Make a diagram or SITE MAP for the project (main sections, location on Stage, navigation system... it can look like a storyboard or like the wireframe structure of a website plan) and add the graphic file to your post as an attachment.
2. Describe your project in 2 or 3 clear paragraphs.

 

 

 

web-page can be analyzed as an image: with blocks of text, images and navigation elements as foreground, and the empty space as background.

As you saw when we covered the Gestalt theory, the background or negative space defines the image as much as the content.

Make a post with 2 attached files, one of them should be a snap-shot of a webpage that uses a very monotonous negative space (what Lynda Weitman calles a design suffereing from "rectangle-itis").

The other attached file should be a snapshot of a webpage that uses negative space to create an interesting and dynamic composition.
Notice that, in many cases, to create an interesting negative space, you need to use images that blend into the backgound color of the page, either through a gradient or through an interesting image-shape (visually not rectangular).

Comment your both choices in the post.

 

 

 

Defining the look and feel of a site. Creating a lay-out/ a color_scheme

 

Things to take into account:

 

1. Define your working space
  This is the area of the browser window in which you are going to work
  It depends on your customer profile (which type of connection and screen size they are most likely to have)
  Typically we constrain all content to 800X600 pixel area
   
2. Create your template lay-out
  This is the distribution of content across the page.
You will follow this structure in most or all of your pages
  Think were are you going to place your main navigation
(this depends on the amount of items you are going to include as main sections)
  Plan a location for a subnavigation if any of your sections are going to have more than one page.
  Reserve an area for pictures. reserve an area for text
 
Design tips. Composition.
 

Distribute your content across the page: think about the negative space of the page and avoid "rectangulitis" (all content in perfectly squared boxes)
  Align your images
 

Balance out the space dedicated to graphics and text on a page
  Text: Think about length of the line of text.
Do not center the lines of text.
Design tips. Color.
  Use color to define spaces.
  Define a color palette, that you will follow across the site.