Introduction to Graphic Design

Our first post of the semester was supposed to be something that inspired us.  Therefore, I thought my last post of the semester(minus the re-do’s I have to post) would also be something that inspired me.  Hopefully, if you were here last year you got the chance to hear her speak at Hendrick’s but one of the people that inspires me most is Annie Leibovitz.  She lives up to the saying, a picture tells a thousand words and her work with Vanity Fair has been brilliant.  Therefore, I’ve connected this post to the Vanity Fair website for Annie Leibovitz.  Take some time and enjoy her work.

When I first started this project, I did two things.  First, I looked at Gift of Life’s Logo and then I looked at Gift of Life’s Website.  From their website, I learned what I did not want to do.  Their website is extremely busy and so I knew I wanted to design something clean and simple.  Their logo gave me my inspiration for my color scheme.  However, when I started making my photo shop file, I quickly realized the red, white and blue scheme screamed July 4^th and everything else patriotic.  Hoping to get away from that impression, I made the background of my website gray.  I later realized this helped the colors pop as well.  I wanted to make everything consistent so I decided that all of the boxes would be blue and the text would be white and red.  Text that I wanted to stick out, like the headlines, facts, etc. would be red and the rest of the text would be white.  I knew I wanted to use a big picture on each page and since Gift of Life is a program that matches bone marrow donors to bone marrow recipients, I knew my photos would be of people.  Unintentionally, most of my photos ended up being of children but I believe this helps create an emotional connection with the viewer.

My biggest challenge with this project was limiting the amount of text I used.  There was so much information on the website that when I first created my web design, it was loaded with text.  To fix this, I took out some text, increased font size and replaced some text with pictures.  Additionally, I wanted to use a consistent design so I stuck to the big feature photo, the feature text and then three additional text boxes, which also helped break up the text so that it was not too overwhelming.

Ironically, though, my second greatest challenge was the contact us page because I had trouble keeping the design consistent based on the amount of contact info I had.  However, I solved this problem by also including the drive information and donation box again.

Overall, I am really happy with my web design.  The only part I would change would be the home page picture because its clarity is a little off.  However, the little boy, Matthew Welling has become the face of Gift of Life and so I thought that having his picture on the home page was really important.  I guess I could have used a different photo but after watching videos of Matthew on CBS and other talk shows with his parents, I felt like this picture really captured his essence and what he is all about.  I really feel like this project brought everything that I have learned full circle and I was able to use all of the techniques, principles and skills that I have mastered in this class.