INTRODUCTION TO HOTGLUE.
Ben Molyneux |
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The first step in designing the hotglue portfolio was creating a number of different spider diagrams, each looking at a different aspect of designing the website. This including things such as content, scope, functionality and design.
This is what the information architecture looked liked for the website.
From this point I had answered a lot of questions about the design that enabled me to begin constructing wireframes and start thinking about layout and content in more detail.
Here are a couple of different designs I went through before deciding on this one. I knew from the beginning that I wanted a very clean and simple design after looking at a number of different designers portfolios online.
In this design I thought about going for a very flat and wide HTML5 sort of design, but due to the limitations of hotglue and page size responsiveness I choose to abandon this design.
This was another iteration of flat and wide design but with slightly different ideas.
This was a different design where i choose for a very simple page layout. This was closer to what I had imagined and designed on paper but still wasn't right.
Portfolio Design and Implementation
This is what the final design looks like. Using minimal colour and through the use of space I feel like I've achieved a very professional looking portfolio.
Using Hotglue's drag and drop mechanics I was able to construct all of the pages and content.
The final steps in constructing the portfolio was adding in custom code. I created a hoover feature on the navigation menu so that when the mouse went over one of the buttons such as 'Home', 'About' or 'Work' the text would change from light grey to Black.
Overall working with Hotglue to create this portfolio had its ups and downs. To begin with it didn't seem to bad, it didn't rely on any need for coding experience and offer a range of quick and easy tools to get stuck in with very quickly.
However, as time progressed and the project began to grow, Hotglue showed its' flaws. Keeping continuity through out the project was one of the main issues I faced as trying to get all the pages to be similar was tricky. Another big issue I had with Hotglue was the fact that there was no saving ability, any alterations couldn't be undone and a couple of times pages were completely wipe, as what happened with this page in the final stages of completion. This did serve as a learning curve and we became aware of a number of different problems that faced designers in the process of designing, developing and implementing ideas.
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After this I then created a number of different sketches of potential designs to start constructing.