IDCC 370: Web Design I Fall 2009

Make some mental notes (or better yet, jot down some ideas) that you can incorporate into your own site as we move into the final phases of designing your sites.

You will also want to visit free graphics sites for images you can use in your design. In class, and in exercise 4, you will be experimenting with graphics effects using materials from the Microsoft clip art photo collection, brownielocks (http://www.brownielocks.com/backgrounds.html), and GRSites (http://www.grsites.com/archive/textures/).

When you start to download free material, remember to save the graphics in your masters subfolder of the images folder. Be sure to name any file you download with the site name prior to the graphic filename; for example, brownielocks-dribblessplats.jpg. Then, as you acquire graphics from brownielocks and other vendors, the files will be together in the masters subfolder. Remember, you need to credit all your graphics sources and provide links to the graphic (or at least to the site if you cannot link to the graphic). It is very important that you keep all of these files straight, so take care.

In selecting the graphics sites and downloading your material, you should be thinking of the whole look and feel of your site: colors, graphics, and page design. Do you want your site to be light and airy? Dark and brooding? Serious and professional? Wild and crazy? Subdued and understated? Adventuresome? Cute? Tough? Nationalistic (e.g., Irish, Italian, American)?

We will spend some time in class working through the technical aspects of design, so you should have plenty of opportunity to experiment. But do not save this work for class alone. Work on your design outside as well.

If you have questions, just e-mail me at wbuchholz@bentley.edu. Feel free to comment on this announcement, or if you want to e-mail it, click on the little mail icon directly below. Note also that each announcement has a permanent link, available through the announcement title and posting date.