Website Building

I know which websites I like, so creating my own should be fairly simple. I definitely don't want too much going on, this can distract users and make navigation of the site much harder than it needs to be. I also wanted to create some sort of logo/image that can be recognised with my site. I came up with black, white and red being my main colours as black and white are complete opposites and red was to give the site more a bit of colour. They also contrast with each other which again makes it easy to identify. The menu is located exactly the same on every page, also making it easier to navigate, which is at the top making it clear and easily found.

This was the first image i came up with, but it did not turn out the way I wanted, it was way too small to be used and not what i was after.
So I went back and came up with a similar logo/image using Illustrator to make the image much larger and clearer. I also kept it simple by just using the domain name 'olza' to keep it specific to my site.

So this is the image i came up with to use for my site. I definitely wanted to use this, but was not sure of whether to use it as my back ground image, or the header of each of the site pages.
Here are some screen shots of the different ways the site may look by experimenting different uses of this image.

Without Background Image:With Background Image:
I am currently split between both these options as both have hold characteristics I like. The print screen with no background image I find looks good as its easy to read and nothing to distract users, I find it also makes the menu much easier to use as its extremely clear and separate to all other text.
The print screen of the site with the background also looks appealing as there's something extra, but not too much that it takes away the main focus to the text. It also makes the site more unique having a background image that I have created myself.

My choice of font was Arial as it is easy to read, but also looks different. I was tempted to use Times New Roman as this is sans-serif font and has been proven to be easier to read as the flicks of the letters bring them closer together, however, this really only applies to large amounts of text that will be read by users for long periods of time. The purpose of my site is not for long reading about me, but more visual in the use of pictures and video. I wanted to focus on this as it is much nicer for a user to see images and clips rather than to read, this should keep users interested for longer and keep them visiting again to see updated pages.