Tag: design

Redesigning the Website. Part 3.

New look web site
New look web site

It’s been a long time since the last post and that’s because I got caught up in creating the content, images and actually coding the new site.

It’s Live!

Yes, it’s finished, uploaded and you can now view the new website.

It’s bugged!

I pushed myself to learn new things as I developed the site:

  • SVG files for images
  • A custom grid framework for my CSS based (very loosely) on parts of Twitter Bootstrap. (Thanks to Dan for the advice).
  • My own hand-coded, pure javascript lightbox that should fallback nicely if Javascript isn’t available.
  • Totally rewriting the content.
  • Using a CSS only responsive Navigation Menu.

It proved a massive task and I was so pleased when I finally uploaded it and it looked great on my Android phone, Mac Chrome, Safari, Opera and Firefox.

Then, I checked it on a friends Windows phone and my heart sank. Continue reading “Redesigning the Website. Part 3.”

Redesigning the Website. Part two.

Branding has been the focus for the last couple of weeks since I wrote part one.

One of the toughest clients a designer can face is themselves! So, I have tried to approach this as I would any other job and forget that I am my own client.

As a start, I created and filled in my own project brief which helped focus my thoughts on who I am, who I want to target and the best ways to portray my personality. This will all come in useful later when developing new content for the site.

Checking out the competition

The next stage was the ‘Competitive Audit’ where I spent time developing a list of websites by other freelancers and design agencies so I could really get an idea of which direction to head in. I developed 2 questionnaires for each of the competition, one to be filled in by Users (people who could be prospective clients) to discover what they like and dislike about the sites. The second form was for myself to make notes regarding what I thought worked and didn’t.

Those amazing, creative freelancers!

Continue reading “Redesigning the Website. Part two.”

Redesigning the Website. Part one.

It’s time for a revamp of the Cheshire Designer website and I thought I would document the process here. To begin with this will be a brief overview of the reasons and preparation work taken place so far.

I plan this to be a series of blogs written at the same time as updating the website–so if you are reading this in the future, you have probably already seen the final results of this adventure. If you have stumbled across this as I work on the web development, then please join me for the journey.

Why change the website?

The current site was always a way of learning the basics of responsive web design. I wanted to create a site that looked neat, loaded quickly and was responsive. I think I succeeded fulfilling my initial brief and learnt a lot, but a timely comment from a friend made me realise a few things too. Continue reading “Redesigning the Website. Part one.”

Affinity Designer review

Affinity Designer has garnered a lot of interest in the design world and after finishing my first illustration and design project, I can see why.

Heres my little review of the vector drawing programme, which is part of a planned suite of professional-level applications containing Designer, Photo and Publisher. Continue reading “Affinity Designer review”

A perspective on perspective drawing

I’ve recently taken a break from character work to explore more about perspective drawing to help with the creation of final portfolio pieces. Throwing myself into a few new (and old) books, I thought I’d discuss my impression of them with some mini reviews.

The books I have studied are: Continue reading “A perspective on perspective drawing”

Creating Characters part 2

As expected, it has taking me a while to complete the first character design from Creating Characters with Personality by Tom Bancroft, but finally, here is Dillon-the hero.

Continue reading “Creating Characters part 2”

Top 10 Recent Animated Films

Over the weekend I decided to think about what animated films produced over the last 30 years would be in my top 10. I hope this inspires you to watch any that you haven’t seen. Please let me know if there are any  animated films you think should be there.

Here is the list: Continue reading “Top 10 Recent Animated Films”