Winter 2011 - Inspiration for a New Year.

For the new year, I have decided that my website needs some serious work. I have abandoned my old address from school and created amandameng.com. This will be my home-base for all future projects.

I have also been working on a more useable layout that is more tailored to a target audience. I have been researching interesting layout design and hope to make my site more visually appealing. Here are some sites I have been looking at for inspiration:

Bard's Portfolio Website - I like the playful use of colors and the easy to use portfolio pages. His use of black, white and gray for base colors paired with rainbow images and text gives it a fun and playful tone without crossing the boarder into childish and underdeveloped.

Climate Wisconsin - I love, love, LOVE the simplicity of this site. I see something I like, I click on it, I get my info in a clean, 3 column grid. Almost makes me wish I lived in Wisconsin.

Allison House - I was drawn to her clean color palate and use of graphics to create a concise hierarchy of information. I do however really dislike the quality of her graphics and don't find myself compelled to click on any of her links.

These Are Things - Again, grey/muted base colors paired with bright and cheery graphics and text. This site is fun to view and easy to use. Their about page is very nice.

After all this research, I began working on a modification of my site-map. I want shortcuts from my homepage to be able to take the viewer directly to the thumbnail image to the corresponding portfolio page similar to the Wisconsin and Bard's sites, but also have a portfolio link that will give the viewer access to all portfolio information.

So I have been sketching possible layout designs for this, keeping my side nav buttons that I fell in love with last year. I am not sure if I am making a good decision by holding on to them but I love them so very much that it is hard to let go. So for now I am holding onto them but if I find that they are still taking too much focus away from the content of the site I will have to let them go. So sad.