Week 1 Outside of Class: 5 Events

Since last post, I have found all of my event sites to consider redesigning. Here they are.

1. http://www.centralpacomiccon.com/

My first event site is for the Central PA Comic Con. This is the front page of the website, although it certainly doesn't feel that way. This site has a bad choice of fonts, it's unorganized, it has poor choice of structuring, and in some areas the readability is also bad. There is a lot that could be done here.

2. http://www.sakuramatsuri.org/

This one is not nearly as bad as the first, however it needs improvements. For something that has been happening for 57 years, the website doesn't show how much of a tradition it is or how big of an event it is. There are also some organizational issues, as well as a lot of white space at the top of the page.

3. http://sa.rochester.edu/simcon/blog/

This page is for SIMCON, which is a student run game convention at University of Rochester. When I first landed on this page, I thought it was one of those pages for a domain that hasn't been claimed yet, which cause me to return. However, I realized it wasn't and went back to looking at it. It really is just a very boring page and nothing about it, other than the descriptions, gives away what the event is about. Obviously, you don't want people visiting your event site only to click off because they don't recognize it as what they are looking for. It is for this reason that I think this page could use a redesign as well.

4. https://www.valhallafaire.com/

The event for this page is the Valhalla Renaissance Faire, which takes place out in California. This Renaissance Faire has been running for 25 years, however their website doesn't reflect that very well. Most of this site's issues are with its aesthetics. There is stretched type, stretched pictures, it is very crowded, and the header for the page is apart of the background meaning when you scroll, the "Faire" part sticks out. I also feel that the typeface for the header doesn't really scream Renaissance, it actually feels more like something you would use for a horror or Halloween event. There is a lot this page could use to improve its looks.

5. http://dofiff.com/frameindex.htm

This website is for the Depth of Field Film Festival. Interestingly enough, this is an online event, which is different from most traditional events I suppose. The website looks like a Geocities site straight out of the 90's. There is even an entrance page which blares sound at you from an off center video. All of the navigational buttons are animated, as well as just about every element on the screen. The page also doesn't scroll like a traditional website, instead only the white/gray box content scrolls. I find it to be bizarre, and for an event which mainly focuses on this page, it is confusing and distracting and definitely needs to be refocused.

Week 1b

Today our project was announced and we were given time to begin searching for our event websites to redesign. So far, I have found two that could definitely use an upgrade. The first one is centralpacomiccon.com. This is a local event and the website is just awful. There is an overuse of fonts that don't even match the topic of the event and the organization could definitely be improved as well. The second event I found was http://www.sakuramatsuri.org/. This is a Japanese street festival that takes place in New Jersey. The website seems mostly outdated and is rather boring overall. I can definitely see myself doing something with either one, but especially the Central PA Comic Con site. In my next post, I will have the full list of event sites I found.

Week 1a

Today was the first day of the class, so there isn't much to post about yet. We discussed some of the things we'd be learning which includes more in-depth HTML and CSS, as well as responsive web design. Our first project will be to create an event website. I am excited to begin this semester and to learn new things. Hopefully, through this class I will better my skills in HTML and CSS to create better websites overall.