Good aesthetics- changing my layout

So as part of the checklist for this Assignment #2 one of the things was too have experimented with templates, fonts and colours. Now I could have easily lied and said I tried and after a few hours of attempting to change my template and getting nowhere I was tempted, though this wouldn't have really been lying as I had tried.

Luckily enough I stuck it out and managed to create a template that I am fairly happy with! First of all I had to change my basic blogger template to a different one then I went about trying to find layer and skins on the net to download and put on my blog but unfortunately was trying with MySpace skins websites like Pyzam and Blogskins so they were rejected.

Anyway I did find one template made for blogger on someones blog skins site that I really really liked! Unfortunately blogger again rejected it and I attempted to then save the images as they were but couldn't as there was some copyright on them, so I ended up doing a screen shot of them in image ready and putting them into Photoshop.

After a lot of trial and errors and attempts and finding the right piece of HTML to replace I finally got where I am now. You can see by the screen shots my attempts to make a good template, and a lot of uploading of different sized images into Flickr and Photobucket. A lot of trials and errors!

I am pretty happy with the way my template sits, I got rid of the grey boarders after hunting for the code for ages and took away a silly grey swirl as well as getting rid of this green bar seperating the header and body, I changed the font, size and colour of the text. I think for a first effort I haven't done too badly not quite happy with the join mark between the header and body but it will do for now!

I love the colours I think they are pretty and I am so proud of myself for all the work I did to get there! Now I must begin my final post for my Assesment #2 so as to email it to Johannes!

Wish me luck!

Aesthetics...?

What is Aesthic?

Answers.com defines aesthics as "An artistically beautiful or pleasing appearance" which I feel is a good start to the understanding of what aesthics means. I feel there are many componants within defining aethetics such as there should be quality within the look, it should be pleasing visually and the overall feel should be one that doesn't make you feel violenty ill! Aethics is ultimately all about the way something looks and whether or not the viewer finds it attractive or not.

Aestheically pleasing website...

I think the Splendour in the Grass website is one that is visually pleasing, especially for my age group. It uses bright fun colours on a black background but keeps the colours to a minimum of 3 - pink and green for text and red for the fruit. I think it is a lively website that makes you think feel like Splendour is going to be fun weekend outdoors but is not overpowering. It has rotating images of the headlining artists which looks good and is informing at the same time.

I think that Accept Jesus, Forever Forgive is quite possibly the worst website ever for aethtics, this site makes me feel violently ill just being there. The biggest piece of crap I have ever seen with constant flashing background in the colours of the rainbow. What were these people thinking? Apart from that it only has a cluster of links to other pages within the site etc. at the top of the page nothing at all what so ever describing the site or anything. This is a piece of rubbish!

What makes a good website is firstly the content contained within the pages followed by the way it looks, whether or not it is visually pleasing or makes you want to vomit! Also whether or not a site is easy to navigate around and that it is quick at downloading each page.

The difference between web aesthetics and print aesthetics is mainly the font style, as websites need fairly standard font so everyone can read it from all computers as well as it not looking retarded on the screen as it might if it was in cursive script and wouldn't be very easy to read. Where as print is hardcopy so it can have all kinds of fonts and be legiable. Also print can have more detailed images as it doesn't need to consider bandwidth!