I wanted my website to be simple and easy to use, yet memorable with my personality in there too. I chose a light grey background as this was a simple and gave a relaxed feeling. I added three accent colours- dark green, orange and light green. I chose the orange as the header and subheading colour as it popped against the background. Orange matches my portrait on the ‘about me’ page, which ties in to give personality and continuity. I chose dark green font, as this links to the themes of nature and the outdoors, without being too obvious. The colours are muted and not too bright so work together and are not overpowering. The linked text is light green, so it stands out as something different and the colour changes so that the user knows they have touched or clicked the link. The font is consistent throughout, with different font in reels to make them a separate entity, as they are an advertisement for something outside the website.
The reels were placed to be noticeable and eye catching to the reader as they scroll through pages, so they do not have to choose to view them. I did not want them to be obstructive of the content of the page as this could annoy the user, deterring them from the website. As the user would be scrolling, images throughout are all almost full sized, so that detail can be seen, but not too large that the user would scroll down an image and not see the whole image. There is room for text and more images this way and the layout is less overwhelming. The bar along the top of website is the main form of navigation. The user clicks each page name to get to that page. The ‘Profile’ is the home page, as this gives an intro to the location used for the rest of the projects on the website and a main page to go back to. There are links to the projects at the bottom of the page to encourage the user to browse the website.
While I mainly based the site on my own style and how I thought best to present the briefs, I did pull some inspiration from existing photography websites, such as Jackperksphotography.com (Perks, 2022) and Nature Journeys (Hillman, 2022). Jack Perks has a different style, but I liked his informal and simple layout and writing style. He used bright, eye-catching colours, which he pulled from his images to tie into colour scheme. The website appears friendly and approachable, and it is clear how to contact him and what he does. Nature Journeys has a clean, simple design. I liked his informal captions, which I also used in my own site. He includes links to click on images on the main page that lead to other pages as well as a navigation bar. It seems easier for the user to click on these while scrolling than go up to navigation bar or click ‘back to top’. However, I wanted mine to be simpler to navigate so that one link wouldn’t provide another link on the following page to click to get even more pages, which could cause the user to get confused or lost.
References:
Hillman, P., 2022. Nature Journeys [online] Available at: <https://petehillmansnaturephotography.wordpress.com> [Accessed 12 January 2022]
Perks, J., 2022. Jackperksphotography.com [online] Available at: <https://www.jackperksphotography.com/index.html> [Accessed 12 January 2022]