The Plan for OESE
If you clicked on that link in the title, you might have noticed that the page is not all that well designed. I'm not blaming my dad for it—he slapped it togther with a table and very little time—but there are some very obvious design flaws:
- The content fills the entire page.
- There's an annoying animated GIF.
- There's too much information coming at you at once.
- The blurb is too long.
- The logo is too small/not well incorporated with the rest of the page.
- There is no navigation.
- Everything has a horizontal rule separating it from other elements, even if
they are supposed to be connected. - The basic color scheme isn't really carried throughout the entire page.
Full Width Content
This will be the first thing to fix. Most screens won't make this look bad. It's busy and uncalled for, but not entirely upsetting. On my workstation at school, I have a 1680x1050 screen resolution, which makes that little 8pt font on the sides appear that much smaller.
The Animated GIF
I lied, this will be the first thing to get the ax.
Too Much Info
I'll try to organize this in a logical fashion and add some navigation.
The Blurb
I agonized over my blurb for a week. Not because I couldn't find anything to say, but because a blurb should only be 30 - 50 words long. The one on the site currently is two full paragraphs.
The Logo
I'm going to try to redo the logo, because it'd be good practice (my art skills in visual media are somewhat lacking, much like the existence of unicorns and dragons). The logo is also too small for the page. It's 440x200ish. It looks fine on the smaller resolutions, but appears disjointed on the larger ones.
Navigation
I'll add this when I sort out the content.
Horizontal Rules
Horizontal rules are good things, but should be used sparingly to emphasize the separate-ness.
Color Scheme
I'll fix it, I really didn't expect my dad to actually do that. The whole site is about science, so the color shceme will probably end up being something green.
