Design Development

After sketching up the first few frames in flash and trying to see how it would work, i realised that a. the portfolio was currently unsuitable for web publishing b. there are huge difficulties getting .swf files to work in flash and c. using liquid layouts in dreamweaver combined with a table structure would be useful. Having such a simple layout does make it look a little too basic, and although i like the general effect, i am making a few changes.

I am still in the process of designing the website, and i fid paint shop pro a useful tool in sketching it out. I have used my centre image in a more tabular layout.

I want pinstripes on the header and footer so i am ging to create a tile from this sourcefile: http://product.grahambrown.com/assets/tile/447x550/447x/grahambrown/prod/18169-pattern.jpg

it needs resizing and rotating though

I dont really think it goes very well with the background, and the pink headers make it look even stranger. Need to go back to sketching.

I've had to go back to the drawing board as i've realised my original design isnt working

It is too dark and it's been difficult to implement my cutout header design style so i've had to rethink my layout. I'm now quite comfortable with using flash so i feel i can play around with design.

I'd really like to use a photographic background and i've been looking up different flash portfolo sites such as:

http://www.warmforestflash.com/blog/2009/02/21-well-designed-flash-portfolios/

The only problem is that it's almost skewing my ideas and i'm quite worried about subconsciously copying them, so i am making sure that i am not looking at them when working on ideas in my sketchbook.

I've been working to my original 4 box ideal template, name header and footer and have come up with this rough image (i used PSP to very quickly and inaccurately model this):

I'm very happy with this layout as it is very crisp and clean.

The background image is another from my brothers photography work. I like the apple label as it makes the photograph seem less synthetic i.e. it has a flaw.

It is striking and modern and a nice setting for my work.

I will have insibble thumbnails until the mouse hovers over them. The contact button will pop up with contact information: There won't be a seperate page for it, and it will be in the bottom left right corner over all of the pages.

I added a right and left navigation. to the top, so that you can move left and right through the site without clicking on the thumbnail. It wil take you through left to right

On clicking on a thumbnail, the others will disappear, and the thumbnail will move to the left, eventually growing and moving to the project header page.