When creating my website pages, I wanted to use the criticism from my classmates to make it a little less boring.  In my head, I wanted to create a clean website that was easy to navigate, because these are the types of websites that I like and that I feel most people find appealing.  So from my rough draft, I first made the boxes on top a little more lively by changing the font to something more unique.  I also added icons to find me on Facebook, Twitter, and also an RSS icon.  I also changed the font in my header to make it a little more “sporty,” and I think that this font worked a lot better.

Next on my homepage I wanted to get rid of the floating head, so I used the magic wand on the original picture to add more of my shoulders to the it, and enlarged it so that it looked 3D and like it was popping out form the banner.  The drop shadow also added to this effect.  I think having my face on the homepage is important, because it adds a human element to your website.  People will know what the person writing the article looks like, and I think this gives the website more credibility.  All the photos on the website were taken by me, so at times it was difficult to find pictures that matched what I was writing about.  All of the writing on the website is also my own.

I also changed some of the colors from my rough draft to make it more aesthetically appealing.  The arrow for the videos was also scaled down to make it look more realistic.  In my following pages, I used the same design and color scheme, but added a Twitter feed on the left.  I think that this is important, being a social media program, and added to the appeal of the website.  I also liked the balance of these pages.  For my pages, I added a Golf page, a College basketball page, a Videos page, and then a About me and Contact page.  I had to adjust the kerning of the letters in the banner so that they looked more aesthetically pleasing, and added a drop shadow to make the letters stand out more from the dark blue color.  I liked the balance of my pages and felt that everything lined up for the most part.  My goal was to make the website look clean, sporty, and unique, so I think I accomplished this.

In the Contact page, I used icons for Facebook, Twitter and my resume.  Users would be able to click on these icons and then they would be taken directly to those websites.  I also think that in the About Me section having another picture of the author is important, as it shows a human side to the website and gives you more credibility.  In all this was a difficult yet fun task, but I now can say that I am much better at Photoshop because of it.