Thursday, May 24, 2012

Final Project Proposal

The website needing redesigning proposal:

 

http://www.fargohomes.com/

 

My Redesigning Ideas - website proposal


Overview - This is a website of a business which is running as the agent of home buyers and the agency for brokers who have owners’ proxy to sell houses

Why – This website was done by non-professors in designing web, so it has a lot of mistakes.

Design Overview:

What is working

1.    Domain Name - www.fargohomes.com is easy to remember.
2.    The photography of every house is showed clearly and completely.
3.    Many styles of the houses are provided, so the information the website is giving the customers is in variety.
4.    Logo is OK

What is not working –  Most of mistakes are in the home page

1.    Its organization is awkward and a big mistake when the designer don’t almost arrange and classify the information into the items.
2.    The navigation makes the viewer confused so much.
3.    The color scheme is kind of awkward.
4.    Leaderboard is designed carelessly.
5.    Layout is done by snatches.
6.    Some texts are so big and other texts are too small

Proposed Changes

1.    Reorganizing whole home page
2.    Classifying the information, the style of houses and put them in the items following their features
3.    Arranging the styles of houses following the clients’ needs.
4.    Reducing many details and putting them in subfolders
5.    Applying another color scheme
6.    Redesigning the leader board
7.    Redesigning whole interface with using a lot of pictures and icons in metaphors
8.    Using the images in animation to attract viewers
9.    Making the direct link from the big image the client has just seen to its detail.
10.    Reducing some fonts
11.    Adding some links to useful service sites for the customer and the same time, put some links in original website to new links.

 

My color scheme I suggest

 

 

My mockup for the website proposal


 

Monday, May 14, 2012

The Wesite Seeming to Need Some Helps - The Work Proposed For Improving - Assignment # 13



 
 

 












THE WORKS PROPOSED FOR IMPROVING THIS WEBSITE 



MY INSPIRATION AND DIRECTION:
-          Images with their meaning and relations and condensed texts, slogans or proverbs if needed.
-          Using the pictures to express what website wants to talk about immediately and directly.
-          Using combining and composing images to illustrate the content lively, make visitor’s feeling and attract them

THE WEBSITE SEEMING TO NEED SOME HELPS FOR IMPROVING

FARGO HOMES BUYER AGENCY


SOME WORK MAY IMPROVE THE WEBSITE:

Color scheme: 


  For leaderboard and logo
-          Keeping the logo (due to the logo is successful with metaphor), moving it to left side.
-          Adding the sentence “Certified Residential Specialist” underneath the logo.
-          Redesign the leaderboard with using metaphor and some images of houses and landscapes to express the business briefly.

  For the body
-          Moving the square sign “CRS – Member Site” to top-left, but underneath of leaderboard
-          On the right side, underneath leaderboard, putting “SIGN IN YOUR ACCOUNT, New here? Sign Up, Tutorial For Using Your Account”
-          Putting current date right under square sign “CRS – Member Site”
-          Deleting whole ads for instruction of using account (because this information is included in the item page - “SIGN IN YOUR ACCOUNT, New here? Sign Up, Tutorial For Using Your Account”
-          Deleting all of navigations of the website
-          Reorganizing all of items and content of the website:
Classifying showing houses for sale according to clients’ needs:
        For Architectural Style of Houses:
                        New Starter Homes
                        Character Homes
                        Ramblers – 1 Story
                        Two story homes
                        Bi levels
                        Split levels
                        Condos – Town Hm
        For Costs of Houses
                        Low
                        Medium
                        300 K
                        Luxury
        For Amount of Bedrooms
                        1 Bedroom
                        2 Bedrooms
                        3 Bedrooms
                        4 Bedrooms and more
        For Area
                        Less than 1000 square feet
                        1000 – 1500 square feet
                        1500 – 2000 square feet
                        More than 2000 square feet
        For City and Town
                        City A
                        City B
                        City C
                        City D
                        ……
        For Geography
                        Near River
                        Near Lake
                        On Mountain / Hill
                        In the Country Side
        For Foreclosed Houses
                        Instant moving in
                        Needed repairing
                        Reduced price
       
There is a big screen with animation in the center-top of the website body for showing house by house with its price and classification
Underneath this big screen, each kind of houses is showed through icons those are images in small scales of those houses and coming with their subtitle

For the right side of the webpage body:
        On the top, putting:
                        FAQs (button), Contact Us (button)
                        and some texts:
                        “YOU NEED HELPS?
                        Contact Dan
                        Cell Phone: 701-306-6632
                        E-mail: ………..
                        Contact Lida
                        Cell Phone: 701-306-6632
                        E-mail: ………..”
        Underneath, next, putting a Web Ad (300x250)
                        “Home Buyer Education
                        Real Estate
                        Free
                        Register now”
        Underneath, next, putting a video:
                        “Video about why you might hire an exclusive buyer’s agent
                        and only one agent”
        Underneath, next, putting some icons in small scaling videos for the others

For the left side of webpage body putting the icons in metaphor for links to service sites:
Map, Real Estate, Water Co., Electric, Garbage, House Repair, Moving, Landscape service, Interior Design, Landscape Design, Furniture Shopping, Plumbing.
                       










Monday, May 7, 2012

The Website Seeming To Need Some Changing

The Link of the website:

 
   http://www.valleyisleaquatics.com/

 

Some of work I think that they may improve the website:


- Changing the more appropriate background color for this website ( I may use the color of sunshine)
 

- Adjusting the design of the leaderboard 

- Improving and adjusting the color scheme of the website to match the new 
  background color so that it gets more balance, harmonious colors
 

- Reorganizing its webpages with involving contents 

- Recomposing for each of web page 

- Adding more necessary images for each of its web page 

- Increasing the size of some texts 

- Reorganizing the navigation (menu bar)
   -    Reducing some menus through combining and putting them into main items
   -    Arranging the order of menus
   -    Redecorating and improving the navigation so that it becomes more clarity and   
        attracting

   -    Changing font size

Monday, April 30, 2012

AD VIDEO WEB SITES

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58-9Ae9cvDI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3cYpdz6JbE&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noqTRy2VtHk&NR=1&feature=endscreen
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UqZzZWZd-Y&feature=endscreen&NR=1
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xm24q_the-effect-of-beer-on-men_fun?search_algo=1
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xibcav_oil-spill-anniversary_news#
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xi83z7_oil-spill-victims-join-bp-protest_news#
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x65bs2_funny-commercial-chicken-of-the-sea_fun#
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4xisl_funny-commercial-scream-tv_fun#



Monday, April 23, 2012

Color Scheme





HIEU PHAM
GDES 070 ONLINE CLASS
COLOR SCHEME

I chose colors such as Yellow, Blue (light and dark), Purple (light and dark) for my color scheme.
I specially love this color scheme due to following reasons:
Yellow: the color of light and sunny expresses certain something open and free. It represents intelligence and
enlightenment. It brings vigorous, cheery spirit for youth and feeling wealthy and luxury or success 
for adults or seniors. It also blows a new air or spirit for people in a bad mood.

Blue: the color of sky, coming with Yellow they seems to take the viewer to beautiful beaches with warm
sunshine. Blue make people get feeling which is relax, comfortable,  cool and clean; since then, they
refresh their spirit and mind. Blue brings the people calm and confidence and then they can direct   
their heart up to the sky and even beyond that space. Blue is also favorite color because it represents for honesty and justice.

Purple: this color is exotic. It seems to contain something magic, spiritual and mysterious, so it often stirs up
people’s curiousness. It may cause the people feel melancholy as if it wants to sympathize with
viewer’s bad state of mind which they may get. Purple is also represents for something regal and 
rich.

In conclusion, I think that Yellow, Blue and Purple make harmony of colors when bringing balances in colors
between warm color and cool color and the balance in people’s mind and spirit.

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

WEB AD - FOR THE STUDY ONLY






THE CODE OF WEB AD

<html>
<head>
<title>
This is first Web Ad
</title>
</head>
<body>
<a href="http://www.nrlc.org/index.html"><img src="Images/Web-ad.jpg" width="300" height="250" /></a>
</body>
</html>

WED AD - ANIMATION - FOR THE STUDY ONLY


THE CODE OF WEB AD

<html>
<head>
<title>
This is first Web Ad
</title>
</head>
<body>
<a href="http://www.nrlc.org/index.html"><img src="Images/Web-ad Animation 2.gif" width="300" height="250" /></a>
</body>
</html>

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

WEB SITE

THIS WEB SITE IS FOR THE STUDY ONLY




THE CODE OF WEB AD:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<title>Vacation</title>
<style type="text/css">
<!--
body {
    font: 100% Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
    background: #666666;
    margin: 0; /* it's good practice to zero the margin and padding of the body element to account for differing browser defaults */
    padding: 0;
    text-align: center; /* this centers the container in IE 5* browsers. The text is then set to the left aligned default in the #container selector */
    color: #000000;
}
.oneColLiqCtr #container {
    width: 1150px;
    height: 862px;
    margin: 0% auto; /* the auto margins (in conjunction with a width) center the page */
    border: 0px solid #000000;
    text-align: left; /* this overrides the text-align: center on the body element. */
    background-color: #FFFFFF;
    /*background-image: url(images/bg-p2b.jpg);*/
}
.oneColLiqCtr #mainContent {
    width: 1150px;
    height: 862px;
    /*margin: 0% auto;*/
    background-image: url(images/bg-p2b.jpg);
    padding: 0 0px; /* remember that padding is the space inside the div box and margin is the space outside the div box */
}
#book_tour {
    background-attachment: scroll;
    background-image: url(images/Book-Tour.png);
    background-repeat: no-repeat;
    background-position: center center;
    margin: 0px;
    padding: 0px;
    height: 31px;
    width: 131px;
    position: relative;
    visibility: visible;
    left: 103px;
    top: 830px;
    right: auto;
    bottom: auto;
}
#places {
    background-attachment: scroll;
    background-image: url(images/places.png);
    background-repeat: no-repeat;
    background-position: center center;
    margin: 0px;
    padding: 0px;
    height: 31px;
    width: 87px;
    position: relative;
    visibility: visible;
    left:543px;
    top:798px;
    right: auto;
    bottom: auto;
}
#hotel {
    background-attachment: scroll;
    background-image: url(images/Hotel.png);
    background-repeat: no-repeat;
    background-position: center center;
    margin: 0px;
    padding: 0px;
    height: 31px;
    width: 70px;
    position: relative;
    visibility: visible;
    left: 965px;
    top: 765px;
    right: auto;
    bottom: auto;
}
#animation {
    background-attachment: scroll;
    background-image: url(images/animation.gif);
    background-repeat: no-repeat;
    background-position: center center;
    margin: 0px;
    padding: 0px;
    height: 13px;
    width: 1100px;
    position: relative;
    visibility: visible;
    left: 25px;
    top: 500px;
    right: auto;
    bottom: auto;
}
-->
</style>
<script type="text/javascript">
<!--
function MM_swapImgRestore() { //v3.0
  var i,x,a=document.MM_sr; for(i=0;a&&i<a.length&&(x=a[i])&&x.oSrc;i++) x.src=x.oSrc;
}
function MM_preloadImages() { //v3.0
  var d=document; if(d.images){ if(!d.MM_p) d.MM_p=new Array();
    var i,j=d.MM_p.length,a=MM_preloadImages.arguments; for(i=0; i<a.length; i++)
    if (a[i].indexOf("#")!=0){ d.MM_p[j]=new Image; d.MM_p[j++].src=a[i];}}
}

function MM_findObj(n, d) { //v4.01
  var p,i,x;  if(!d) d=document; if((p=n.indexOf("?"))>0&&parent.frames.length) {
    d=parent.frames[n.substring(p+1)].document; n=n.substring(0,p);}
  if(!(x=d[n])&&d.all) x=d.all[n]; for (i=0;!x&&i<d.forms.length;i++) x=d.forms[i][n];
  for(i=0;!x&&d.layers&&i<d.layers.length;i++) x=MM_findObj(n,d.layers[i].document);
  if(!x && d.getElementById) x=d.getElementById(n); return x;
}

function MM_swapImage() { //v3.0
  var i,j=0,x,a=MM_swapImage.arguments; document.MM_sr=new Array; for(i=0;i<(a.length-2);i+=3)
   if ((x=MM_findObj(a[i]))!=null){document.MM_sr[j++]=x; if(!x.oSrc) x.oSrc=x.src; x.src=a[i+2];}
}
//-->
</script>
</head>

<body class="oneColLiqCtr" onload="MM_preloadImages('images/Book-TourR.png','images/placesR.png','images/HotelR.png','images/Go-back.png')">
<div id="container">
  <div id="mainContent">
    <div id="book_tour">
    <a href="http://www.travel.com/" onmouseout="MM_swapImgRestore()" onmouseover="MM_swapImage('book_tour','','images/Book-TourR.png',1)"><img src="images/Book-Tour.png" alt="book_tour" name="book_tour" width="131" height="31" border="0" id="book_tour2" /></a></div>
    <div id="places">
    <a href="http://travel.usnews.com/Rankings/Worlds_Best_Vacations/" onmouseout="MM_swapImgRestore()" onmouseover="MM_swapImage('places','','images/placesR.png',1)"><img src="images/places.png" alt="places" name="places" width="87" height="31" border="0" id="places2" /></a></div>
    <div id="hotel">
    <a href="http://www.travelandleisure.com/tl500/2012" onmouseout="MM_swapImgRestore()" onmouseover="MM_swapImage('hotel','','images/HotelR.png',1)"><img src="images/Hotel.png" alt="hotel" name="hotel" width="70" height="31" border="0" id="hotel2" /></a></div>
    <div id="animation">
    <img src="images/animation.gif" alt="animation" name="animation" width="1100" height="13" border="0" id="animation" />
</div>
   
   
       
    <!-- end #mainContent --></div>
<!-- end #container --></div>
</body>
</html>


Monday, March 12, 2012

Good and suck websites

HIEU PHAM
GDES  70
PROFESSOR: MR. RASCOV
10TH MARCH 2012

YAHOO!  –  A GOOD WEBSITE
http://www.yahoo.com/
After watching a lot of websites, I think that in general, Yahoo! Website is the best website I have seen so far.
In my opinion, Yahoo website is valued as a good website thanks to following elements:
-    Contrast
Most of pages of Yahoo have good contrast in colors or states. For example, the pictures are always prominent on a background in white. In the title, the purple and yellow are contrast each other and Yahoo logo in animation breaks flat title. The white of background and the dark blue of title also make a strong contrast.
-    Unity
It’s a good unity with design and balance harmony. The home page is divided into three columns with a small column for icons which are the links to favorite columns such as autos, dating, movies, and etc, and they are put in the left side, which the viewer often looks at first. Those icons with the same sizes are numerous, and they are arranged uniformly to make the comfortable feeling about something clean for the viewer.
The images are arranged in a spread for the balance of viewers’ vision, and they are selected for color harmony and nice color scheme.
The alignment of objects on the page is also excellent
The images at near bottom of the page make closer layout for whole page.
Light gradients for each item make clear separations for the items.
-    Feedback
It’s simple but effective with underlines for texts and some rollovers for images. This thing prevents the viewer from confusion or a frightful jumble.
-    Typography
It has unity with only one legible and readable font and bold font for titles.
-    Metaphor
The Yahoo logo and the icons as buttons for the links are good examples for good metaphor of web page.
-    Navigation
The Yahoo website really has excellent navigation. In the first looking at, the viewer is attracted by the images and subjects which are breaking news or favorite columns. They are spread out in all of three columns and in right viewers’ eyesight. This thing excites their curiosity and makes them take a look the content of this page; and then it leads them going down the items at the bottom or to related pages naturally.
-    Consistency
This website has its logo in the same location for each page, and most of pages have titles main tabs in the same place.

GORDON WAYNE WATTS OFFICIAL RESEARCH PAGE – A SUCK WEBSITE
http://www.gordonwaynewatts.com/
This website is poor in most of aspects such as contrast, unity, typography, metaphor and navigation.
-    Contrast
It’s poor with local highlights; and even some highlights are very light and unclear.
-    Unity
It’s really bad in layout, balance, color scheme, and no design harmony.
-    Feedback
Its feedbacks are too strong in light green, so viewers still do not see the titles of items which they put their mouse on.
-    Typography
It’s too hard to read with very small font sizes and a lot of different fonts in multiple colors
-    Metaphor
No metaphor
-    Navigation
No navigation. The viewer doesn’t almost know where to begin to read and even finally, cannot understand what this website is talking about.
-    Consistency
No logo for the its related webpages.

Thursday, February 23, 2012

My comments for the movie Interactive Design of the lesson 2a


After watching the movie Interactive Design, I do like the knowledge I got from this movie. The origins, situations, backgrounds, reasons, principles, products, especially interactive designs, and the characters, the designers attracted me during whole movie. Especially, there are products and interactive designs I have just know them thanks to the movie
However, during the movie, sometimes I felt that some of contents were a little bit wordy.

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

My Dream Computer

MAC PRO

Specifications

·     Two 2.93GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon “Westmere” (12 cores)
·     64GB (8x8GB)
·     Mac Pro RAID Card
·     2TB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s hard drive
·     1TB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s hard drive
·     1TB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s hard drive
·     1TB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s hard drive
·     Two ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB
·     One 18x SuperDrive
·     Apple LED Cinema Display (27" flat panel)
·     Apple Magic Mouse + Magic Trackpad
·     Apple Keyboard with Numeric Keypad (English) & User's Guide
·     Dual-channel 4Gb Fibre Channel PCI Express card
·     Apple Mini DisplayPort to DVI Adapter
·     Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI Adapter
·     Apple Mini DisplayPort to VGA Adapter
·     AppleCare Protection Plan for Mac Pro - Auto-enroll

Summary

Purchase Information
·     $13,373.00
·     Ships: 4-6 business days
·     Free Shipping
·              Add to Cart


Jobs in Multimedia- Research

I was really confused while selecting the most favorite one of
M. C Escher's Works ... Finally, I think that it is

 But I really want to share more the following M. C. Esher's works I love so much:















ASSIGNMENT #1

1/SUMMARY OF THE JOB AS A VISUAL DESIGNER

The job opportunity is found from Craigslist website. It is opened by SugarSync  Inc that provides  service as actively syncing our files across all your computers and devices.

Job description:

Working with Senior Designer in his design direction to keep standards for brand identity, UI, and, and user experience. Willingness to iterate on designs based on internal and user feedback

Experience required:

Having 3-4 years of visual design experience for consumer web, experience collaborating with product managers on user interfaces and interaction designs, and experience supporting usability (a plus)

Skills and level needed:

·         Bachelor's or Master's degree in Graphic design or equivalent with working knowledge of HTML and CSS
·         Proven ability to solve visual design problems
·         Well honed and detail oriented production skills (preparing graphical UI, PDFs, etc. for deployment)
·         Solid understanding of the latest implementation technologies and design trends
·         Successful track record
·         Ability to design compelling marketing pages to drive usage of new features
·         Passion designing powerful. Having good visual design skills, knowledge of the latest UI, web and mobile design trends and an appreciation of interaction design principles.
·         Being comfortable creating UI elements spanning web, desktop, and mobile applications of the company.

Software & hardware skills required:

·         Good in using web and mobile applications.
·         Expertise in Adobe Creative Suite

2/ SUMMARY OF THE JOB AS A CONCEPT ARTIST-INTERN

The job opportunity is found from LucasArt website with the link as http://www.lucasarts.com/ . It is opened by LucasArts Company which is running The JEDI Academy Internship Program that is a technical program for 12-16 weeks at the Letterman Digital Arts Center in San Francisco, California.

Job description:

·          Working in a variety of positions (in Lucasarts, ILM, Lucasfilm Animation, and Lucasfilm)
·         Being responsible for collaborating closely with Art Lead, Senior Concept Artists, and members of the various content and Design Teams to conceptualize, design, execute and deliver AAA game environment concepts, props and set dressing in a timely fashion.
·         Creating concept art for environments, props and set designs from ideation to final concepts.
·         Creating orthographic and architectural representations that clearly define material and construction.
·         Helping the senior concept art team develop style guides for game environments, props and set designs.
·         Collaborating with art lead, senior concept artists and designers to meet aesthetic, game play and technical goals.
·         Self motivation and a passion for the games industry essential.
·         Will be involved in all aspects of the teams’ development process, including stand-ups, meetings, critiques and reviews.

Experience required:

Completing your Junior year as an undergraduate in Fine Art, Illustration or related courses with strong portfolio demonstrating outstanding environment concept art and prop design skills from ideation to final concepts.

Skills and level needed:

·         Junior Undergraduate, Masters and PhD students with technical, art and production training
·         An ability to work independently as well as under the guidance of senior concept artists and art lead. Working well with various content and design teams.
·          Meeting production deadlines
·         An understanding of games, 3D gaming platforms, performance and limitations, and basic 3D modeling skills (a plus). Knowing how to design concepts that translate into the final product according to established art direction

Software & hardware skills required:

Comfortable illustrating in digital and analog mediums.