MW ON-LINE
is a new site designed and created by myself. It comprises of three parts . . .
MW ON-LIFE
- all about me lol
MW ON-MEDIA
- media I have created for television
MW ON-DESIGN
- designs I have created for past clients
Hope you decide to have a look, and more importantly leave comments about it.
Please note that this isn't "blatant self promotion" like other members on here, because my site contains media related information which I assume allows it to be posted in 'media websites' lol
Thanks very much! The colours were in fact inspired from BBC News lol - and the whole theme was about reflection.
Therefore the 'stage' where all the action happens is supposed to be glass, as well as the vertical panels that appear. The hardest part was trying to reflect everything convincingly in the glass base!!
Like it, but PLEASE cut down on the fancy animations.
If there's one thing I hate more than anything else on the web, it has to be sitting through some animation before the content loads, especially if it is slow.
Like all this business with animation, make it quick or ditch it alltogether. I and many other people are likely to leave a site if it contains animations which I must sit through in order to get to the content.
And make a non-Flash version (i.e. 100% HTML) for those who don't want to sit through the animations or don't/can't have Flash installed on their PCs. I shall refer to the case in point of the people who made the intranet at college - they decided to not only do the entire site in Flash, they made all sorts of stupid animations with the text fading in etc- .very annoying to use, and for the machines on site that don't have Flash installed - you're stuffed as you can't access anything on the intranet.
Flash should be used where appropriate, and its use should be kept to a minimum. Don't make entire websites out of Flash, and if you must, then make sure that you have a HTML version for those who prefer not to wait 4 seconds for some piece of text to appear or don't have Flash installed.
And keep the whizzy special effects to a minimum, and make them fast. It's painful to watch Powerpoint presentations where the speaker has elected to have every single word fly on or fade in slowly.
Like it, but PLEASE cut down on the fancy animations.
If there's one thing I hate more than anything else on the web, it has to be sitting through some animation before the content loads, especially if it is slow.
Like all this business with animation, make it quick or ditch it alltogether. I and many other people are likely to leave a site if it contains animations which I must sit through in order to get to the content.
And make a non-Flash version (i.e. 100% HTML) for those who don't want to sit through the animations or don't/can't have Flash installed on their PCs. I shall refer to the case in point of the people who made the intranet at college - they decided to not only do the entire site in Flash, they made all sorts of stupid animations with the text fading in etc- .very annoying to use, and for the machines on site that don't have Flash installed - you're stuffed as you can't access anything on the intranet.
Flash should be used where appropriate, and its use should be kept to a minimum. Don't make entire websites out of Flash, and if you must, then make sure that you have a HTML version for those who prefer not to wait 4 seconds for some piece of text to appear or don't have Flash installed.
And keep the whizzy special effects to a minimum, and make them fast. It's painful to watch Powerpoint presentations where the speaker has elected to have every single word fly on or fade in slowly.
Flash is now a preferred platform to create website in and the tool itself is mainly for creating websites. I have to say creating banners and whatever for websites in flash gets slightly pointless because the potential of flash is huge if done correctly.
The issue of people not being able to view flash I'd have to say is few and far between. The majority of users will be able to view flash and in most cases it will enhance your viewing experience of websites.
If there is a site which your having to wait for content that you need it instantly then perhaps Flash isn't the best solution for it. In most cases the introduction animations are often watched by users because the site is about a film, a design firm, media site or something you expect to be very upmarket and in your face.
MW your site is very pleasing to the eye but to me there are spanners in the works everywhere.
Firstly the 'glass' effect your going for on the main parts of your site looks to me like nothing more than white boxes with transparency. It doesn't work. It looks cheap and nasty and there is far too much text for each section when it loads.
Loading is slow which I partly think is the framerate your using. Try increasing it to 20 - increasing this too much and having too many motion tweens will have the reverse effect and slow the movie down.
Motion Tweens - I get the impression they are in use in huge clumps on your site and it probably is slowing things down. Try looking at alternative methods of bringing things on screen. In today's world of design having text just appear with no fade can be attractive if done right.
To improve loading times you could make each section in it's own flash .swf and use the getmovie function to bring it in. It will speed up the initial loading process by not having to load each of the three sections at once. Your site doesn't seem to take that long to load but it could be improved yet further.
The BBC News Culture of design seems to have hit this forum like an asteriod to Earth. It's not easy to describe because it is infact a designers style. Infact it's none other than Martin Lambie-Nairn's style of design and a lot of people are merely using that to re-create things.
I'm not criticising the work of that design house but every designer and person has their own preference. The work of Lambie-Nairn follows the same trend and is now becoming outdated - that's my personal opinion.
The BBC News design culture messes with your design skills. Your watching and designing based on TV graphics which work differently from graphics for Print and Web etc. A lot of sites I've seen from here, MW's included, use some sort of TV Graphic spacing and display to them. You don't need to design websites for TV - chances are your site will never get on TV.
If you do want to become a graphic/web designer in the future then try and abandon the BBC News design culture. An easy way to do this could be to not visit the Mock forum & refrain from creating mocks for it. Try and create random pieces of artwork to represent what happens in your life. For example if you take a school trip somewhere do a graphic based on that. Make a magazine article based on your journey.
You need to think out of the box. If you took a school trip to a Zoo your immediate instinct is to design something with animals from the Zoo. But look at the process - you took a 'journey' to the Zoo. Try writing a brief description of what you did and remove any reference to a Zoo. If you mention journey like I have then you will start thinking about modes of transport, roads, signs, lights at the end of the tunnel etc. The same applies to designing a website.
Pick a theme for your site. Think about what your site is. Don't base the design on BBC News. It's been done to death.
Yeah but I have designed graphics for TV which is probably why I'm stuck in that design style lol
The design style is copied from Lambie-Nairn. And from memory your 'TV Graphics' were a sequence for something to do with Bristol and the BBC.
A good designer doesn't copy another. This is all fine for research and development of skills - but to become truly unique you need to discover your own style.
MW ON-LINE
