“..and I told him you were a perfectionist and you were always working on better ways to make your layouts.”
Jennifer is quite right of course, I am a perfectionist, I never used to be but I am now. Nothing I design seem good enough, I might like it first off but after a few weeks I am looking at other design concepts to impliment instead. It is almost like one is addicted to designing sites, I do not think I am of course but work on my sites never seem to end.
Take greyskiesstudios for example, now this is my online portfolio site previous layouts have been, in my opinion, lacking in a professional look about them. So after browsing the internet looking through what the fashions are on the internet I realized that most of the “web 2.0″ gimmicks when utilized in more contrasting colours that aren’t whites, light greys and violent pinks or blues, can actually bring a “professional class” to a site. Whether this site is deserving of the “professional class” or whether it attaches the illusion of remains to be seen. So like the traitor I am, I embrased gradients, shiney images and rounded corners (although rounded corners are not really a gimmick in my opinion they can add some much needed dynamics to a site) in the bid to make my site look professional. In doing so my site lost some identity, it became another site on the internet that looks similar to countless others.
The site needs to serve several functions in my mind, it needs to be professional, it needs to say “this guy is a genius hire him”, it needs to be easy to see what visitors want to see and it needs to have some degree of personality attached to it so it can give potential employers an indication to who they are hiring. Well what about having an “About” page for people to see some personality Tweek?
Quite so that could possibly do the job, however when you take into account the following it might not be so good for everyone. First off the attention span of the regular internet goer is very short, some say with online marketing you have approx 6 seconds to generate interest in a product, so would someone be willing to read through a long about page. Of course this can be countered by having a short and simple about page (my current one is very short and isn’t actually very informative but I shall get to this in a moment). The second factor is the site owner themselves, I personally don’t like talking about myself in a positive light as Jen can attest to. So writing about myself, what I’ve done and accomplished is not an easy task, infact I find it almost impossible. So I think expanding ones personality into the site design itself is a good way to get across an indication of what the site owner is like.
My problem is finding that balance, finding a layout that ties in with the sites name, looks professional and contains personality.
This explains why I want to redesign greyskiesstudios again, but what of my other sites? DJC for example the new layout is done and the site isn’t fully uploaded yet and I have been thinking of changing things, perhaps theres a different reason for each site.
