried to correlate the images I had to the event’s purpose as much as I could. The Donate and Directions pages are the only ones where I used outside images. I cropped and feathered almost all of my images in Photoshop before I placed them into my website. For the mapquest image and the donation form, I took snapshots from the website and placed them into Photoshop.