Portfolio

DROWNING IN MERCURY - DEBT LIST

Quick design for a app for memorizing the little things in life that you have borrowed or have had borrowed off you, those drunken pints, those forgotten fivers. Very quick and simple to use with 4 pages with areas for recording the lent, borrowed, earnt and spent.

The navigation is easy to pick up with quick buttons back to the respective pages and one on all pages to return home. Had issues gettign the input text to not center in the text box, and also start on a new line for each set of input data.

The asthetics are kept minimal and a black background with elegant white buttons surrounded by a light grey border the text is Verdana and is very easy to read even on a small interface such as the smaller HTC phones. The pages slid up and down and it gave the app a bit of depth rather than just switching between the two with no animation, I also used a balck banner as a header to all the pages this gave it a feel that would be consistent with the rest of iOS.

PAGE LISTINGS

Lent -
A area to store items you have lent out to friends, aquaintances.

Owed -
To record all items owed to you from situations

Earnt -
All your incoming earnings help full to keep track of income

Spent -
A place to store all those pesky spendings.

TARGET MARKET

This app will be targeted in the younger more forgetful teen to get there life back together and also to save them time and money. If you are constantly trying to update your list you will also eventually train your brain to get better at memorizing individual singular events, items.

Also could be used by the older generation when memory starts to become an issue again could be used not only for earnings and lendings but for general note taking to keep track of where your belongings have gotten too.

But I feel this app has uses across all age ranges, who doesn't like to keep track of their belongings?

HOTGLUE
This website had been designed using an in browser designer called Hotglue, it has a small collection of tools to be used to create a basic website. The small amount of commands means the way you create the site is very simple. Element by element you drag text boxes, text or other media onto the editing site, this generally means the editing site looks very similar to the online site.
It has several usefull features beyond the slightly awkward editing interface, you can add your own code for slightly more advanced features such as javascript. Another feature which is slightly more technical is the ability to install the Hotglue software on your servers for quick acsess and offline capabilities

INDESIGN FIRST USE

Having never used Indesgn I was slightly apprehensive as to how it could be different to programs I had already used such as Word and Publisher, and how it could be more useful. However after being introduced to such as basic page layout being able to be recreated throughout the document and the ability to easily work out where midpoints and intersects are for easily creating professional well proportioned documents.

After setting up and basic page layout I set about adding my content and although designed for this kind of work i struggled to get the layout to sit where i wanted it to, even to the point of having to turn the snap function off.

This software will definately be the software of choice for creating PDF and paper portfolios during this year and the future.

AUTODESK MAYA FIRST USE

Maya is Autodesks main 3D development software and is a very deep and all encompassing software, with a huge variety of features from the development of 3D environments for architecture too creating characters for animated shorts and cartoons. After a few tutorials I started to get my head around the basic set up which tools were where, the first exercise was too create a planet using a lambent sphere and a .jpg wrap of earth. The creation of the actual 3D element was straightforward with the help of a tutorial however when it came to animating the planet to spin at the correct rate and too loop the animation was another story. I could happily get the planet to spin but it would slow down and speed up towards the beginning of the sequence, I followed the instructions to the tee however the (insert name of feature here) would not show the line i needed to change to get the planet to spin at a consistent speed. The lighting features were also very intuitive and was easy to drag and change the intensity and direction of the light, there are also quick keys to not only turn off the lights but also change views, lambent, shading and many other handy layers.

II also had fun just experimenting with the many features, such as the water and hair elements and as this is such a huge piece of software I'm sure I could have sat fiddling around with the many features for hours.

HOTGLUE FURTHER USE

After messing around with Hotglue I started to get the hang of manipulating the page as I wanted, albeit not exactly as I wanted as the software is reasonably limited. I started off creating a simple home/news page which was home to short basic paragraphs about what we had been undertaking in the course. I started out with a black background and yellow paragraph elements the contrast looked good between the colours however the box elements did not look clean and the square nature of them reminded me of early html pages, not the look I was going for. After refining the look I started on creating the skeleton of the website by creating new pages, portfolio, about and a links page. Creating the pages was very simple and jumping between them to edit it was also straightforward. The portfolio page, the one you're reading now, is the most important and it was whilst typing this page up I played around with the background and discovered the best way to get a clean look was to make all the elements transparent as this gave it a very ordered but nicely designed look.
I don't think I'd use Hotglue again if I was to create a website but can see how it is a easy introduction to web design. The interface is easily accessible if you put a bit of time into leaning all the features almost by trail and error, the end result I'm quite pleased with and think it makes an elegant website to present my portfolio with.