Welcome back, my friends!! It’s been a wonderfully productive Wednesday for me and I want to share why. As I’m sure all my RWU design friends are aware, Citizen Designer is a course, and it’s definitely a stress-inducing course. Our current task is to design whatever we want or see fit for a non-profit organization or a business that has limited funding, like a local small business of choice. My chosen business is Grasmere which is an eclectic living local business in downtown Bristol. I was incredibly excited to design for this business seeing as it’s a store I visit regularly and one I support and whose ideals align with mine. They represent local independent designers, artists, and sellers in order to create uniquely curated treasures.
When I say Citizen Designer is a stress-inducing course, I think I can speak for everyone that I’m telling the truth. The reason this particular task is taxing is that I chose to design a completely new website for them. Now if you’ve been following me on my journey, you know that I have completely no idea how to design a website. And I know what you’re thinking, Kristen you did that to yourself. And you’re completely right, I did do that to myself.
So, going into class knowing I have to build a website from scratch when I sit down at 2:00 until 6:00, I will be blindly figuring out how to design a website for a portfolio piece, I was quite stressed. However, I watched an hour-long youtube tutorial for beginners on how to operate WordPress. At first, I didn’t think it was going to be very effective though, when I sat down in class and started designing, everything just clicked. I found myself enjoying the process, the trial, and error, and seeing what worked and what didn’t. And after four hours of class today, I was left with a fully functioning website. It’s not done by any means though, I did completely impress myself with what I learned visually and philosophically.
Before I go into what I learned in class today I want the opportunity to showcase my beautiful work and for you to get a glimpse at my homepage.
Okay, so what did I learn? Well, three things:
- Trial and error is your friend; If you don’t know how to do something that doesn’t mean you can’t do it.
- High contrast and thin typefaces work, by providing great contrast but keeping it simple and crisp.
- You can get a lot more than you think you can in four hours.
Welcome back, my friends!! It’s been a wonderfully productive Wednesday for me and I want to share why. As I’m sure all my RWU design friends are aware, Citizen Designer is a course, and it’s definitely a stress-inducing course. Our current task is to design whatever we want or see fit for a non-profit organization or a business that has limited funding, like a local small business of choice. My chosen business is Grasmere which is an eclectic living local business in downtown Bristol. I was incredibly excited to design for this business seeing as it’s a store I visit regularly and one I support and whose ideals align with mine. They represent local independent designers, artists, and sellers in order to create uniquely curated treasures.
When I say Citizen Designer is a stress-inducing course, I think I can speak for everyone that I’m telling the truth. The reason this particular task is taxing is that I chose to design a completely new website for them. Now if you’ve been following me on my journey, you know that I have completely no idea how to design a website. And I know what you’re thinking, Kristen you did that to yourself. And you’re completely right, I did do that to myself.
So, going into class knowing I have to build a website from scratch when I sit down at 2:00 until 6:00, I will be blindly figuring out how to design a website for a portfolio piece, I was quite stressed. However, I watched an hour-long youtube tutorial for beginners on how to operate WordPress. At first, I didn’t think it was going to be very effective though, when I sat down in class and started designing, everything just clicked. I found myself enjoying the process, the trial, and error, and seeing what worked and what didn’t. And after four hours of class today, I was left with a fully functioning website. It’s not done by any means though, I did completely impress myself with what I learned visually and philosophically.
Before I go into what I learned in class today I want the opportunity to showcase my beautiful work and for you to get a glimpse at my homepage.
Okay, so what did I learn? Well, three things:
- Trial and error is your friend; If you don’t know how to do something that doesn’t mean you can’t do it.
- High contrast and thin typefaces work, by providing great contrast but keeping it simple and crisp.
- You can get a lot more than you think you can in four hours.
It’s wonderful to see your process for tackling this project. I should go watch that video to help me along too. I think the green is both very “Kristen” and a great solution for Grasmere. The combination of undertones in the greens is wild and eclectic.
I LOVE your picture of the Grasmere website you included and having learned a lot of my WordPress knowledge from YouTube, I can attest to the fact that it’s a very good tool! Also, as much as I love Citizen Designer, it’s definitely a really stress-inducing course and watching you work in that class and how work for that class translates over to Web Design is so cool. It’s impressive that you were able to teach yourself how to design an entire website in only the class time and I can’t wait to see your future work!
Looking at everything you have so far, posts, ideas, and images, I am so excited for this! I loved reading ll your thoughts and little posts on here so far it felt like little Facebook posts and it was inspiring me to do more work and idea brainstorming with my site. I think the brand that you’ve made for your site so far is really awesome and unique, I am excited to see where you continue to go and grow with this!