Lydfields Web site

Whilst I was back at home I noticed that my boyfriends parents did not have a website for there business and so, I have to design a site for them. This will be a project that I will work on in my spare time but I was quite please to be creating it because it will help bulk up my portfolio and help me gain more knowledge about html.
The company is called Lydfield constructions Ltd they are a contractors/building company based in Southampton.

I have started designing a few designs and I have been looking at other building websites to get an idea on what to design. From looking at other websites I can see that the majority of the sites are fairly simple, the main pages consist of a homes page, about us page, gallery, services and contact us page, so I think I will stick to these constraints.
I may try and add some flash content because I would like to add a slideshow but, I could do this on dreamweaver so I may try it on there because I need all the practice that I can get.

Design layout continued

After designing my initial sketches I thought that I could get a better idea of what my designs would look like on the computer. I have designed a variety of designs to give out a different impression/theme. I also showed a few people my designs to get a different opinion on what they thought and I thought it would be helpful but in the end I was left with mixed opinions leaving me confused, so I think before I make anymore decisions I will show my designs to a few more people to get a stronger view.



This was only a rough layout but I was mainly working around colour because I wanted to see what colours would give out what impression. I wanted a new target audience based mainly around people who would like to go out in the evening. For this reason I used the colour purple. I used this because I feel tbat this represents a romantic colour. I was trying to avoid using dark colours but after researching into some restaurants I noticed that black actually complimented the romantic/sophisticated theme very well.



And for that reason I designed a web site containing mainly dark colours (black and grey) looking at different sites I realised that the darker website used stronger more powerful imagery so, thats what I did and I have to say that it works really well. This was one of the more popular designs. What I like about this design was the pattern that I managed to find on the internet. Its subtle yet adds alot more detail to the design.



I decided to go for the complete opposite and have a design with a much more lighter and neutral look. I was planning to go for a plain white background (like first design) however wanting to be adventurous I decided to go with another image, this also received a positive result. I brought the neutral colours from the background forward and created navigation button. It all compliments each other well but I'm not sure whether it gives out the theme that I want.



The final design was probably the most popular. I got the idea from the website zizzi. The main content is directly in the center of the page. Having a neutral background I used a more bolder and powerful foreground that could catch the users eyes. I wanted to experiment with both flash and html and that is why I would input a slideshow. What I like about this design is that it is more simple.
Now that I have designed some pages I am going to try and mix the colours because from the feedback that I receive people like the 4th design yet they like the dark colours, so maybe mixing them together will get the site that I want.

Social Networking - Entity Relationship Diagram

This is the entity relationship database that I have designed (so far) I managed to work out roughly where my entities would match, here's how I picture it:

> One university has many courses
> One course has many students
> One to many users can only be a single user.
> One to many companies can also be a single user.
> A user can have one to many posts
> And a single post can be on one to many blogs.

As you can see this is how I think it works out but it could be very different, I'll have a talk with Simon in either a surgery or my next seminar to get his opinion on my diagram.
I still need to add fields to each entity including the primary and foreign keys but I feel that this will not be too difficult to input.

Flash games

For Davids project we are to create a mini flash game using some advanced actionscript. I have been looking at some different games online that can give me some ideas. There are quite a few different gaming websites that I could use but the main two that caught my eye was miniclip.com and coffeebreakarcade.com. The two sites have a vast amount of games that can keep people entertained for hours.
I have been doing my research over the past week to see what games keep users entertained and what games are not so successful. The games that I have noticed are successful are the games that I simple, easy to play but entertaining at the same time.

Polar jump was a game that I found in the top ten games and its very basic, the rules click on the bear to make it jump higher, sounds very simple and boring but when playing it you feel you have the need to make the bear jump higher, you are continuously trying to beat your own personal score or, playing against other people. Its simple yet quick to load and fun to play.

Mahjong is a game that I have played for a long time. Its also a simple game all you have to do match the pairs but there is a twist, you can only match tiles that are not surrounded by other tiles. So the tiles basically have to be on another level or you have to work your way down and along each line to get the tiles to want. However the reason I play this game is because its quite challenging and its very hard to complete a level, and thats why I want to play it again to try and complete the level.

The final game is the idea that I will most probably be using. It is called 'yeti olympics' something that I used to play at school. It is a very competitive game, the main objective is to complete a set of five olympic sports, but they are all designed in an animal setting so, rather then a golf club they have used a flamingo and a penguin for a ball, all amusing.
Overall I think I will create a game like yeti sports something thats simple but has a challenge, but I think that I will try a few more different things on actionscript, I need to learn some more advance actionscript to create these games.

Tamrai restaurant

The 'Tamrai' restaurant is the type of theme and image that I am trying to go for. Even though it is very dark the subtle imagery and colour brings out a sophisticated look.

As you can see the designers have used the strong imagery to attract the potential audience. This is the next point that I wanted to point out, target audience. Just from looking this site I can see that the designers are trying to target a sophisticated business class audience. This is where I think the dark colours have worked. Looking at a number of different thai restaurant sites they all clearly have a target audience, this is what I want my redesign to have, maybe around the age range of a young business class age.

The menu layout is also a good set up, they have inserted a scroll bar to enable the user to view all of the menu. This is something that I might try and use because you can view alot more information in a smaller amount of space.
Overall the tamarai site is a perfect example of the type of design that I would like to design. From just doing this website I want to completely recreate the image of the Golden thai, give it a whole new image bringing in a completely different target audience.

Layout Designs

Like I said in my previous post I wanted to have a set layout throughout the site below are some sketches and ideas that I came up with that I feel will work well with what I am trying to create.

In the sketch to the left I focused on having the main text in the center with the images to the side, the navigation would also be in the center. But for some reason I don't think that this will work with what ideas I have, its also very very similar to my preivous projects layout.

For this design I went for a more simple design. I put the whole content into the center of the page, it will be alot smaller but I have seen this in a number of different sites (zizzi, sinatras) and it works really well. This design I would like to experiment with a bit more because I have taken an interest to this design.

This is a standard design for any web page but, saying that it must be a successful layout if it is used so much. The general layout is the navigation to the left, title and logo at the top and main content in the center, I would like to try this as I am still very new to this web design world but, I would like to add some flash content.

My final design layout is basic as well but this time I've moved the navigation to the bottom having the content and imagery above, I haven't tried this out yet but hopefully its going to give me results that I am looking for, which is an interesting design.
I am going to try these designs out in photoshop to get a stronger idea in what I what, I have already got some colours in my mind and that is dark purples and reds but this could also change when experimenting, who knows what will happen.

Restarant - Designing

Ok so now I have finally chosen which restaurant That I plan to redesign and that is the 'Golden Thai Restaurant'. I chosen to redesign this one because when I looked at the site for the first time I didn't realise that it was a thai restaurant, the only thing that gave it away was the name.

As you can see in this image there is no actual theme to the site, my actual first reactions was that the site had been designed for a pub mainly because of the pint of beer and the background imagery (looks like decking). Another reason why I am redesigning is because of the whole general layout. There is no set theme to any page and no actual set font. This website does not help the restaurant in any way and thats what I want to do, I want to create a site that is visually interesting.

The site that I intend to design will have a theme that I feel gives out the impression of a thai restaurant. I have started looking at other sites and I seem to see alot of dark, romantic colours. I want to keep the menu on the site like the original site because that I feel is a good idea but I would like to maybe add images of more food rather then the interior, I will also try to frame the different sections i.e. text, images, navigation etc because having looking at other site this always seems to give out a more professional look.