My Website.

One of the things that we have to do for this project is to make a website, it has to be linked to fashion & style and include primary images. To be honest, I have been finding it quite hard to come up with a theme and an idea that relates to fashion as I don't really care for it as much as I probably should with being a teenager. 
After thinking about it and going over the what I had to do with my tutor, I decided that in order for me to actually make a good website that related to my work, I had to make it apply to something that I'm interested in. Seeing as one of my obsessions and passions is film, I had the brilliant idea that I could pick fashion styles from some of my favourite films (For example, The Breakfast Club, O' Brother Where Art Thou...) and talk about what era/century/decade they came from and how popular/unpopular they were.
At first I thought that it might be hard for me to obtain primary imagery but the more I thought about it, the more I saw that it wouldn't be as hard as I thought. As I said in a previous post, people are always wanting everything to be vintage. I could take photos of things that I have that look as though they may have been influenced by fashion from a different time. I could also use secondary imagery (stating that they aren't mine) and my own drawings, to show the readers what the style looked like from that time. (As it would be very time-consuming to actually recreate the look.)
I was thinking that I could set my website out as a book or some type of design/sketch book that would show the style that I was talking about, what time period it was from and then a little information about it, along with a secondary image and a drawing of what it would look like in today's fashion.
Seeing as most websites these days have a type of photo gallery to show off images, I was thinking that I could have one dedicated to drawings of designs that I have come up with from the different fashion styles that I have been researching about. I feel that this would make the website interesting and appeal more to people that will be viewing my website.
I haven't thought much about what colours I will use for my website, but I am still in the early stages of putting everything together. Hopefully I shall be posting some images of the layout and the design of my website soon.

-Rebecca Hickey

What makes a good website?

Making a good website can be hard, as you have to constantly think of your target audience and what they want. There are a lot of things that you have to include in a website these days in order to make them worth going on.
Before you create your website, you have to think about your target audience and the demographics surrounding them. What do they like? What do they want? What would make them click onto a website? Without researching your audience, you can't even start to plan your website. (It would be a bit stupid if you did.) You need a general idea of what you're going to create. It is vital that you do this before you plan your layout as you may create one that isn't easy to navigate and you may have to change it halfway through making it which would be very time consuming.
After all the research, you have to think about what you want it to look like and the colours that you are going to use in the design.
A website has to look good, so that means no tacky bright colours or dodgy trumpet music in the background. (If a website doesn't look appealing, the audience is most likely not going to type it into their address bar.) It's good to not add colours that clash with each-other as it just makes the website hurt the audiences eyes. A lot like this one here... 

(Image taken from http://www.webdesignfromscratch.com/web-design/colour/)

Ouch. Right? This website may be very informative and contain everything that the target audience wants, but it's a sight for sore-eyes and is very distracting. The only thing that sticks out is the colour red which kind of gives of the wrong kind of mood, as if something is going to pop up on the screen and scare the socks of your feet. You don't want to put off your audience before they've even explored what you've created.
When you've got that out of the way, you can start to add images and content into the website. It is important that you get the size of the fonts right, having a font too small or too big can hurt the readers eyes. This also applies to the images as well, they need to be at a size that isn't confusing to the eye.
A good thing that seems to work well is links and advertisements to other websites that might be similar to yours. Links and adverts are good because they take up the blank space on your website that would otherwise make it look bare. It is important that they do not clash with the design of your website too because it just then makes the whole thing off-putting.
There are a lot more things that make up a good website but the main thing is planning. You should never start creating your website before you know what you're going to add to it. The more you plan, the more your idea grows and the more it grows the better it will be. Once you've sorted every detail of the website out, it should be easier to make it.

-Rebecca Hickey

The 50's.

http://pinterest.com/rbecah23/the-50s/

So this is a board about the 50's. It's what inspired Grease, Big Fish, Forrest Gump, Flipped and so many other films. There are so many things from the 50's that we incorporate into our daily lives. Things have changed a lot since then as in politics and world leaders, but the thing that hasn't seemed to have changed is style. Most people today want everything to be vintage, they want everything to look like it used to and that's all due to the iconic entertainers that lived in that decade.
People want nostalgia in the air these days, which is why fashion trends are on a never-ending cycle. People never get tired of digging up old things. There may have been some bad things about the 50's like natural disasters and such; but it looks like people are remembering the good things that came out of it like the films, music & fashion. I think that the 50's played a big part in the making of what we call 'the fashion industry' because designers and artists have definitely been inspired by icons that are well known today. You can clearly tell from the things that everyone seems to be wearing.

-Rebecca Hickey

The Decades.

I've decided to create a mood-board for each decade starting from the 50's. The mood-boards will include all the things that I think were the most important highlights of that time, such as celebrities, music, film & fashion. I decided to do this to show how things have changed since then and how some things from those decades come back into trend & fashion. I expect to use Pinterest yet again as others can pin the pictures that I've used to their online boards too.

-Rebecca Hickey

Another 50 years of art...

http://pinterest.com/rbecah23/another-50-years-of-art-summed-up/

As I said I would...
I made a new mood-board (using pinterest again) continuing on from my first. I included more artists this time, including photographers like David Bailey & Brian Duffy. I quite like David Bailey & Brian Duffy's work as they are quite creative with what they do, plus I love their Black and White images as I think they can express more emotion than coloured images can. As you can see from the board, art started to get more digital and more and more artists started to use cameras and experiment with models. I think that this was a major breakthrough in the world of art because you could actually capture a mood or a feeling very easily with just the click of a button.

-Rebecca Hickey

The first of many mood-boards.

http://pinterest.com/rbecah23/50-years-of-art-summed-up/

I decided to make a mood-board (using Pinterest) about the first 50 years of art in the 20th Century. I added pictures from artists such as Picasso, Mondrian, Magritte & Gustav Klimt. I also added in a few pictures of things that were influenced by their work such as (for example) a chair that has the work of Mondrian painted onto it's surface.
The reason that I chose all of these pictures, is because I thought that they represented their decades the most. (Plus, they're all really pretty)

I expect that the next thing that I will make a mood-board of is the 50 years continuing from this mood-board that I have just added the link to.

-Rebecca Hickey

Introduction to this Blog.

The reason for this Blog is to show my college tutor that I can present my work in different ways. Usually, as a class, we would make a Digital Sketchbook using Adobe In-Design to document our work; but seeing as our newest and final project of the year is on the topic of Websites, it seemed a better idea to replace the Digital Sketchbook with a Blog. So, in this Blog I will document my Website project, it will include things such as mood-boards, videos, photos, pretty much anything that has to do with my work. This Blog is strictly work based and related so I will definitely not be posting anything personal or irrelevant to what I'm doing. Hopefully I will remember to post and update almost everyday because if I don't, then I'm pretty much screwed. (: 

-Rebecca Hickey